Spain Day 5!

This morning Lara and I went shopping (for souvenirs and gifts and because everything is cheaper here) and met Oma & Opa for lunch with Dominic. I'm the only one in our group that knows more than two words in Spanish (besides my aunt, but she wasn't around) so I had the privilege of ordering our food... Which was neat. It's an awesome feeling of accomplishment when you successfully communicate with someone in another language. Also, I had pineapple juice because it sounded awesome. It was most awesome. 

Then Lara & I went and got ice cream. Mine was snickers flavored! :)

We walked back up to the hotel and changed into our swim stuff to hang out by the pool. And that's all we did all afternoon. :)

We had dinner at the hotel, and then went to a little outcrop to watch the sunset. Lara and I took some really neat pictures. 

We leave tomorrow! I want to stay... This has been such a fun vacation, I really hope to come back to Spain again someday!

Spain Day 2!

Today we got up early and walked down a hill behind our hotel to wander through the actual city of Granada. 

We visited the Cathedral where Queen Isabella of Spain's body is, 

and a cool statue showing Christopher Columbus asking Queen Isabella for permission to go to India, which was neat.:) (oops, you can't even see the statue in the picture? My bad.)

Then we did some shopping, because everything in cheaper here than in Switzerland. Everything is cheaper anywhere else than in Switzerland (kind of). 

We came back to the hotel & went swimming & laid in the sun until dinner (it's so nice & warm here!), where we walked to a place close by where there was amazing cheesy pizza & paellas (rice with tomatoes and lots of other veggies-apparently a Spanish specialty). 

Tomorrow we have to get up early to get on the bus for two hours.. *horrified gasp*

School again

Today we went back to school, but it was a really short day because a bunch of classes were canceled. :) It was gorgeously sunny, and I wanted to see how little I could spend on lunch & still be full... I ended up getting a banana, a yogurt, and a fresh roll for the grand total of 2.30. Healthy food is very cheap here, and it's the chips that are expensive. This leads to people generally eating healthier, which is clearly a good thing. I find it interesting that there are wayyyy fewer obese people (or even just chubby people) here... Might have something to do with making better quality food cheaper? *cough cough* America *cough*

Skiing & tubing

This morning Lara and I walked down about 40 feet to the bakers and got gipfeli (croissants) for breakfast. Here that's a totally normal thing to do but for us in America it's just weird. But it's also really cool to have fresh baked breakfast so close to your front door. :) 

Today we went skiing again as usual and in the afternoon went tubing down a mini ski slope thing. It was super fun and Lara and I almost slid off the slope... And the boys decided to switch and try snowboarding or skiing (whichever one they hadn't done before) and it was super hilarious to watch. We're already halfway through our time here in Sedrun, it's crazy how time flies. 

URL change

I've moved URLs, in case you didn't notice... Instead of 1238798.blogspot.com , I'm now izziscrazyadventures.blogspot.com . And today I just hung out and did laundry & homework, and helped my grandma go shopping and made dinner. A nice calm, quiet day. :) Goodnight. <3

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.

Long lunch!

Today I had three hours for lunch because history and study hall got canceled. Yippee! So I went into Zürich with a bunch of other girls in my class to this adorable little underground Italian take-away place. It was so so so good:)

Then when I got home (why is it already dark at 5pm?!) I was greeted by an adorable little package sitting on my desk with the return address of  a certain Kayli. She sent me a late birthday present!! Yay! I got even more skittles:) It made my week. Thank you Kayliiiiii.

Then tonight at about 7pm I decide it would be a good idea to update my phone, because iOS 8.1.1 is available and my phone keeps sending me notifications. I figure it can't take more than a few hours, right? Well apparently I was not right. Right now it says 5 hours remaining. So... I guess I'll go to bed and cross my fingers that when I get up it'll be done? *crosses fingers*  oh wait, now it says 4 hours... I'm so confused. Is this a good sign?

Pizza snail

Today we had a double lunch because "studium stunde" (study hall/class discussion period) got canceled! And apparently on Thursdays there is a market in the little square where we eat sometimes, so we went there. There was a little stand with bread and such, and I got a "pizza schnack" (pizza snail) which is like pizza in a cinnamon roll shape. And a roll with chocolate bits in it. Yummmm!

Today in p.e. We played basketball, which was super fun once again, because no one here can play. So I'm really good in comparison, which would never happen at home.

But one of my friends was astounded that I'd never had these things called Giotto. So she gave me a whole package of them. :) They're little creme-filled, crushed-hazelnut-covered things. Delicious.

We also had school late. Which means I got home at 6 ish. Meh.

Tomorrow's Friday! Yippee! And Halloween! (I'll be talking about Halloween in tomorrow's post-I'm doing something)

New York day 4

Today we went to Ellen's Stardust Diner for breakfast. The diner is special because all of the waiters and waitresses can sing and dance to lots of songs, and you can request songs to be sung. It was super cool. It was probably my favorite part of the trip so far, tied only with the dinner that we had later that night.

After breakfast we went to the Museum of Natural History. It was crazy huge, and really interesting. 

Then we went to Central Park and rode bikes all the way around it. That was really fun, and I found it funny that it was basically a little island of carefully controlled "nature" in the midst of all the pollution and skyscrapers and noise.

