Musings on a Sunday Afternoon

This is a picture of the cat that is sitting on my lap as I write this post. I have discovered that I am more of a cat person than I thought. Thank you, allergy shots! And since my blog always looks cooler with a picture in the post, I thought I would throw it in.

Well, it's Sunday afternoon. I assume most of you inferred that from the title. It's that lazy time of day between lunch and dinner, when not a whole lot is going on. So I thought it would be a great time to write another blog post. I guess that makes my posting patterns irregular because they had been getting farther and farther apart, and now there are three in the course of one weekend! I, however, appreciate the break from all the weekend activity that had kept me from posting very often for the past couple of weeks, mostly because I am getting over a cold. Parents: don't worry, I am taking my medicine and drinking water and sleeping and all that. I would even gargle with saltwater if I knew where the salt was.

I think my project for this week is going to be figuring out the kitchen. I have a basic idea of where to find stuff, but I want to actually cook something. And I have the perfect opportunity, which is that next weekend is a Rotex weekend. Half of the inbounds to Switzerland go hang out in Chur for the weekend, and we all have to bring a dessert from our home country. So I will probably make the family cookie or coffee cake recipe. I also considered trying Rice Krispy Treats. I know for a fact there are Rice Krispies here, because I have eaten them for breakfast mixed with various flavors of yogurt. I am not sure, however, about the availability of marshmallows. So that recipe might have to wait until I have a chance to check for myself.

This morning I slept in quite late to give my immune system a chance to catch up, and as I was eating peanut butter toast and apple slices with peanut butter around noon (thank you, Rotary Leawood!), I thought about what Sundays meant before I came to Switzerland. In the morning, church. In the afternoon, homework and chores. In the evening, youth group. Here it's a bit different. My host family doesn't regularly go to church. The only time I went was shortly after I arrived and a church in Plaffeien was celebrating the hundredth anniversary of its being rebuilt after a fire. My host mom offered to visit a church with me a couple of weeks ago, but I have not yet been able to take her up on it. Maybe next week. I do have homework here, but so far I don't have that much, though I have been assured that it will get worse. And my responsibilities in terms of chores are very minimal here. It might seem weird for me to say this, but I kind of miss manual labor. There is something ever so gratifying about mowing the lawn, washing the dishes, folding the laundry, or scrubbing out the bathtub. Granted, once I return, I probably won't want to do those things. But here all I really do is clean my room every once in a while.

News from this week is orchestra-related. For the past few weeks, I have been researching and visiting different orchestras in the area. The first one was a youth orchestra, but the director thought that since I was only going to be here for a year, it was not a good idea for me to join. They have a concert pretty much every month, which is a lot. The first orchestra I actually visited and played with in rehearsal was in Düdingen, a town between Zumholz and Fribourg, and I really enjoyed meeting the people there and talking to them. Unfortunately, I was not as excited about their level of playing. The second was at the Conservatory where I take my piano lessons, but the level there was also not quite up to par, mostly because a lot of the musicians were very young. The third was also in Fribourg, and it's called l'Orchestre de la Ville et de l'Université de Fribourg. I was much more impressed, and I was not the only new person there. The orchestra seems to be continuously growing, which is a good sign. Also, I noticed that the viola section was proportionately smaller than the others and let slip the information that I can play the viola but that I didn't bring one with me. The person I was talking to (a bass player who is also the president of the orchestra, as I understood it) immediately ran off to find someone with an extra viola. So it looks like I may have a chance to continue the exploration I began last year on this instrument, which is exciting.

As my host sister does her religion homework in the next room, I'll think about starting my own homework (answering some complicated philosophical questions in French, plus some nice, simple limits and such for math). As for the rest of the day, I have borrowed copies of Lord of the Rings in French and The Little Price in German, so I might dig into those. And I brought some Shakespearean comedies with me, since we never managed to get around to them in school. If I want to keep reading in English after that, I will probably turn to www.gutenberg.org for some of the classics. I would send you all letters, but my host family doesn't have any stamps. Looks like it'll have to wait until Monday when I can go buy them myself. Another thing I need to do: translate names of ingredients into German so I can ask whether we have them or not when I want to bake something. So, until the next post, have a nice Sunday afternoon!