Sent August 26, 2004 @ 18:12
The trip was fine. Smooth. Watched the movie on the back of the seat in front of me. Sat beside nice people. Strange that night time only last a couple hours (think of the direction we were flying).
I took some pictures of stuff to sort of document my journey. Once I figure out how to connect my camera to the computer, I'll send them your way (until next week, I'll be using a school computer).
I tried to remember everything about the trip. Once in Geneva
(airport), the background music was "White Flag" (or something like that) by Jewel.
It wasn't too bad with my luggage on the train. It was really empty, and they wait so long at the station that I could just carry one piece on at a time, get off and get the next piece. I had a cart to wheel everything around at the airport (cardboard box with skates arrived fine...didn't even have to go to a different place to pick them up).
After arriving in Neuchatel though, didn't have a cart, so had to try to figure out how to carry/wheel everything. I found that I could clip the smaller suitcase to the larger one without any problems.
Remember we're six hours ahead here (it's almost 6pm on Thursday). My body feels like it's friday...timeless. I mean, I don't know what time it is. My body feels really awake, but my eyes are a little sore.
I only napped for an hour or two on the first flight.
I thought it was funny that on the second flight, it was filled with businessmen/women wearing dressy clothes, whereas on the first flight I didn't look odd wearing sweatpants.
Bought a duvet/pillow/covers a little while ago. (I arrived here much earlier - one schedule, but this is the first time I've been near a computer) The school paid for everything, so that means I don't get to bring home my swiss purchased bed items. That also meant that I don't feel guilty about buying a $500 really down filled duvet. Is that normal price in Canada?
A box of kleenex (I think I have a slight cold - or maybe allergies) cost me ~$2.50 Jeez. I guess stuff here is really expensive.
My apartment is really really nice. Really big. Except the kitchen is really small. Well, not too bad, just the fridge. It's the size of the fridge that I had in first year university. Aparently they don't get much more bigger than that here. I'm going to try to convince them to get me a bigger one. If they were willing to spend that much on bed stuff, who knows?
I have a balcony (overlooking the lake). Ikea furniture. LOTS of closet space. Almost too much.
The second room has a bed, and I belive the couch in the living room pulls out to a couch as well. My place is so great!
The weather here today is like Toronto. It's been raining off and on since my arrival, but the sun is shining.
I saw where the skating rink is in the town, so I'm going to have to look into ice availability.
There's an Esprit clothing store downtown, and some other stuff that I haven't seen yet.
The town is half like you'd imagine a Swiss town to be, and the other half is more modern, but not like Toronto. I guess "European", but I don't know how to describe it.
The keyboard I'm using is different too. @ is not above the 2. " is instead. £ is above the 3. ~ and # are on the same key just to the left of the enter key. ¬ and ` are where the ~ should be. (under the esc key).
Grocery stores close at 6pm or something, except at 8:30 instead on Thursdays. Perfect. Maybe I can pick up some food on the way home.
I'm going over to another staff member's house for dinner. That'll be good, because I don't want to cook.
I've met the two other new staff members today already. They seem nice.
It's a little weird hearing the french around me. Especially since they talk with a different accent than the French speakers in Canada.
I haven't had any communication problems yet, but I guess I've only had to speak when buying a train ticket and say thank-you and hello a couple of times.
My TV doesn't get too many channels either. Too bad. It gets ~40 which is a lot, but only 2-3 in English, and all of those are CNN type of channels. Boring. I watched a couple cartoons in French today and part of the Olympics. I flipped past the Italian, German, and Arabic channels.
I think I'll leave it at that for now.
So I'm here, and I'm fine.
Will e-mail again soon,
Cheers,
Limin
P.S. I found it really odd that when I left you guys, I was surround by people who were crying a lot. It felt really really weird. They all just looked so sad. It makes you wonder where they were going (the people beside me on the first flight were headed for Abu Dabi - they're Lebanese/Canadians who couldn't speak much English).
No comments:
Post a Comment