Via ferrata and SATC weekend :)

So nothing really too amazing about this past week.  Evenings tend to be my not-so-great-feeling times so poor Paul doesn't really get to see my good times during the week.  :(

Saturday, Paul went on a via ferrata (kinda like a cross between rock climbing and a ropes course in hiking gear) and left me for the day.  Luckily, Rachel (from Paul's group) wasn't going so she had an awesome idea of going to see Sex and the City 2!  The night before I woke up around 3am for a bathroom break and snack and when Paul left around 6:30 I had another snack which put me to sleep until 10!  I was so shocked I was able to sleep that late!  But anyways, I hurried and got ready, met Rachel at her place, we left and bought our tickets (19 bucks each!-omg), ate yummmmmmmmmmy burgers at an English Pub (I even got lemonade!!) and saw the movie.  We made sure to find a showing that spoke English but it still had German and French subtitles.  Movies here have intermissions so all of a sudden it shuts off and the lights come back on and most people go out and get a snack.  We got ice cream.  :)  I came home and skyped Amy which definitely needs to happen more often and by then Paul was home.  This is what he did:

They went to the town of Engelberg which part of the route involved taking the cogwheeled train (a train that rides like a train until it clamps on to a center track and pulls itself up a very inclined track). Then they took a Brunni cable car to Ristis and hiked from there to the via ferrata (or klettersteig in German).  The route was easy with an easy climb and 2 short bridges where you basically walked on a cable holding on to other cables.  They hiked down, had lunch, and then some of them attempted the difficult route but it started raining so they came down.  Then it was a beautiful scenic hike back down to Engelberg through cow pastures and tons of wildflowers- a very Swiss looking hike.  They hung out in the town while waiting for the train and made the 2 hour trip home.

I was actually pretty disappointed that I couldn't go.  Before we left the states, we both bought harnesses (mine is even purple!) because this sounded fun and not too much for me to handle.  But we realized that me wearing a harness with the possibility of being jerked around if I fell would not be a good idea at this point.  :(  Anyways, Paul took the only pictures for the weekend.  So here they are:

Schwangerschaft indeed

Work has been work and I think I get my first paycheck soon!  And to 'celebrate' the paycheck Paul had planned on buying his via ferrata gear in time for summer.  So Saturday we decided to go to the farmers market, grab some fruit, run some errands, and shop for his stuff.  We went to a really nice outdoors store and he found his stuff almost 200 bucks later and as we were leaving we noticed the 'outlet' store downstairs... not exactly something we should have found.  It was basically a smaller version of the store with older models of things for a much cheaper price.  And since I don't own a sleeping bag for trips/camping we had been talking about getting one and that of course meant that Paul needed to upgrade too.  I did agree with him on that though since his is super old.  For 300 bucks we bought 2 Mountain Hardwear awesome sleeping bags and are so proud of our finds.  Now who knows if we'll use them before our road trip in August but I hope so.

And other than that and work, we skyped our parents with some pretty big news- Schwangerschaft.

Ich bin Schwanger.  English version:  I am pregnant.

We are very happy to announce that after one test and one doctors appointment we will officially be parents sometime around January 9, 2011.  The test took all of 3 seconds to tell us the news and showed the clearest lines I didn't expect to see.  Now the shock has finally wore off and we are getting excited.  Well, I am as excited as I can be feeling so nauseous all the time.  On our anniversary we went to the doctor and they did an ultrasound- never expected that for our 2 year anniversary.  So that was great/shocking/exciting/just-plain-crazy and then our anniversary dinner was definitely not what we had hoped for.  We thought we'd go out to dinner at our favorite Thai restaurant but instead I was feeling so terrible that we took it to go and I could barely eat half of mine even though it was SO good!  But he/she will be born in Zurich but no, they will not be a Swiss citizen.  Switzerland does not give citizenship that easily.  This will definitely be a- maybe once in a lifetime- experience and we are ready to take it all on.  Maternity care in Switzerland is spoken very highly of so Im sure it will be a great experience besides maybe a little difficulty on language barriers.  Whatever happens, we are very ready to become a family.  :)  I am 7 weeks along, very hungry all the time- including the middle of the night, but I have no interest in food... this will be a fun month or 2 (hopefully only one!).  I'm just so thankful Paul is such an amazing husband.  I seriously couldnt ask for someone better suited for me and my quirks.  :)

Bellinzona and Lugano

What a week!  I'll try to spare you the details to make this not as long as it definitely could be!  :)

Thankfully, I only worked 3 days last week.  Very much needed and I am very thankful for Swiss holidays.  Paul planned a short trip for our 2 year anniversary.  The italian side of Switzerland is spoken very highly of so we decided to check it out.  Lugano, our destination, is about a 3 hour train ride from Zurich.  So Thursday we gave our apartment a very good cleaning and did the laundry and packed up.  Friday morning we left around 7:30 and hopped on a train towards Lugano.  But before we arrived we stopped in Bellinzona for some castle site-seeing.  3 castles total with our packs and walking mountains before we even arrived in Lugano around 5 made for a very long day.  But I did it and Paul was proud and surprised!  Few pics of Bellinzona:

