Home again, home again, jiggidy jog…

January and the New Year brought longings for home. It’s a good thing two of my best friends were tying the knot so I had an easy excuse for the trip. Jase and BP were married on January 20^th in a small ceremony in Athens, GA. I arrived home a few days before the wedding and stayed nearly a week after. I was able to see many, many people during that time, even some I hadn’t seen in years, but felt like I missed out on seeing that many more.

The wedding was a modest sized one and very elegant. It was exactly what I expected from BP. We’ve been friends, best friends, since the day we moved in together our freshman year in college, though we’d barely met before that day! She and I have shared our hopes and dreams about the world around us since that time and those dreams definitely included weddings. I’m so happy she met Jase and they are happy together. They are such a great couple and will enjoy together so many great things in life. Though I wasn’t there to help with the planning I stayed abreast of the plans for the event over the phone and via emails. It was one of those things I wouldn’t ever want to miss!

In the days before the wedding, BP and I spent a lot of time together. Shopping for last minute things needed for events, chatting about life, and just enjoying the familiarities of being together…after a day or so we were joined by the rest of the bridesmaids and the festivities began. We all ended up staying in one, not so big, hotel room (aaahhh, 5 girls with one bathroom!!) and it was just perfect. We went out for a girl’s night, made wedding favors together (you really don’t want to know the details of all that, I promise!!), bridal luncheon, etc. The Big Day was upon us before we realized it and the chaos ensued…j/k, not really chaos but the rush of the day began. Getting our hair done, running out of gas on the interstate, making sure the last touches were done in setting up the chapel and reception hall, etc. The wedding was lovely and the reception also. Dancing and fun, my only regret was not saying goodbye as I thought I’d be able to before they left. I flew back to Zürich before they arrived home from their honeymoon…so I was a bit bummed about that!

I was also able to attend a great dinner with nearly all my best friends from high school. It’s funny to see where everyone is in life now. Some married, some married with a child on the way, and some married and have had children for a while now. We are all in different places in our lives and yet we make time for each other…I love that! I’ve missed these girls immensely since I moved here, even though we didn’t see each other very often even before I moved. We’d always have our yearly Christmas parties though and I guess that’s what I’ve been missing…it has been three years since I attended one, thanks to my two Christmases spent in Europe. It didn’t take long and we were all caught up on everyone’s goings and doings and we found ourselves back where we were all those years ago when we were mostly inseparable.

A lot of my old co-workers from the bank came together for a dinner at the local Applebee’s which made me happy. Again catching up on all the new gossip and happenings was a priority of the evening’s discussion. These are the people who accepted me as the little brat-faced punk I was just out of college and thinking I could own the world. They were my first real adult friends and they gave me advice as I entered the real world, and it really makes me happy to say we are still good friends even now.

I was also able to spend time with my other best friend, Candy Cane…though it seemed that we wouldn’t be able to do anything we found fun, thanks to Mr. Pig putting his big foot down and squashing our plans. You see…my girl Candy is from the city and it’s a widely known fact that city folk, at least Atlanta city folk, don’t know how to handle motor vehicles in the snow and ice. And so we found ourselves with all these grand plans and then a snow and ice storm had to go and ruin them by precipitating on our parade! Luckily the sun was cooperative and cleared up most everything by mid morning and we were on our merry way to shop, catch up on gossip, and annoy all those people we now call our former coworkers…all things Candy and I join forces to do regularly when we spend time together

Family…family was a HUGE part of my trip home. It was great to see them all, especially James and my little Whitney. They’d both changed so much since I was last in Georgia. Whitney has long hair and a very large personality and now looks just like her mother did at that age…and James is growing into the independent teenager I’ve been warning Mom and Dad about for years! I was hoping to spend more time with him but somehow I forgot he now has his own social agenda to maintain as well.

So many groups of people that make home special to me…they are the reason I will one day return there. I’m not sure when that time will be but I am ready for it even now (though I never thought I’d be the one to admit that!). I hope they know how much I value their roles in my life and miss them every day. Nevertheless, at the end of the time in Georgia, my homesickness was for Zürich and my home here. I was ready to come back and see my friends and live my life here. I have to live it to the fullest because this time next year it will all be over…and that makes me sad!

Until the next post…I love you all!!

LuLu

New Year’s Resolutions: Made to be Broken??

Hello everyone! I’m sure you were all convinced I’d finally fallen off the face of the earth, but I haven’t. In fact, I’ve been in my own little bubble, hiding out and procrastinating anything which makes my last few months here seem final. So, I have a lot of catching up to do on keeping you up to speed with the things I’ve done/seen…I haven’t written anything yet in 2008, and the end of this week marks the beginning of spring! The funniest bit about my nearly 3 month absence from you all is the fact it was actually my New Year’s Resolution to blog more regularly, and I haven’t even attempted to try once in the last few months…which leads me to the ever-popular conclusion that most NY’s resolutions are made to be broken: diets, exercising more, gossiping less…these are all good ideas but the reality of doing them just because one has decided to “start the New Year right” is mostly absurd!

