Geneva, Switzerland Part 1

Holy cow is it getting harder and harder to keep up with my blogging. I'm LOVING Europe, but I'm finding myself spending more and more time with my host families which is FANTASTIC, but then I sleep and have busy days and realize I'm weeks behind on posting! My apologies. I hope to get caught up in the next few days! Phew!

So...Geneva! What a whirlwind! I had my first experience NOT speaking the same language as my host family, so that was a trip! And naturally, I've been roomed with many different French speakers, but the time I need help translating, I'm roomed with a Mexican! haha. But Brenda was an awesome roomie (even though she got me sick! =P) and we made it work. Our host mom, Genevieve, spoke a LITTLE English, and we played a LOT of charades. I laughed a lot with this family as we tried to understand one another!

Our first night in town, we quickly realized the language barrier. Around the dinner table, we were eventually speaking in 5 different languages. We had English (Me, Brenda, and Genevieve some), French (Genevieve and Dario), Spanish (Brenda and me), Italian (Brenda, Genevieve, and Dario), and then German was brought in some how! WHAT?!? Talk about chaos! lol. My mom instantly thought of this scene from I Love Lucy when I told her what was going on:

We ended up having a great week, even though we didn't talk much. We still enjoyed each other's company and learned a lot from each other. One of my favorite days was host family day. We were only 40 min. away from an adorable city in France called Annecy, so we went to visit! It was my first time in France and I loved it!

I LOVED the architecture of old town. My goodness! The colors were vibrant and the buildings were just lovely. And they were all built over the river. We stopped and got crepes at an adorable little restaurant and I was IN HEAVEN! I ordered a chocolate/banana crepe and it was one of the best things I’ve ever eaten! When we drove home, we stopped at a French bakery to pick up some bread. Brenda and I went in with Dario just because we wanted to see what they had- everything was gorgeous! I wish America had bakeries like they do here! 

 

Genevieve et Dario

Eating the most delicious crepes!

Visiting an old bridge on our drive back home

We got home and I saw that my mom had texted me saying they finally landed in Geneva after a huge fiasco of trying to get out of London. They were looking for a place to eat downtown but couldn’t find anything. It worked out that I asked Genevieve if we could go pick them up and have them over for dinner, and she said yes. I got some more work done while they walked back to the hotel, then Genevieve and I went to pick them up. What a chaotic thing that was! We had directions, but Genevieve wasn’t sticking to them, and I knew we weren’t in the right place, even though I'm clearly not from Geneva! haha We eventually got mom and dad, and it was great to see them! We came back and had quite the dinner of bread, vegetable puree soup, chicken in cream and rice, then salad, cheese, and an apple torte/pie thing. Oh goodness we were full! It was a great day!