My Switzerland Adventures: It Feels Like I Never Left

Some pics of my town, Saignelegier

It was a strange feeling when I landed in Zurich and began the familiar 2 and 1/2 hour drive back to the Jura region with my new teammates. It felt as if I had never left this beautiful country...of course it was a nice change to see sunny skies and bright green landscape, although it would soon disappear sometime between October and November. Last season, in our region of Switzerland, we had snow from mid December until I left in late March to return to California. Needless to say, I have learned to really embrace the sunny, blue skies when they decide to come around. My roommates and I have made sure to spend some time outside whether its walking on paths in the fields/hills, sipping a cafe au lait outside at a bakery, or even walking to practice. Anyway, I'm starting to ramble. One huge difference from last year is where I live. Last year I lived in Le Noirmont, which sported a population just over 1,600. Now, I live in the capital of the Franches Montagnes, Saignelegier, with a whopping population of 2,500 people. Exciting! The building our house is in is very nice, except for the amount of stairs we have to hike up to get to the top floor. And when I say top floor, I really mean it. We actually live in the roof haha. But, our house is nice and big. I live with Kristin, Emily, and Tara, and we each have our own room. Kristin and Em played with me last year on VFM and Tara is new to the team. The other 3 Americans, Jill, Taylor, and Brianna, are new to the team also. So, we've all spent the last month or so getting to know one another. We certainly spend enough time in the gym together haha. Another difference from last season is that we are all enrolled in French lessons with a real teacher! Our teacher is awesome, I really enjoy learning the language. On the first day of class, another woman introduced our teacher to us and made a big deal that our French teacher didn't speak any English. We spent the whole first class freaking out about how we were supposed to learn from someone that couldn't even understand us. Our teacher did a great job making us look like fools when she began speaking perfect English at the end of our first lesson haha. Now that we know she can speak English, she still only speaks French to us, which is good and makes us put in more effort to learn the language. We will have French lessons 3x per week for 6 weeks and see how we progress. Anyway, when we've had the day off, we have traveled locally around Switzerland. We have spent one day exploring the Callier chocolate factory and its surrounding areas and spent another day walking around Switzerland's capital, Bern. One weekend, we were lucky enough to have 2 days off in a row (which we thought would never happen, and probably never will again until the holidays) so we decided to take a spontaneous trip to Cinque Terre, Italy. But, I will save this special trip for another post. In the mean time, enjoy these pics!