Ice sculpture

Today I went up on the Albis-the mountain that is near where I live-with my grandma. It's 60 years since the seilbahn (gondola-ski lift thingy) opened, and so they had a day where you could go up to the restaurant and get free hot drinks and watch this guy carve an ice sculpture. The ice sculpture thing was really cool.

It won't stop snowing here, which makes me really happy. Is it weird that I missed being cold? Probably. Oh well. It was lots of fun and I got to spend some quality time with my grandma. :)

😊

Today I cleaned my room, did some studying, drew some stuff,

and put up multicolored fairy lights over my window that I plan on keeping up all year:) I also got a super nice surprise-Grammy called me! Love you! 💕

Woot Circus!

Today I went to a circus with my cousin. It was really really really cool. The physics of some of the stuff the artists did are beyond me. Pretty insane stuff.😳

We also got ice cream & had front-row seats. :) 

Zürich also looked absolutely gorgeous today with snow. 

SNOW

So it finally snowed here. Up in the Alps there's almost always snow, but down in the valleys it's a bit rarer. It was so wacky not having a white Christmas, but yay now there's snow!!

Tomorrow I'm going to the circus with Lara (Christmas present from my aunt & uncle)! I'm excited!! 😊

Stephanitag??

In Switzerland (and I don't know how may other countries) the 26th of December is another holiday, called St. Stephens Day. That means everyone has another day off of work and such. So happy Stephanitag!

Tonight we went to my Aunt & Uncle's and ate leftovers from Christmas dinner. Then we were made to watch a movie called Doctor Zhivago. It's a movie set in Russia during the Russian Revolution and it's super long. I didn't particularly enjoy it. We watched it because one of the main characters is named Lara, and my cousin's name is Lara. Also, her friend Lara was named after the Lara in the movie, which is pretty cool. 

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas!

Today I got up earlier than I wanted to so that I could unwrap my presents from Montana. It was a super awesome surprise to see my stocking here... My mom gave it to my grandma in New York. Merry Christmas! 

Christmas Eve Day

Today I helped my grandma prepare for dinner pretty much all day. Then we had my cousins and aunt & uncle over, and ate a yummy dinner and unwrapped presents. We Skyped with my parents and then I got to unwrap my presents from my swiss relatives:) Then my grandma, cousin, and I went to midnight mass. It was gorgeous!

1 more day!

Oh my gosh tomorrow is Christmas Eve! Today I helped my grandma clean & prepare for the Christmas dinner tomorrow. My aunt & uncle & cousins are coming over:) Here they open presents on Christmas Eve, so I'll be opening the ones from here then, and the ones from Montana on Christmas morning.

I'm also probably going to midnight mass with my grandma and cousin tomorrow, so I'm going to bed a bit earlier. I can't wait for Christmas!        🎅🎄🎁

Presents(!!!)

I dorm like to get out the wrapping paper and tape and scissors and markers and paper and cards and bows and such to wrap presents with until I have all the presents I want to wrap. Which means I wrapped all my Christmas presents today! It's really strange picking out presents for people that I usually don't, and not giving things to my brother and parents. Meh. I have way fewer presents to give this year. Only my grandparents and cousins and aunt and uncle. 

Only two more days until Christmas! Yippee! This was the sunset when I was walking home with my grandma after grocery shopping. 😱 So gorgeous. 

Christmas tree, swimming, & cookie fail

Today I got up late and helped my grandma decorate her fake mini Christmas tree. Apparently my dad calls it the Charlie Brown tree. It's tiny. It only took about 1/2 hour to decorate. I'm used to a real & much larger tree that takes most of the afternoon to decorate... But it was still fun. My grandma has to have everything just so, therefore it was basically her giving me ornaments and then rearranging them until they looked symmetrical enough. She's adorable. 

After lunch I went swimming in the indoor pool literally across the street from my grandparent's apartment with Lara & Dominic. It was pretty fun:) We basically just hung out & talked.

Then I went over to Dominic and Lara's house and we attempted to make cookies. There's a particular type of cookie (I don't know if it's a swiss specialty or something?) that's called a "Spitzbueb". I honestly don't know how to translate that... Uhh... "Bueb" means "boy" in swiss-german, and "spitz" means "tip" (like the tip of the tower), but together they mean something along the lines of "mischievous boy". I don't know why. It just is that way. They're two cookies with jam in the middle, and usually a face or a heart cut out of the top cookie, so the jam peeks through. With powdered sugar on top. They're so good. However, it took us forever to cut out the cookies, because the dough is impossible to work with. Then we only had a small amount of dough, so we couldn't make very many. (26, to be exact) And lastly, when we put them in the oven, they melted quite a bit... So basically all the careful cutting out we'd done was useless. Oh well. I got to eat some yummy cookies, and we had fun.

Happy birthday to my uncle:)

Friday! Christmas break!

