February 7, 2008

Wow I'm full. Tonight we had raclette (rack-let) (see picture below) which is the most traditional Swiss dinner. All of the kids on the program were invited with their host families to a restaurant in a nearby town to have raclette. Basically, there is a massive half block of this special kind of cheese and they put it under a heater which melt the top layer of cheese.

Then they scrape off the layer of cheese onto your plate and you eat it with potatoes dipped in the cheese, and then with tiny pickles and sweet onions on the side. They also claim you need to drink hot tea or wine while eating it because if you drink water or something cold, the cheese will congeal into a giant ball in your stomach and give you a bad stomach ache.

Besides that, class was really interesting the past two days. On Weds we went to the ICRC (Red Cross) and had a few lectures on the role and goals of the Red Cross. Then today we had a guy come to talk to us about the UN who served in Bosnia and Somolia and served directly under the Secretary General a few times. He was an amazing speaker and his stories were even better.

Other than that, not much is going on. I've started bonding better with my family as we become better adjusted to each other, but all of the kids have holiday (vacation) next week, so they are going to Vienna. A bunch of us on the trip are thinking of going there for Easter weekend.

My French is slowly improving, and each day I try to choose one phrase that I can use and I repeat it over and over and it becomes a joke in the group. Today's phrase was "Il y a monstre sous moi lit" (there is a monster under my bed!)

That's it for now, got to go sleep off the massive amount of cheese in my stomach.