Megan, Switzerland, and Other Fun Stories

Last weekend, Megan came to visit me. Megan and I flew to Amsterdam together, and we've kept in touch via facebook. She lives in north-east Italy, as I live more north-west, so we hadn't seen each other in all the time we've spent here. Here are the highlights of her stay:

She arrived in Milan on Friday. Friday night, we went out to dinner in my town, and there just happened to be a French festival in the center, so we wandered around that, too. We bought real eclairs, which were delicious, then we walked back to my apartment. We stayed up late talking, but not too late, as we had a train to catch the next morning.

Saturday, we hopped a train to Milan, met up with Kailee the Austrailian, Kristen, Taylor, and Heather and Ray, girls from Cremona. We went shopping, got gelato more than once, and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. Megan reminded me to put on sun screen (bless her!) so I did not turn into a tomato.

On the way home, Megan and I were seperated. We got to the station at 6:28, and the next train to my town left at 6:30. We ran to the train, and right after I hopped on, the doors slid closed, leaving Megan on the platform. A nice man stuck his arm in the doors to try to stop them from closing, but they closed anyway. I frantically pushed the button on the doors, trying to open them, meanwhile yelling "NO! NO! FERMA! FERMA!" The train started to slide away from the platform, and Megan lifted her hands in a "what can we do?" gesture. I screamed "take the next train!" knowing she probably couldn't hear me. It was then that I realized everyone in the car was staring at me, as if I was insane.

Not caring, I whipped out my cell phone, dialed Megan's number... and a recorded voice told me I didn't have enough money to make a call. Thankfully, Megan called me, and I was able to explain to her which train to take, which luckily arrived at my city 5 minutes after I would arrive. Trying to calm myself down a bit, I pulled out my iPod to listen to some nice, light music. Then the iPod battery died.

Megan got to the station just fine, and we had a lovely dinner outside a restaurant I know. We decided to go for drinks, but I was low on cash, so we stopped at an ATM. The ATM did everything it should have done, except give me money. It gave me a reciept, but no money. Deciding we should head back home so I could call my parents and ask them to work things out, we started on our way back towards the apartment. We had taken two steps away from the ATM when it started to sprinkle. In the course of thirty seconds, the sprinkle turned into a downpour. We ran home, and arrived at the apartment soaking wet.

Despite all of this, we really did enjoy our day!

Now, Megan left on Sunday. Monday morning, I was at school at 6, waiting to board the bus that would take us to Switzerland.

Here are the highlights of my trip(s) to Switzerland:

We got on the bus at 6:15, and arrived in Geneva at 11:45. We were given until 1:30 to eat lunch. I had packed a sandwhich, but had forgotten something to drink, so I went in search of bottled water. Luckily, there was a little bar in a nearby park. I walked up to the bar, unsure of what to do, and asked in terrible French for a bottle of water. The guy at the bar looked at me like I was an idiot, and I stared back at him. Luckily, there happened to be a nice lady who spoke English, and offered to help me out.

She ordered the water for me, I payed, and while I was waiting for the guy at the bar to get it, she asked me where I was from, mentioning she was French. "I'm American" I said, after thanking her for my help. "Oh" she replied in a disgusted tone, and she turned away from me. The bar guy gave me my water and change in Francs, I thanked him and the lady and was on my way.

After lunch, we went on a rather uneventful and slightly uninteresting tour of Geneva. People told me that I spoke better Itailan than the guide did, and I had trouble understanding her. After the tour, we went to our hotel, which happened to be in France. We ate at the hotel, then everyone boarded the bus again to go back to experience the night-life in Geneva. We got back to the hotel just before midnight, and I went straight to bed.

Tuesday morning, we had a leisurely French breakfast (croissants and baguette! yum!) then boarded the bus for Geneva. We went to the UN headquarters for a tour, which was actually very interesting. We got to sit in on a convention, in which people from China, the U.S. and other places discussed the internet and how to reduce spamming. There were headphones to put on, and a knob to turn to hear what people were saying in different languages. You could see the translators as they translated, and one of them waved her hands all over the place! She wasn't Italian, sadly.

After the UN headquarters, we went back to the hotel in France for lunch. All of the Italians were disgusted by the fact that they were served potatoes that still had the skin on them. Evidently, no Italian has EVER eaten potato skin. Once again, we boarded the bus and returned to Switzerland. This time, however, we did not go to Geneva, we went to Cern.

Cern is the 27 km loop used for particle acceleration. We saw a little presentation which I found enthralling, and then we went to see the Large Hadron Collider in the making. We put on hard hats and took an elevator 100 m below the surface, where we saw people working on the collider itself. It was pretty fantastic to see, although most of the stuff the physicist said went right over my head. On our way back up, the physicist told us that one of the more unusual things about working at Cern is the fact that there are no stairs. There's only one way down and one way up, and that would be the elevator. That was rather disconcerting, but then the physicist said that the waiting room for the elevator was pressurized, so if there ever was an outbreak of fire, we would be safe.

Leaving Cern, we started our journey back to Italy. We went through France, then passed by Courmayeur, which is the town I spent Christmas vacation in. We arrived home at about midnight, and my friend Mari gave me a ride home.

Yesterday, nothing really interesting happened, besides the Rotary meeting I went to. I thanked the club for hosting me, we had lunch, and as usual, a speaker stood up to discuss a certain topic. My tutor, whom I was sitting next to, has never really enjoyed these discussions. He always has difficulty concentrating, but this time, he came prepared. A few minutes after the speaker began her speech, my tutor pulled out his laptop and began showing me pictures of his cats.

Today, I went to school as usual, then Mari and I went to visit our classmate Clara, who is in the hospital. She has cystic fibrosis, and isn't doing too well. Prayers are appreciated.

Next week, I'll be going on a trip to Rome, and not long after, I'll be on a plane back to the U.S.!