Post Swiss

So I came home for Switzerland in one piece. Am I the first Costello to have ever traveled to Switzerland? The place was absolutely gorgeous as you can see from the pictures. I told a bunch of friends about how awesome Swiss was, and now I have heard about 8 people from our program going there now. My trip had ~70 kids (30 from Florence and 40 from Rome) and I thought that was a lot of kids. This weekend there are 150 going from just Florence with another 60+ kids from Rome. I went with John, Meredith, Annie and Ellie.

The snowboarding was just awesome. If you could see from the pictures, the snow was perfect. So much fresh powder and you couldn't ask for better weather. About 35 degrees without a cloud in slight. None of the 4 other kids I went to Swiss with wanted to ski/board. I met some guys on the bus ride up (they are from Rome) and asked if I could join them on the mountain. Halfway through the day, he asks if I know Herman Brito (he is my roommate at Trinity for those who don't know). Small world!

The best part of the trip, other than the boarding, was the night sledding. We went up about 1500m and sled down on butt sleds. in order to turn you put the foot of the direction you wanted to go on the ground and lean. There were some very dangerous/sharp turns that kids nearly flew off the edge but there were no injuries. The only accident I had was when i was trying to pass a kid in front of me and I went very slightly off the path and ended up in some powder. As soon as I hit the powder, the nose of my sled stuck into the ground causing me to face plant. But the good news was that I still won! The exhilarating part of the night sledding was that there was very limited visibility. Each kid had a glow stick/light and GPS so we could be found if we were lost and so we could follow the kids ahead. Following the sledding, they took us all to a diner to have an American breakfast (eggs, bacon) and cheese fondu.

There was a bar in the place we stayed. We stayed in a very luxurious hostel...I didn't think there was such a thing as a luxurious hostel. The place we stayed was called Balmers. My room had 8 guys with 4 bunk beds. Luckily all of my roommates were cool guys. At first John and I were worried because the guys didn't seem very fun/open cause the 6 of them all came from University of Michigan and weren't very interested in meeting others since they had each other. But as time went on, they opened up. The worst part of the trip was that one of the kids snored incredibly loud... and of course he slept in the bed next to me. The first night, I had to wake him up. I woke him up and he stopped snoring for about 5 minutes. I then woke him up again but fell asleep and continued to snore. I had to get up once again but this time I physically turned him on to his side. The next morning I asked him about it and he had no recollection of me trying to wake him up.

The next day, I tried going to Zurich but the bus was full. Annie, Ellie and John went snow shoeing and Meredith and I decided to walk around Interlaken. We walked for around for about 4 hours. We walked to one of the lakes (this is where some of the pictures are from and more to come when Meredith sends me the photos from her camera). It was absolutely gorgeous. As we walked around, we played a game of trying to pronounce names of streets around town. I thought Italian was tough but the language there was so much more difficult.

The next day, we got up and found out the bus would be leaving 2 hours earlier than we originally planned. The Rome kids were complaining about what time they would return to Rome as it was a 12 hr bus ride from Interlaken to Rome for them (we were all on one bus). We didn't have too much time to do the things we had planned. Ellie, Meredith and Annie were planning on going paragliding but the visibility was too low so they didn't end up going. The trip was 8 hours each way. We left Hartford at 1130pm thursday night and arrived in Interlaken about 7am and was on the mountain a few hours later. Left Interlaken at 2pm and got home at 1030pm.



Soccer has started. I originally thought that the games would be played on grass...so bringing cleats wasn't useful. We are playing on a court that is the size of a tennis court (from fence to fence). And the ground is basically a tennis court surface with felt on top. each game is at 6pm so the surface is damp. Twice I would go to shoot and my bottom foot would come out from under me. I had one very painful fall towards the end of the game. I made a left footed strike and completely lost traction and fell on my right hip and right elbow. My elbow is really swollen and my hip is black and blue. NOT GOOD. it is only day one!

The only classes that I have had any tests/quizzes are in Italian. And both quizzes I have gotten A's on. Maybe Italian isnt as hard as I thought?

There have been so many things that I have noticed here that are different from the states and I will talk about that in the next post. We're heading out the door now.

GO PACK GO!