For dinner we met up with Oma and Opa (grandma and grandpa) in a restaurant called The View, which is a two-story rotating restaurant. It was the coolest thing, tied for my favorite part of this trip with Ellen's Stardust Diner. Basically there was a skyscraper that was a hotel and this restaurant bought the top two floors and somehow made it so the outer ring, where the tables and such are, rotates. It was really neat. The lighting wasn't very good because of atmosphere and all that, but I tried to take pictures of all the weird fancy food they served us.

There was also a chocolate fountain. It was awesome. 

Sadly, aunt Claudia and uncle Ralph and Dominic and Lara and I leave tomorrow night so we get home in time to go back to school.

New York day 3!

Today we got up and went to the 9/11 memorial museum. It was super foggy on the way there. 

The museum was pretty depressing but also very interesting.

We went to lunch, then walked the highline trail, which is a walkway above the ground and through some buildings by the river. It was gorgeous!

Then we went to meet Oma and Opa (grandma and grandpa) for dinner. They were on a cruise for the past few days on a ship called the Queen Mary from London to New York. 

The school trip and the plague

Tuesday-

Today we met at the train station at 7 am, which meant I got to get up at 5:45. Then we were on a train until 10:30. We arrived in some little town and rode the gondola thingy up to the top of the mountain where there was a little restaurant. Then we spent 6 hours hiking 14 miles. It was fun, except my feet feel like one big blister. And there was a ton of fog the entire day, so we couldn't see more than 50 feet in front of us, which was a shame because we were on the border to Italy and Switzerland, and if the skies are clear, you can see super far into both countries. But at least it didn't rain, and it was pleasantly chilly. 

We got to a big building right next to anther gondola, then played card games and watched soccer until we went to bed. Then we just sat and talked and listened to music until about midnight. It was an exhausting and awesome day. 

Wednesday-

We got up at 8 to eat breakfast, and then we just sat around listening to music and talking again until we had to leave.

We went down the mountain in an adorable little gondola thing again, and then took the train to a city called Lugano and spent the day just messing around there.

We then hopped on the train and went home. I got home around 8 and didn't feel so good... I went to sleep around 9 and had to get up for school the next day and that's when I realized: I had the plague. (A.K.A. I have a useless cold.)

So that's what I've been enjoying the past two days at school. Everyone gets to enjoy the lovely sniffling, coughing Isabelle. Joy. *cue confetti shower*

But on the bright side, I had "Dönner" for lunch on Thursday. It's this type of meat... That's really yummy... Almost like bacon. With fries. It's hard to explain. Anyways, that was delicious. And apparently all my classmates think it is horrifying that I've never experienced different Swiss specialties, so we have a mini lunch menu thing planned for the next couple of weeks, so that I try new stuff every few days. I'm excited!

Monday half day

Today we had a half day of school encase if the Knabenschiessen. It made my Monday so much better. 

I also forgot to mention yesterday that I was ordered by my mother to buy "rahm-tafeli" (cream-pieces) which are heaven in edible form that only exist at the Knabenschiessen.  They're caramel type things in little pieces like chocolate. Yummmmmm. 

And walking home from Dominic and Lara's house was an adorable little hedgehog! The picture isn't very good (it was dark) but it was the cutest little thing ever!

Also, tomorrow and the next day is a school field trip, and I don't know if I'll be able to post anything, but we shall see. And if not I'll just take lots of pictures and post them when I get home:)

Yay for hiking! (All my stuff that somehow fits into one backpack) 

Cousin time!

This Saturday Lara and I went shopping (I needed jeans, mom, I promise)

Ate the most delicious ice cream

And biked to a poetry slam-type event. It was super awesome. 

Sunday we watched movies (until 4 am, whoops!)

Did some math (literally 3 hours)

And went to the pool because the weather cannot decide if it's summer or fall. 

The rediscovering of the baby bottle

Today was Thursday, which means school until 5:45, which means I don't get home until 6:15. Which means I starve. At least I don't have to get up early on Thursdays...

Something random I was thinking about in class was how even the paper they use to write here is different. Graph paper is what they use-for everything. I don't know of a place that you can buy lined paper here like we use in the U.S. It's the little things that you wouldn't even expect to be different that are so fascinating about being somewhere else. 

Also, while I was walking home from the train station, I happened to pass by where the baby bottle was (two days ago) and I looked up and there it was! Someone put it on top of a parking meter, maybe so someone could find it again. So apparently yesterday I just failed at actually finding the bottle. There was this guy riding a bicycle down the street that looked at me all weird because I was laughing while taking a picture of a parking meter. Yay!

Language class day 5

Today we had class in the morning and a short cooking class in the afternoon. In the language part of the class we had to write two short paragraphs about ourselves and about our hometown. The tricky part was doing it in German... I think my teacher liked mine though, so that's good.

In the cooking class we made a traditional Swiss dish that I don't remember the name of... It was made with potatoes, noodles, ham, carmelized onions, and apples with carmelized sugar. It sounded horrible, but it was surprisingly good.

After class, my three friends and I decided to go to a design museum right next to where the school is. It was called the Museum für Gestaltung. It had a video about the particle accelerator in Germany (i think) and my friends and I got all excited because that's close enough to possibly visit, which would be super cool.

Then after dinner, I went over to my cousin's house, and I met three cats along the way. It was adorable.

Boring Sunday...

It's a church Sunday. I cleaned the lab.
And I need to finish this test before I go to bed. Merh. I don't want to.
Does someone want to come do my homework for me? I'll reward you with... a paperclip, a copy of "The Crucible", a blue light-up pen, and a package of Oreos...
No?
I guess I'll have to do it myself. But hey, Oreos! NomNomNom

Bye!