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.