Heavenly week of Travels

So Thursday we were off to Geneva, Switzerland. Also known as Ginebra in Spanish or Genevé in French. Yes FRENCH! A whole week of French. What a remarkable thing. Not understanding anything. Actually that's a lie, I surprisingly understood a fair amount of french when i had to buy things, mostly because I'm very good at reading body language and gestures and usually could guess what they would probably be saying to me. A few times I'd say Bonjour J'voudre un crêpe avec nutella y banane , which is like french-spanish, but then theyd start talking to me in french and id just stare at them blankly until they asked me if i spoke french. The french answer would me Je no parle pa frances or something like that. WOAH i'm soo fluenttt. Ya I had a little cheat sheet were i wrote down key french phrases but I basically know them all now which is cool. I love France! And Switzerland, which is basically France too because theyre so close!
SOO the Eric and Mrs. Brandolini picked us up at the airport Thursday night. There was so much snow on the ground! I guess that is really rare because normally it just rains and snows in the mountains 1/4 mile away. We followed lake Geneva to this little "village" (not town, they say that they were corrected, that a town is bigger than a village) where their house was at. The roads weren't that good because apparently the Swiss don't believe in paving all the way to the pavement because that will ruin the roads. What? Ya. The swiss also have all these rules like about cutting your bushes and no noise after 5 pm and no yardwork/noise on sundays and everything is closed. And they use the swiss franc. Lame switzerland. But it was SOO beautiful; the Brandolinis live right next to grape vineyards and then you can see mountains on all sides, some of which are in France. That night we had lasagna, thank you mrs. brandolin! The next day Mrs. Brandolini took us into France we went to the quaint town of Annecy which might have the future winter olympics there, that'd be cool. They had a Christmas market and it was snowing and man it was so great to get into the Christmas spirit that is seriously laking in Granada (as i write this it 60 degrees, so nice, but so not xmassy). We walked around, and grabbed some croque monsiers to eat (the French version of open faced grilled cheese) and then headed back to meet up with Eric when he was done with school then Eric, Becca and I took the 10 minute train into Geneva to see that city. It was FREEZING. We saw the United Nations and the worlds longest bench and the city of Geneva, that was cool. So freakin cold though, it was a cold shock to my body and once again I remembered how my hands have no circulation in them. When we came back we had authentic Swiss dinner with sausage and then baby potatoes that u put a slice of cheese under this special broiler contraption to sizzle it and slide it over the potatoes. Pretty tasty. On Saturday we got up early and headed for Chamonix, France. Mr. Brandolini, Eric and I went skiing on one of the Mount Blanc peaks for the morning and we were going to go to another peak about half day, but when we got there it wasn't open so we decided to head into the town of Chamonix to find Mrs. Brandolini and Becca. The view of the mountains were breath taking. First of all we had to take like 2 chair lifts and a gondola to get to the top of this peak we were skiing at, which just says it all. It wasnt that big though, the difference skiing here was that each peak has a handful of trails off of it and then you can go down and drive over to the next peak a few minutes away and ski there too but most of them aren't connected. And theres no lodges, which is so nice when your freezing cold and want to eat your lunch you packed, they have restaurants though that you can get something in and sit down. It seemed as if they had groomed some and then it snowed more so there was a few inches of powder on top of that which by mid day was starting to get pushed around into little moguls so the conditions weren't that great as Mr. Brandolini was saying. But it was still amazing. I would look across and see this beautiful huge mountains and everywhere i looked was white because we were above the tree line. So different. I was dying a little bit to keep up though. Mrs. Brandolini's boots that i was using, I don't kno if she has any calves because they were so tight around my calves and were angled so i constantly felt like i was squatting, and sometimes we would take a gondola that u had to stand in so there was no relief to sit down between runs. My god it was intense, and my legs were shaking, and it was freezing but my back was sweating from the burn in my legs. The runs were really long