Surprise!

Lindsay (one of my very best friends) is coming to Switzerland to visit me! I can't wait to see a friendly face and I'm very excited to speak American English to someone :) So I'm having a celebration dinner tonight. I was going to have curry chicken but when I opened my chicken it smelled like rotten eggs and the internet tells me that's very bad. So I settled for, what else but pasta? And some white wine I bought for three franks, banana split ice cream and caramel chews. Then I get to work on writing the newsletter for work because it's final draft is due tomorrow afternoon! Yikes!

For those of you who keep asking about my internship...
- It's going well, I think. I feel like I am on track with what I am doing but at the same time I'm not too sure because I am not as familiar with strategic advertising as I am with creative advertising.
- My boss is one of those genuinely good people and I always have an interesting conversation with her - she's very down to earth. She always tries to accommodate me, ie: I need a fan in my bedroom so I ask her where I can buy one. She says, "No! I will find you one! Do not spend the money on that!" and asked the other two guys at lunch with us and within two minutes, I had one. She's one of those people who really makes things happen, obviously, or I wouldn't be in Switzerland. She's even making sure that I take a week off to spend with Lindsay when she is here - nevermind that I told her I didn't need to.
- Speaking proper English is not as hard to do as I thought it would be, but there is still a huge language barrier in which I sometimes I/they don't understand what I am/they are saying.
- Croissants out the ears! We get croissants just about every day for a breakfast/mid-morning snack. Wonder when I should bring some in?
- It always smells good in the office, because like most foreigners, my coworkers pump their veins with espresso.
- I have my very own Mac PowerBook to work on. Unfortunately, the keyboard is German so I'm all kinds of confused.
- We go out to lunch every day to a place that is the equivalent of eating lunch at Ukrop's - too bad it's not the same price. However, you do get a small cup of free water! Lunch with my coworkers always makes for an interesting conversation too. For example, today's:

"Don't be surprised if you walk into a bar and smell marijuana."
"Um...what?"
I figured since they always like to talk about how different life is from the US, that this was a major topic. According to Swiss law, Marijuana cannot be sold, distributed or grown but it is perfectly fine to have it in your possession and smoke it without getting in trouble with the law. But alcohol is a bigger problem here than in the US...? And don't ask me how that was the topic of our lunch conversation. I mean, we started out by talking about fans and how to pronounce the name of my street (which is Milch-tal-straaas-se, I think I got it right this time).

Anyways, it's paper recycling day here tomorrow. Yes folks, you better stack all of your paper into neat, even stacks (and don't think about mixing flattened boxes with paper) and tie them with string. Who honestly has time for that? Do you have to set aside a special time to do it? Because if it were me, I would rather spend the time cutting it up into tiny pieces to hide in a garbage bag than fight the string.

Have I mentioned it's hot as Satan's kitchen here yet? There's no relief anywhere because there's no AC. So I have been a constant sweat-fest. I really don't know how people adjust to this. I guess they don't because if you have lived here your whole life, you are used to it. But not this American!

I really do not have much to write about because all I can do during the week is work. It seems that when I get home from work, it's already 8. Even though I left at 5. So much for doing stuff after I get off work. Also, the bells that ring for five minutes at 8 remind you that it's 8. But it's very pretty to listen to.

My roommate showed up yesterday. Her name is Andrea (pronounded An-drea) and she's a med student at the University of Bern. She's very nice - she offered to do some laundry for me (and you know I took her up on that!) and gave me some of her English movies to watch. She even popped her head in my room last night and this morning to say goodnight and good morning to me. People are very nice here! Well, of course, except the staring ones.

I'm slowly turning into a rude person and not because I want to. I just find it easier not to say anything to cashiers or random people than to tell them two or three times "English, please." So I just nod in agreement and smile, hoping I don't get myself into something I don't want to.

This weekend, if my boss is not in Zurich, she's going to show me around Bern. I hope she shows me where the public swimming pool is and where to swim in the river! Well I'm off to write some convincing words...

What I learned Monday/today:
- Public swimming pools are free.
- It's perfectly normal for people to have conversations in their native language and completely understand each other; ie: French woman speaking French to an Italian man speaking back in Italian.
- You can get eggs and yogurt on the non-refrigerated aisle. Isn't that bad for you or something?
- I can buy wine for two franks. It might not be good wine, but it's still wine.
- 800 or toll-free numbers do not work outside of the US.
- Concerts are called open-airs. There's a big one here soon where they cram as many people as they can on the tiniest field and it's one big drunken open-air.
- At 16, you can drink beer (and maybe wine), but you cannot have the hard stuff until you're 18.
- Cops (polizei) are nowhere to be found here. Except at lunch when you might see about four of them eating.


Guten Nacht!
Jessica