Ciao ragazzi!

It's been an awesome week and an even better weekend.  Last week was good.  I had two quizzes that I did well on, and I played in a practice soccer game.  I think we start the real games against other schools next week.  It was so great to play again.  I also went to the elementary school that I will be volunteering at.  It was a really nice school and I was surprised at how early they start teaching english.  These little 6 year olds were already learning english phrases.  I'm excited to start volunteering this week, it will be very fun.  I went to Interlaken this past weekend, and it was possibly the most beautiful place I've ever been.  Florence is a very pretty city but Interlaken is this beautiful snowy place with amazing mountains.  It's so serene and amazing.

We left for Interlaken on thursday at 8 PM and didn't get there until 4 AM.  I woke up as we were on the side of the mountain in the snow and driving so slowly up the hill.  It was probably the most terrifying ride I have ever been on but we made it! When you enter Switzerland, it's just tons of mountains so there was a lot of tiny roads up and down the mountains.  I was just glad that I didn't have to drive on those roads.  We got to our hostel and immediately slept for about 2 hours.  The hostel was so nice, super clean, and they were very helpful.  I feel like I was a little spoiled for my first hostel experience.  We all got to stay in the same room so that was nice.  We went with a company called Bus2Alps and they were so helpful and nice compared to the last company we booked a trip with.  After we slept, we got up to have breakfast and get going to start skiing!! My friend Colleen and I had booked a full beginner's day and we were really excited.  We got there and found out that we couldn't have a lesson because not enough people had signed up.  So our choices were to pay more and have a private lesson, or to just do a half day skiing and have our lesson in the afternoon.  We decided to do that and it was so perfect.  The lesson was sweet, our instructor was really friendly, and the mountains were beautiful.  I was so glad I took the opportunity to ski.  I wore so many layers that I was actually so hot on the mountain, and I never once was cold.  We went down the bunny hill the whole time, with little kids flying past me, but I didn't care, I had a blast.  After we got home, we went out with a big group to grab dinner.  All food in Switzerland is crazy expensive.  It was hard to find a meal that was under 15 swiss francs (swiss francs are basically the same amount as dollars).  We all went out and had swiss cheese fondue for dinner.  It was very filling, but I wish we had gotten chocolate fondue instead! We were all so exhausted Friday night that we went to bed early.

On Saturday, me and some of my friends went to Zurich.  It was so cool! Zurich is a really pretty city and it was only about a two hour drive away from Interlaken.  It's pretty small but it reminded me a little of Boston.  It was very clean and people friendly.  It was snowing and it was so beautiful.  First, everyone made a stop at Starbucks, since there are none in Florence.  It was nice seeing some familiar American stores there.  We walked around the city, saw a beautiful church, and then we got to climb the Grossmunster church and see the views of the city from the top.  It was awesome, and Lake Zurich is beautiful.  We got lunch and shopped.  For lunch, we all got rostis.  A rosti is Swiss food, and it's basically a hashbrown with toppings.  Mine was the rosti on bottom, then cheese, bacon, and egg on top.  It was delicious; it pretty much just tasted like breakfast.  After we got back to Interlaken, we grabbed dinner and then spent the night with all of our friends at the other hostel's bar.  It was a great time, and so fun because we knew so many people from our program on the trip this weekend.

On Sunday, we walked to the beautiful lake in Interlaken.  It was about a 20 minute walk and we got to see a lot of the local houses.  They all look like little toy cabins, they are so cute.  The lake was so clear and blue, it was like we were in the caribbean.  I was in awe of how beautiful this place is and I hope to go back someday and bring my friends and family.  After, I bought lots of chocolate, and it was unbelievably delicious.  Chocolate, unfortunately, is also very expensive.  We grabbed some burgers for lunch - which were weird and tasted more like sausage - and then got on the bus home! We were all exhausted by that point.

I feel like this trip was probably different that the others I will be doing.  Most of seeing other places is just walking around and going to museums and such.  But this trip, we got to do really fun activities while seeing the country.  They had a ton of stuff you could do: skiing, snowboarding, paragliding, skydiving, night sledding, etc.  It was very expensive but 100% worth it.  It was also really awesome, because in Switzerland they speak Swiss-German, so I could read and understand things! It was a nice change from being in Florence where I can only understand a little.

There's a chocolate festival going on in Florence this week, literally 2 minutes from my apartment.  We signed up early and tonight we get to go to a free wine and chocolate tasting! I'm really excited :)  Other than that, this week is pretty relaxed since I will be getting ready to go to Paris friday morning! We still need to figure out everything we want to see but it will be fun regardless.  I want to definitely see the eiffel tower and the louvre.  I'd also like to see Versailles because I've heard it's beautiful.  I'm so excited!

Upcoming Plans:

This weekend (Feb 15-17): PARIS! I am so excited!

Next weekend (Feb 22-24): The weekend before midterms, so I will probably be studying and just relaxing after all of my traveling!

THEN IT'S SPRING BREAK!!!!

I miss you all! Ciaoooooo,
Katie