Yay Christmas break!!! Today was super fun. We only had one hour of music in the morning because the second period was an orchestra concert, and choir was canceled because Christmas/the teachers are nice. So we had two hours for lunch, and three other girls and I went to the lake.

Then we had an hour less of math, because of the "atempause" I mentioned in my last post. I got to sing a song called "there's a girl that I love" (don't know who wrote it) that is in a round. It's super pretty and has like a secret message, a place, at the end when the round finishes. And a bunch of other classes did different things, basically it was a little celebration that there's a break, and happiness about the holiday season and the accomplishments of the school.

After I Skyped with my mom in the evening, Lara and Lea and I were going to go ice skating, but it started raining. So we had a movie night instead. It was still super fun. (My friend took this picture & I thought it was cool, so...)

I'm so excited it's finally Christmas break!

Happy day of school

Today was a usual day, except I went to lunch with a bunch of other girls from my class & then went shopping because we had a double lunch period. It was super fun. Tomorrow we are supposed to dress a bit more elegant, and I get to sing with my music class at the "atempause" (literally breath pause??) tomorrow instead of going to math. I don't really know what it is... I guess I'll find out. But only one more day until Christmas break! I'm so excited!

Also, I don't know if I mentioned this before, but our class is doing a secret Santa type thing, and I got a bunch of delicious chocolate from my secret Santa today:) Basically it was a good day.

Christmas market (again)

Today I had a half day, like every Wednesday, and afterwards I went to the Christmas market again to get presents for my grandma, aunt & uncle, and my little brother. (Gage, I'll give you your present when I come home:)) 

I'm so excited for Christmas ahhhh only two more days of school! I can't wait! (Shoutout to Stephanie for skyping with me for forever)

Pentatonix

Today was a usual Tuesday. :) It was nice. 

I was on Facebook this evening and I noticed that the music group Pentatonix is on tour, and they are coming to Europe! I looked at the tour dates, and they're coming to Zurich on April 15th! I want to see if I can get tickets... Because that would be so cool. If you don't know who Pentatonix are, I suggest you Google them and watch some of their youtube videos. They're pretty amazing.  

Christmas lights

Can Christmas break start tomorrow? Pleaseeee?

Today was an average day, so exciting. I spent about 5 minutes lost in thought whilst brushing my teeth this evening after skyping Kayli, so my teeth are especially clean. *sigh* I need my friends. Come make me sane again. 

Oh! I took photos this morning of some of the Christmas lights in Adliswil, and they're really pretty. I was kind of on the way to the train so I didn't have time to stop and find a good angle for a picture and such, but you get the general idea. (The trees are attached to a bridge by the way, and you can see one of the many stars that are hung around the main square area)

Surrrrnday

Today I did homework, practiced Christmas music on the piano (finally!!), cleaned my room, and Skyped with Stephanie. 

My class is doing a sort of secret Santa thing where you get a name and you have to give that person little gifts without them knowing who you are... I'm giving the girl that I got a pretty ring tomorrow, and a scarf on Thursday or Friday. I already got an adorable little "Schutzengel" (protector angel) from my secret Santa. :)

Only one more week of school until Christmas break!

Weihnachtsmärt

Today I got up early ish and went Christmas present shopping. Then I came back and just spent some time at home. In the afternoon I went into Zürich with my grandma and we went to the "Weihnachtsmärt", or Christmas market, in the main train station. Basically a Christmas-themed farmers market. It is so cool. There is also a giant tree decorated with Swarovski crystal ornaments that is basically the only lighting in the whole station after dark. It's gorgeous, and super sparkly. The picture doesn't do the sparklyness justice. (This is inside, by the way.)

We took a different way home than normal to see the lights down Bahnhofstrasse, the main road in Zürich. They were so pretty!

I also got a yummy "morechopf" (by the way that's a politically incorrect term, the politically correct version is "schoggi kuss", meaning "chocolate kiss" instead of "nigger/black person head"), which I've blogged about before. They're those yummy marshmallow-filled chocolate-covered things of deliciousness. Anyway, there was a hut selling just those in different flavors, so of course I had to get the zebra one. :)

The gorgeousness of the lights and the tree and the market almost made up for the ridiculous amount of people everywhere. Zürich alone has a population of almost 400,000?! (Kalispell is 20,000) Ew.

Apparently I am not a party animal

So, last night I went to that Christmas dinner, but I left early to go to bed. Lame, I know, but I was/am still sniffly, so I have an excuse. But my grandma told me this morning that she and my grandpa didn't come back until 2 am?! Are my grandparents better at partying than I am? Really? *cries*

Today I went to school and then Skyped with my mom. Hi, mom! *waves*

Happy Friday, though! Yay! I can sleep!