too. I just couldn't get over how I was skiing though. It went by really fast, feels like a dream now. Such a great experience. The town of Chamonix is precious. So quaint and the sun was glistening on the snow. Perfect freakin day. My life is great. We went back and had PULLED PORK sandwiches!!!! LOVE it so much, best four days of food, especially compared to Spain. Then on Sunday was a Switzerland day. We went to Gruyere where Gruyere cheese comes from, saw that factory and the cheese, got a little bit. Decadent cheese. Went up to the castle thats on the hillside. So beautiful but I definitely want to go back in the summer when everything is green! THEN comes the best part in the world. We went to the Cailler chocolate factory. Picture Willy Wonka not on drugs. We took the tour which was super cool and talked about the history of chocolate, then we got to this room with HUGE bags of cocoa beans from around the world and then huge bags of roasted almonds and hazelnuts that you could just eat! I was LOVING IT. Mr. Brandolini and i kept going back for handfuls. My kind of guy right there. Then we watched the making of this little chocolate nugget thingys that Cailler is famous for and at the end we got to take as many as we wanted. But wait it gets better. Then we went to this room where u did a little square around counters that had all their types of chocolate presented so neatly and you could try as many as you wanted. Unlimited chocolate. I was not even a huge candy chocolate eater before I came to Spain, but now.... I tried just about everything. We were dying a little bit at the end, i needed milk so bad and the back of my throat burned from the sugar. so awesome though. After that we went to another city that is between two mountains and somehow has this weather bubble so that it has palm trees, but they were covered in snow because it was snowing. It was right on lake Geneva and had this huge Christmas market and it was really nice. We went home after that and had the classic swiss fondue with bread and meats. Delicious. We watched a lot of ski racing on t.v. too. Ask Becca, she knows so much about ski racing now. Eric was telling me about his FIS races and how he races against Olympians. He says he comes in last but still. To freakin amazing. What a great time.
Monday morning we packed up and headed towards PARIS. I figured out how to get to our hostel which I was proud of and how to navigate all of Paris. Becca and i went to the Louvre which is HUGEEE. Just that museum is practically the size of Granada. We went to the Eiffel tower too and then walked to Notre Dame which is a 50 min or so walk and half of that is just walking the length of the Louvre. We were cracking ourselves up saying that our new favorite phrase was instead of saying have you been working out to say "have you been walking the Louvre?!" Notre Dame was pretty cool with its Christmas tree in front, wish we could've gone inside though. We walked around the Latin quarter after that which has food from all over, lots of Greek and Italian places. That night Sara and Kimberly got there, and it was great because the 4 of us had our own room at probably the cheapest rate in Paris. On tuesday we did the New Europe free walking tour. It was snowing. and i mean snowing. Very much, but our tour group trudged on. We ate at a restaurant with part of our tour after that and Becca and I got french soup with cheese and croutons, really good. There was also a Christmas market in Paris which we got many crêpes from. Had 2 crêpes a day. Not enough. On wednesday morning we went to sacre cour, which is this big church on the hillside and is surrounded by the older Paris. Loved the quaint smaller streets. Thats more what i pictured Paris like. Can't wait to go back to France again. Ya and after that it was time to leave to come back to warm Granada.
Now we have a paper or project for every class thats due next week when we have our finals. Ew. So much work to do this weekend. Today we went to García Lorca's house who is a famous Spanish poet that lived in Granada. He wrote Blood Weddings (Bodas de Sangre) which we had to read for one of our classes. That was pretty interesting. And tomorrow we're going to Sacremonte again to see something else. Yup so even though Granada is the size of the Louvre there is still stuff to see before we leave.
Wow I'm shocked I just wrote all that, have fun reading it all. I'm also shocked its been a solid 20 minutes since i've seen my bestie Juan. He normally pops in every 5 minutes or so. Haha what a keeper.

oh p.s. mom just wait till i bring home all my clothes to be washed. Thats everything. because my clothes wreak of smoke. Ya i never mentioned that but my spanish parents smoke. Fun times.