Actually in Switz again!

Hello all. Here I am writing from Signy, Canton de Vaud, Suisse. Back in the host family where I stayed when I started writing this blgo! I originally wasnàt sure I would end up here this summer but thought it would just be simple to use the same blog... but here I am. how full circle of me.

But before Swityerland I went to Hungary with my good friend from HiA...

BUDAPEST WAS INCREDIBLE!!!! My friend Ben and I from the HiA program were aboslutely perfect travel buddies. We just walked and walked and walked for hours every day. Literally ten hours on foot one day. Budapest puts the so called European travel capitals to shame, Iàm not kidding. it is gorgeous, rich in history, bustling with life. I just canàt say enough about it! Hungarian is a nutty language though. It sounds like galloping horses. Ben and I took a day trip to Bratislava, capital of Slovakia. I love that kind of spontaneity. He proposed it at 11pm and we got up at 6 the next morning to head off to Slovakia! Funnn. A cute little former Soviet capital. DAYUM it was hot - about 100 degrees every day. Hmmm random story - it took us a slightlz paiful hour and a half to find the entrance to the 'castle caves' - these caves that run under Budapest castle that have been around since cave peopl times and were used to store treasure by kings and queens, during the world wars, during the cold war, and now as a museum of course. They were fascinating - but also suuuuper strange in parts. There was a big exhibit on 'homo consumus' - meaing u now in the age of capitalism who consume a lot of materials and arenàt connected to our modes of production. It was fascinating, but super edgy and strange and not something i would normally expect from a state government - more as an avant garde art project. So it was interesting to me that it was a state run museum that put it together.

Yesterday my host mom Gudrun and I swam in Lac Leman (Lake Geneva) and lounged around by the lake for a while - and then she took me to this bizarre Swiss park in the Jura Mountains. My French has improved by leaps since I first came ti la Suisse! It was really gratifying to talk to her and Hermann, her long term boyfriend. He doesnàt speak any English so communicating with him is even more of a full on French experience. They have an SIT student staying with them for the 5 week summer program right now. He is originally from Germany but has lived in the states for the past 6 yeras - so he speaks German and not French. The conversations between the four of us are hilarious. Gudrun is fluent in all three - Hermann and I speak French - Max (the student) and I do English - and Hermann speaks enough Swiss German to get by - but that is essentiallz a different language from 'High' German so that is another struggle bus!

Okay I am tired, tired, tired and tomorrow I head for a farm in France. It is Bastille day as well so that will be interesting :)

Love,
Alice