"Back to school"

Today I finally got to go back to school! Yay! It was nice to see all my classmates again:)

And there was a Christmas dinner downstairs for all the people in the building that my grandparents live in, which was very nice. They had two xylophone players from Poland come and play two giant xylophones for us. It was pretty cool. They played four or six-handed, (one of them sometimes took two mallets in each hand) and they played songs from famous composers like Vivaldi or Beethoven. It was super impressive, believe it or not. The most amazing part (in my opinion) was that they had all transposed the music for the xylophone themselves. That had to be hard to do. It was basically one of the coolest things I've ever seen. I wish I could put video in my post but I can't. I found them on the Internet, you can see their website here: (or just search for malletduo and click the first link) http://malletduo.pl/en 

K my face is normal again

My face is normal againnnnnn yay! I also have no fever, so I hopefully get to go to school tomorrow after I go to the doctor hopefully for the last time. Yippee! Then it'll have been exactly two weeks since I went to school. Whoop whoop. 

"My plastic surgery experience"

*simpering, annoying, girly voice*

So a few days ago *smacks gum* my daddy gave me lip implants for my sweet sixteen. He also got me a Lamborghini, but it was blue instead of purple, which is not what I wanted, so I made him give it back. *checks manicure* Anyways. So I finally got these lip implants. Don't they look BEYOND fabulous. *twirls hair* I know, right?? I am SO in love. I still have to get my nose fixed, though, so just ignore that in the picture. *shudders delicately*

No, but for real. Today I woke up, normal sick day, ate breakfast and took my antibiotics just like I did last night, and went to my room and watched YouTube videos and such for a while. About two hours after breakfast, I was chewing on my lip while reading something online (random habit I have) when I noticed that my lip felt wayyyy wacko. I touched it with my finger and then looked in the mirror. I will admit I freaked out just a little. That picture up there was my real lips (no, I obviously did not have plastic surgery. Also, I like my nose. Just a joke.). I apparently am allergic to something in the antibiotics they gave me. I also had red itchy spots on my legs. So we went to the doctor, where they stabbed me with a needle and then gave me some pretty intense allergy medication. It worked really quickly. I now no longer have any spots or itchiness, but one side of my bottom lip is still a bit weird. You can't tell from looking at it, but I can feel it. Hopefully everything goes away very soon. Basically, I've stopped taking all medication stuff except for the allergy thing. Yay for learning new things? Never been allergic to anything before...

Doctor

So today I went to the doctors again, and the lady there gave me medication because I might possibly have the very beginnings of a lung infection. Gah. So now I have to stay at home for another week! Yayyyyy

Relatives I didn't know I had

Today we went over to Dominic & Lara's for dinner. I met my uncle Ralph's parents for (what I think is) the first time. I guess we're related. It's weird.

But hopefully I get to go to school tomorrow!!!!

Happy late Santa day

So yesterday was "Samichlaus" day. This is the day that Santa Claus comes and visits, and if you've been good, he gives you a little bag filled with nuts, mandarin or regular oranges, chocolate, and little gifts. Here's mine:)

(Christmas is when the "Christkind" (Christ child) comes.)

For dinner we went to a restaurant near where we live with my aunt & uncle & cousins. It was pretty fun, but we got back and I forgot to blog. Oh well. 

What the heck

So today I was again at home with my lovely cough. I got bored, so I went on YouTube. I ended up watching that old TV show Shake It Off, with Bella Thorne and Zendaya. Never seen it, never had any inclination to see it, but I was bored. So I tried to watch it and oh my gosh. Why. Why do they feel the need to make the characters ridiculously stupid and slow??? Why do they tell horrible, boring, unimaginative, not even actually funny jokes and then layer canned laughter over it later??? Is it so the people that watch these dumb shows know when to laugh? I literally could not finish the episode. I've never been so disgusted in my life. Thank you to my parents, who never exposed me to that absolute garbage so many people call "entertainment".

COUGHHHH

Argh! I can't stop coughing! I feel fine, no fever, no headache, but this cough is driving me insane and tiring me out. Grr. Still no school. 

Yeah, no

So I'm stilllllll at home. My grandma thinks my cough is too bad. I got a note from the doctor for me to be excused from school until Monday if need be. The real problem is that it's cold out, and I have to wait at various tram and train stations on the way to and home from school. And the cold would make me sick again, and we'd start from square one. At home I could just hop in the car and barely be in the cold. :/

Grr. I want to go back to school. 

*cough cough COUGH*

So I stayed home againnnn today, and now I'm coughing a lot more. But no fever, no headache, and the only reason I'm tired is because I don't usually use my abs as much as I am now. *cough*

I'm hopefully going to school tomorrow though! It'd also be a half day, so I wouldn't be too tired afterwards. 

Attack of the cough

Today I again felt much better, except now I am coughing. Grr. My grandma wanted to see how well I was recovered, so she sent me for a 10-minute walk. I came back and promptly fell asleep for two hours because I was so exhausted, so she decided that maybe we should wait until I go back to school. 

So now I have a cough, but I still feel way better, and I don't have a fever either.