Arrived!

It was a long, long day spent in airports and on airplanes. A reasonable 1:20 pm departure from Kansas City, then on to Detroit, Amsterdam, and finally Geneva. I sat next to an interesting woman on the airbus to Amsterdam who was born in the Netherlands and was going back to visit her parents. If you're going to be on a flight for six or seven hours, it's nice to be sitting by someone who actually talks to you instead of sleeping the whole time!

When I finally got to Geneva, my host family was easy to recognize in the KU shirts I sent them. We rode the train to Fribourg and then took a bus to Zumholz where they live. The younger sister, Fabienne, leaves soon for Michigan to be an exchange student for a year so I'm using her bedroom. The weather is fantastic: comfortably warm, a little rainy, but sunny for the most part. Everything I've eaten here so far has been pretty similar to what I'm used to: rice, meat, vegetables, pasta. The only thing I'm not used to is soda water. I guess it's not normal to drink water from the tap, but I have because I seem to be always thirsty.

There are lots of animals here! My host family has a dog and three cats. When I was unpacking my suitcase, the clothes in the closet were moving around by themselves, which I thought was strange, but then I discovered a cat hiding in there! They also have bees outside. It's like a small apiary. I'll post some photos later.

Today my host sisters took me to the city of Fribourg to see where the school is and such. I found an adapter so now my computer works and I have set up wireless internet so I can keep you all posted.

They say my German is pretty good, and I can understand most of what is said to me in high German. I have trouble understanding Swiss German, as I expected, but I can pick up words here and there.

Bis später,

Andrea