So I guess the best place to start is to just jump in at the beginning...of the year that is…For the New Year’s holidays this year I took at trip to Zermatt, Switzerland with my friend Danielle (Australian-I’m surrounded by ‘em) and one of her friends from home, Debbie. The girls went down a day before me so I trained it up there alone to meet them. It was such a nice ride through central Switzerland and then the mountainous Valais region near Zermatt. This is a part of Switzerland I’ve wanted to visit since day one and I was finally there! Of course there is the very famous Matterhorn…you know, the one on the side of the Toblerone chocolate bars…but the whole village was just completely charming. Most of the main areas are car-free so it should have made walking around easy, but the whole place was covered in ice and snow… the streets/foot paths mostly ice…and as I’m still nursing my ankle quite a bit it made getting around more difficult that it should have been!

The day I arrived we quickly went to the hostel (we were so lucky to find something in the village for this holiday weekend) to drop my stuff and then head up the Gornergrat, a ridge overlooking Zermatt…it gives a great view of the Matterhorn. It just so happened that December 31^st was a beautifully clear day and the visibility was so great that our pictures look near perfect! The railway station at the top is at 3,089 meters above sea level, which is over 10,000 feet…that’s pretty high! I’m attaching some of the pictures we took at the top, including some fun ones with the Matterhorn.

That evening we made our way back to the hostel and cooked our own dinner, as we did for nearly every meal in Zermatt…it’s just so much more affordable that way! We were sitting in the community area eating our food when we met up with a group of dentists who go there on ski holiday every year. They asked us to join them and they let us know all the good info for New Year’s Eve celebrations. We were told that the only parties were pay-to-enter and filling up fast, but still we’d opted to wait until that night and then just hope we could get in somewhere…as it turns out we were quite lucky to have not paid in advance because we were sorely misinformed and there was a spectacular party in the center of town. The guys asked us to come along and we were so glad to go…and so it was…us and 2000 of our not-so-close friends in this town center that wasn’t very big. We got shoved around and of course things spilled on us but it was just great. We got to ring in the New Year with new friends, which consequently we haven’t spoken to since that weekend, and see some great fireworks. Then we proceeded to somewhere indoors, as it was really, REALLY cold that night and we celebrated long into the night.

The next day was a lazy one. We slept in and just took our time getting ready. We planned to see a bit of the village and then go up the Klein Matterhorn (Little Matterhorn) to an area called Glacier Paradise. We fooled around all day until we’d just missed the last lift up the mountain. We thought we’d have plenty of time but the next day showed us just how long it takes to get up to that altitude. We went back to the hostel and our friends were there so we made our dinner and then went out again with them for another fun night.

January 2^nd-leave day…we were DETERMINED to go up to the Glacier Paradise so we woke early and left before any human person should be up to get to the lifts. The ride up took over an hour, if I recall correctly more like 1 ½ hours. This is the highest lift in Europe; we had to take 3 different cable cars to reach the top. At each station, we’d get out and it would be oh so much colder than the last one because of the increasing altitude. The temperature when we reached the top was -19 Celsius, which is just below -2 Fahrenheit. I don’t think I’ve ever been colder in my entire life. I had on 3 or 4 layers, I can’t remember exactly how much now but I remember layering up on the way to the top. The height is 3,883 meters or 12,740 feet above sea level up there. When you arrive you come in at a base station and then climb up a few flights of stairs to the peak. I didn’t think my legs would make it to the top because I was shivering so much and out of breath due to the high altitude. I had to stop and rest several times.

But…from the top…it was a sight I’ll never forget! You can see into 3 countries from there: Switzerland, Italy, and France and there is actually an entrance into Italy from there but you have to ski over, a very popular thing with skiers coming to that area. The fog was most thick; it looked like a lot of little peaks coming up out of pea soup, when in fact the mountains you can see from there are giants compared to any you see in Georgia. We couldn’t stay long at the top because of wind and cold exposure and we had to hurry back down to catch our train back to Zürich.

The trip to Zermatt was the best of all the places I’ve been in Switzerland. I love many parts of this country but I think the people there and the scenery is the best this country has to offer…oh, I don’t know, in the warmer weather periods Ticino is the best…well, just come find out for yourself why don’t you?! Isn’t Switzerland calling your name by now?!?!

Miss you all…more posts to follow in the next few days!

LuLu