This post is fairly late considering I arrived in Lausanne a little over 48 hours ago. My mother has been bugging me to post, so here I am with an update!
It is beyond beautiful here... words cannot describe, pictures can't even do it justice. This is the view from my room
The house, La Croisee, is amazing. There is 7 floors total, the 5th through 1st floors are living spaces, the ground floor is classrooms, the program office, a small Cafet, the library, and such. The -1 floor is the student kitchen where we can cook our own meals if we decide to go grocery shopping. Also on that floor is the student area with a ping pong table, couches, a room with a TV, games, books... etc. A music room with guitars and a couple other instruments, and also on that floor is the main kitchen where we have most of our meals. There's also a -2 floor which just has a"gym" of sorts with a few weights and yoga mats. I havent taken any pictures inside the house yet, but I'll get around to it.
The first day we jumped right into things. Our program directer didn't want us to sleep, she wanted us to get on the swiss schedule. So, we walked to a nearby town called Ouchy (pronounced OOSHY) and went to the Olympic museum since Lausanne is the home of the Olympic headquarters. It was a really cool place, but I think we all would have enjoyed it a bit more if we weren't so exhausted.
Yesterday we walked around town and were guided by our program directors. I was so in awe of the beauty of it all.
First of all, let me tell you how GREAT the water is here. The tap water tastes like the best bottled water you've ever had. AND you can drink water straight from fountains. Check it out
On our tour we walked up very long stairs. It seemed miserable but at the end it took us to this which overlooked pretty much the whole city
Up at the top there was also on old Gothic cathedral. It was so beautiful. It had the most intricate and amazing stained glass
Finally we went to a small restaurant/bar called Le Barbare which is famous for its chocolat chaud (hot chocolate). My mother would have been in heaven. It was basically a very thick mouse or pudding served really hot. It was to die for.
We ate dinner as a group at a Thai restaurant (it was interesting) then i headed to bed fairly early because I still felt pretty jet-lagged. It's 11am here now... we've had breakfast, met our French professors and are "testing" out our classes. We're still doing orientation all through next week, so our real class schedule doesnt start until next Friday I believe.
A beintot! (see you later)
