Prepare for picture overload

Hmmm... Not much is new in my Florentine life.  At the moment, it is freezing outside so I am snuggled beneath the covers of my bed, reading and listening to possibly one of the worst sounds in the world.  What’s that?  The sound of pennarelle (markers) scratching quickly and carelessly against paper. Ugh. To me, the equivalent of finger nails scratching the chalkboard... I am such a marker snob.  

I cannot even imagine the baby-face I gave Nina when she asked to borrow my pennarelle because she left the ones that I gave her for Christmas--fine, American Crayola’s for the primary purpose of deterring her from using my Sharpies--at school.  

I couldn’t say “no.”  She needed to finish an art project. 

I couldn’t lie. They were sitting quite visibly on my desk from my afternoon of coffee-shop-doodling with Adair. 

So now, I sit helplessly, like my third-grade self... a prissy, marker princess who would only lend markers to eight-year-old boys that swore on their lives that they would not “press down too hard on the tips.” Seriously, it’s as if these are the last markers on the face of the earth or something. I’m ridiculous. 

Anyhow, this week is essentially purgatory--as have become all of my weekdays over the past month since my exam--because my friends and I are traveling like maniacs.  

My schedule: unpack, speak some Italian, eat some pasta, learn some new verb tenses, repack.  What a life!  

Last Thursday, Adair, Lauren, and I set out for Switzerland:  home of some pretty famous chocolate and mountain-ranges.

Instead of traveling to random Slovakian cities in order to arrive at our final destination, we signed ourselves up for a packaged tour designed especially for study abroad students.

  

There were two, essentially-monotonous hostel options.  Being the breakfast-fiends that we are, we chose one over the other merely for its breakfast options. Nom nom, That’s enough for me.  We woke, bright and early, for the day of snow-trekking ahead of us and headed downstairs for a breakfast-of-champions.  What was awaiting us? None other than some bread, jam, and yogurt.  All I have to say is that the hotel administrator is one lucky duck that I am the yogurt-enthusiast that I am.

The three of us were all ready for snow-trekking--What’s up spandex, sporty shades, and Holy Cross gear from head-to-toe?  Disappointingly, when the van arrived, the driver asked us if we were snow-trekking that day, waited for our affirmative response, and then told us that we were not, in fact, snow-trekking that day.  Apparently, of the two-hundred students traveling with our group, only three signed-up for snow-trekking.  Which three? Us three. Um cool.  

The thoughts running through my head at this point: We are earthy-crunchy-hippy-weirdos... who else would ever sign up for something like this?  Luckily, we got the snow-trekking date switched to the next day so that we were able to find out.

In the meantime, our paragliding appointment was moved up... giving me zero time whatsoever to process the fact that I would soon be running off a cliff with merely a parachute and a man attached to my back.  

During a thirty-minute drive up the Swiss Alps, three daredevil guides listened to three, jumpy, twenty-year-old girls freaking out about the mountainscapes and the idea of parachuting off a cliff.  At the top of the mountain, we were decked out in red-jumpsuits, helmets (size Large for this girl. Anyone surprised?), and ridiculous backpacks that transform immaculately into seats.

Before!

Here, I expect rigorous paragliding lessons.  

Flashback:  Surf lessons, Coronado California, circa August 2008.  Kyle, can you recall how many times we paddled into sand and leapt onto the beached-surfboards before actually hitting the waves?  Yeah, like 300. 

All of a sudden, I’m standing on the side of mountain, in the Swiss Alps, strapped to a strange, Swiss man, watching my friends run off a mountain.  After a few seconds, I was running too... running...running...and POOF... flying, like a bird, like a plane, floating somewhere far above Switzerland.

I skipped away from the field we landed on, and was on an adrenaline high for the rest of the day.

Fortunately for us, our adventures did not end there.  The next day, our snow-shoe-trekking-dreams were realized after all.  And you know what? I am SO glad that they were.  Ronny--a big, German-speaking, lumberjack-type who learned to ski before learning to walk--toured the three of us, in addition to a sweet, Swiss couple, all around the mountains via snow-shoe.  

We hiked up.  

We ran down.  

We went too fast.  

We fell down.

What a workout!  ...And better yet, what a background...

Fluff'n'go with a random, Bernese Mountain dog? I think so.

That night, we returned to the mountains for night-sledding.  When I hear “night-sledding,” I picture a bunny hill:  One big, wide, bunny hill--illuminated by stadium-lights for all to see.  The Interlaken-idea of night-sledding, however, is about 100 doses more extreme than that.  

We arrived at the top of the mountain in the pitch black where we were gifted with tall, plastic sleds that require steering... not quite the blow-up tube edition to which I’m accustomed.  Our only hint as to where the trails ended and where the mountains dropped down thousands of feet, was the hardly-visible, white of the snow.  Our only lights were the green glow-sticks laced around our necks and the sparkling stars above.  (I am fully aware of how incredibly cheesy that sounds, but this was by far the most unbelievable sky I have ever seen in my entire life.)  

Look at those perfect bunches of stars!

For the rest of the night, the three of us referred to the sky as a “Lion King Sky” (If you don’t know what that means, we cannot be friends) and to the other sledders as “bugs” because we all looked like little, green fireflies.  Yeah, we’re weird.

At the end of the hour-long, sled-run we were greeted by a traditional, Swiss, fondue dinner.  It was delicious... though we didn’t receive anywhere near enough cheese fondue.  We ended our Switzerland adventure excursion with a tame day that consisted of a mug of Swiss hot-chocolate atop the tallest hotel in Interlaken and a search for some fine, Swiss chocolate for those chocoholics back home.  We’ll see if it’s still so good in June, but the chocolate bar I’m eating at the moment is pretty, darn tasty.