Sunflowers

These are the sunflowers that greeted me in my new bedroom upon my arrival. Coming from the sunflower state, I was surprised to see so many sunflowers here along the roads in Zumholz and Fribourg.

Fabienne is about to leave for Michigan, and while her family sees her off, I am going to stay with the Rotary counselor and another inbound exchange student from the U.S., whom I will meet tonight. I am interested to hear what she thinks about Switzerland so far.

A couple of days ago we drove ten or fifteen minutes to a nearby mountain (although, as my host mother told me, at 1000 meters or so it was not very tall in comparison to others which go up to 5000 m or so). Dominique was playing football and did not come with us, but Fabienne and I and the dog hiked along a path further up the mountain. We got really close to the cows; in fact, some of them were standing on the path and we had to go around.

Last night we all went to the open-air Kino (cinema), where they were showing Angels and Demons dubbed in German. I understand the open-air concept when it's warm, but once the sun went down, it was freezing! Luckily, I had been warned and had two jackets to wear, so I was okay. It helped that I had seen the film before so I knew what was going on even though I couldn't understand all the German.

And...I am now the proud owner of a Swiss bank account. Apparently there are problems between American and Swiss banks because of the way some Americans abuse the fact that their Swiss funds are virtually invisible to the American government. This made it more difficult to set up an account for me, but they eventually got it figured out.

These are about half of the bees that reside in the yard. Inside the house are jars of honey from these bees. My host father has an awesome beekeeper costume that he wears when he takes care of the bees, but so far I have not taken any pictures of that. These bees are relatively bee-nign...no pun intended. When we eat outside (which we do often: lunch and dinner whenever it's not raining, since it's still so warm), a couple of bees sometimes hang around, but it is no problem to shoo them away.

Stephen Colbert has dubbed bees "a sound financial investment." For more information, entertain yourself with this video:

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Bears & Balls - Bees
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Meryl Streep