SWITZERLAND! Lausanne in the lower left hand corner of the map.


 Notice that Switzerland is not next to Norway.

I've been in Lausanne for almost two weeks, I wanted to update you a little earlier, but I'm a lot busier than I realized I would be. I have discipleship classes through most of the day with an hour of maintenance after lunch (fun fact: in Switzerland lunch is the main meal of the day as opposed to dinner in America). My DTS has 25 students from 17 different countries. I have four roommates, two of which (James and Jeremy) are Korean-American, one (Levi) is from California, and one (David) is from Zurich, Switzerland. I noted before that Swiss has three languages (French, German, and Italian). I found out from David, who is from the German region, that they actually speak something called Swiss German. From what I can gather the only difference between the two is dialect, but he insists they are very different. It was also interesting to find out David has been in the military, not because he signed up, but because it is mandatory for all able-body Swiss men to either serve in the military or civil service.

Our base is in the French speaking portion of the country and all our lectures are tranlated into English and French. It has also been a pain because I can't figure out how to translate the internet out of German. As a part of our studies all the DTS students have to take language classes, most of us are taking French.

The Y-wam base is in Lausanne, a city ot the shores of Lake Geneva. The base itself is an old Swiss hotel which is called a chalet, which means house. Its a really cool old building made back when people wanted their buildings to look nice. It is three stories tall and has almost all the classrooms and dorms in it. Y-wam owns a few other houses in the property, but those are mostly for the staffs' offices and housing.

The Chalet

My dorm is on the top floor with a window looking right at the French Alps

View of the French Alps from my window

Its beautiful and colorful here. As a couple of my classmates have pointed out, we're pretty much living in a fairy tail country. Hopefully you will understand why I say that further on in the post. It is very much like Washington in the sense that its very mountainous and green. Every morning a heavy fog rolls in and then the rest unlike Washington it gets really clear and sunny and you can see all around the valley.

THE DESALPE

On Saterday our class had a wonderful day exploring the country. We went to the little  village of La Gruyere (if you are an advocate of cheese you may know that name as it is a well known exporter of Swiss cheese). Gruyere is in a very green valley bordered on every side by mountains. At Gruyere we got to experience the yearly Desalpe.

"Fairy tail land"

Every year during the summer all the farmers herd their cows into the mountians to stay there for the Summer. At the end of Summer they herd the cows back down in to the valleys. Herding the cows back down every year is a really big event, and they call it the Desalpe. All the farmers get dressed up in their traditional Swiss garb and decorate their cows with boquetes and flowers; and they have a big festival. This is done all over the country, not just in Gruyere.
   

After most of the herds moved through the village we went and visited Gruyere Castle. Situated on top of a huge hill in the center of the valley. As one who had only seen castles in movies and such, this was quite the experience. We spent a while exploring all the battlements and beating off imaginary invaders.

To end the day we went and took a tour of an actuel Swiss chocolate factory. It seemed obvious the factory was inspired by Willy Wonka, but they didn't quite reach that level of tour.

This is a small portion of the gift shop.

Caillers Chocolate Factory. I'm pretty sure I spelled that wrong, and I don't have the slightest clue how to pronounce that name. I remember it sounds nothing like it looks.

When traveling abroad, the adventure usually begins when you first get on the plain or walk onto European ground for the first time However, On my trip I had quite a big experience before I even left my home.
The day before I left I had a mild caution in my mind because during the day my family noticed a whole lot off sirons passing our house, along with a number of Police, Firefighters, and utility workers blocking off Roosevelt Avenue on the east side of our block. From what my family could see it looked like they were fixing a gas leak. Like I said, I had a mild caution, but from my experience gas leaks usually weren't huge deals. Anyway, I went to sleep that night anticipating the plane ride the following morning.
I quickly sat up in my bed. A huge crash had just rang through the house.  The clock read 5 AM. It sounded like someone had tipped over the refridgerator in the kitchen above my room and hit the floor like the surface of a drum.  A sat slowly absorbing what I had heard. The crash was folllowed by a thumping sound, as if someone was knocking on the walls of our home. Each thump was about two seconds apart. I got up and edged up the stairs to investigate the eeiry sound.
I walked into the kitchen just when my mom came running down the stairs. She seemed to know exactly what was going on. She told me something had just exploded near the house. I began creeping along from one window to the next to see if there was anything out of the ordinary outside. It was still dark, so I did not see anything. (the thumping had turned out to be our rabbit, Henry, thumping his feet on the floor which is what he does when he's scared)
Being in my very sleepy state of mind I wandered out onto the back porch because I noticed it was raining a little, and nothing cheers my tired mood like a little rain (seriosly, I enjoy rain). once outside I heard a clacking noise, as if people were slapping sticks together not to far off. Coming to  odds of exactly how illocal it was that a bunch of people would be out at 5 in the morning to do such a strange, I realized that it was the sound of a crackling fire. A very very loud fire. Hurrying to the front yard where the sound was coming from I came to see the entire sky to the North of house blazing orange against the darkness. I could see a harsh orange flame flickering behind the neighboring houses.

This is what had happened about a block fom my house:

http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.king5.com%2Fnews%2FFire-engulfs-house-in-Seattles-Pinehurst-neighborhood-130558363.html&h=sAQDRKdi3AQBgkBaPqEAupTOSKVJb8dt7HClOR_HZY3IDsA

We were not in the evacuation zone, but we ended up spending most of the day at my Grandma's home who was graciously willing to accept us at 5AM.

Since then the gas leaks have been taken care of.