February 5, 2008

Bonjour! The last few days have been a bit of a blur.

We'll start Tarantino style and say that by the time I went to bed last night, it was the first time I slept in about 40 hours.

So as we all know, the Giants won the Superbowl in amazing fashion, which is where this story begins. Four of us from the trip braved the night and went into Geneva around 11:30 to a British pub that was airing the game. It was really strange to hear announcers during the pre-game with British accents, but it was nice to see T.V. in English at all.

When we got there they were running "specials" on American beer ($60 franc for 12 bottles of Sam Adams, MDG, or Corona [That's not quite American but what can you do?]). As the game progressed we made friends with a student who was interning at the ILO and had just arrived in Geneva, as well as many ex-patriots who were happy to talk to us. I even was able to interview people to hopefully write one of my cultural papers on how the Superbowl is viewed in Switzerland/abroad!

After a few buckets of beer between us and the Giants winning, we got thrown out of the bar because they were closing (keep in mind its about 4:30am now). Now, the trains don't start running until about 5:30 so we wandered the streets for a while unsure of whether it was worth it to go home and come back into Geneva for class in four hours (no worries, Switzerland is super safe), and then ended up having to run for the first train to Nyon because we decided to stay at our friends apt and try and sleep.

This is where the night gets interesting...so as were running for the train, my friends make it on, but I don't. I call them and decide I'm going to meet them in Nyon on the next train. I get on the next train, but of course I fall asleep and end up going two stops (about a half hour) past Nyon. I get out, no idea where I am, its about 6am, and I'm still not entirely sober. Needless to say, it was interesting. I figure out the next train back to Nyon (where I was supposed to get off), get on it, and spend the next two hours somewhat sleeping in the Nyon train station hahahah.

Class yesterday was QUITE a challenge and we were all struggling. I was actually falling asleep during French class (which is only 6 people) but the teacher was really nice about it hahah

Then I finally get home last night only to find out we are going to the dad's house for dinner which I went to. But it was worth it because as a hobby he collects wild gourmet mushrooms so we had an amazing dinner and then watched Meet the Fockers in French.

Today I got back on track and class was pretty easy. We also found an amazing chicken restaurant in the Old City for pretty cheap for lunch and it made us super happy.

Moral of the story is it is a great story and I'd do it exactly the same again if I had to, just to see the look on the Patriots' faces as they watch their perfect season slip through their fingers.