We decided to try out a hostel in Lugano for a couple nights since it was cheap and it looked pretty nice.  Everything was great until 3am when 4 of our fellow hostel mates decided to come back drunk and yell inside the room for an hour.  They finally saw me staring directly at them and the less drunk girl came over and quickly realized I didnt speak Swiss German but she didnt speak much English.  So she told the one girl to quiet down which did nothing except make her more insane and then look me in the face to realize YES I was awake!  Ridiculous especially since one of the hostel manager guys came and told them to be quiet since they have hotel guests too and that did nothing.  We were debating staying another night (even though we paid for it) and when we realized they were staying we packed up our bags.  The people still gave us half the nights payment back and Im sure they went back and talked to them because they had just been in the room and saw that they were taking up the extra beds which were trying to be shown to the newcomers... Anyways, Lugano was beautiful.

Since it is the italian part, everyone speaks Italian and the stores are all in Italian unlike Zurich where everything is German.  Pretty weird but we got by with English.  We got a few snacks, ate at a pizzeria Friday night and sat by the huge lake but it had been rainy all day and we were very tired so we went to bed early.  Sat morning we made our way over to the lake to the tourist office and decided to take a funiculor up Mt. Bre, hike down to Gandria, eat lunch, and take a boat back to Lugano.  It was so beautiful and we enjoyed it so much.  We ate lunch at a small restaraunt off an alley and had a table outside surrounded by the lake and mountains.  Gorgeous.  We decided that if we come again, we will definitely stay in a hotel around there.  By the time we got back we had enough time to ride the bus around, see a couple more things and eat a huge gelato before we decided to pack up our stuff and go home.  We had seen everything that we had wanted to anyway.  So running low on time, we just had to eat dinner at McDonalds... ha.  I didnt enjoy my Big Mac as much as I had anticipated but the chicken nuggets definitely tasted more like real chicken.  Needless to say I passed out on the train home and we got in around midnight and slept like babies.  Here are some pics of Lugano:

I uploaded more pictures and if you'd like, you can take a look here- scroll down past the Boog pics for pics of this trip.  Coming back to Zurich being on the other side of the Alps was not pretty.  Back to the rain.  :(

Back to pics :)

I actually have pictures this time!!  To start will be the 'salsa' Paul bought to go with our tiny bag of chips for Cinco de Mayo.  It probably should have been called 'Meatloaf Ketchup with a few green peppers'.  It did not taste good especially on chips.  So we threw some things together and made a very very oniony salsa with no cilantro but better than nothing!  :)

My 2 days of work were work.  The work they have me doing is not hard and just a matter of figuring things out.  So I think it should be fine and maybe even fun.  It is a little isolating since they all speak German unless they want me to join in.  But they are nice old men and it is definitely an experience.

Friday night we did our grocery shopping and had our pizza night.  yummy  And went to bed really early.  I had to run my 4.4 km leg of the Sola Race at 7:30am.  Not cool.  We got up at 6 and made our way over there but I was still not fully awake with my food digested by the time the gun went off and there was a massive amount of women (about 400) speeding down the hill in the woods... craziness. So I did my section- not well but finished with minimal walking- and passed off the e-baton to Katherine.  My section was the very first and the race went til about 6 when everyone finished.  A very long day. 

I wanted to nap when I got home but had other things to do.  Once Paul got back, we were going to use our day travel pass for all of Switzerland and go somewhere by boat but by the time we were ready we didnt have enough time to go far.  So we rode the boat for a little bit (which was super busy and we were lucky they had enough seats for us), walked along areas we had never seen, and stopped by the huge market at the lake.  I guess you could call it antiques but Im not too sure...

Not the boat we rode (you pay extra for it) but maybe one day!

This is the one we road- very interesting

We got some ice cream and headed to the finish line to cheer on our teams.  That night we had a huge potluck gathering for our 2 Sola teams but we were all exhausted.  I met a few new people and had fun just hanging out.  Paul was in charge of the grill and had to grill all 25 people's meats.  A lot of pressure!  But it was fun and we slept goooooooooood last night.

Today Paul really wanted to go see the Monet/Van Gogh exhibit at the art museum since it is leaving next week.  More walking and my legs were exhausted but he enjoyed the 3 hours we spent there.  It was huge.  This week I only have to work 3 days and am super excited about it!  Thursday is Ascention and Rheinmetall just gave Friday off too.  :)  We might go to a bed and breakfast this weekend for our anniversary.  Paul's good at planning trips so I'll leave it up to him!

Oh, and a side/ending note... I can officially take SHORT showers!  I can do most everything within 10 min with time to spare to just sit there and I am so proud.  Go me.  :)

Picture slacking...

The weather has been downright nasty and will not be clearing up for awhile.  It's very frustrating especially because the race is Saturday and I haven't ran since last Thursday.  So to fix that, I signed up for the University's gyms this afternoon and after trying to figure the place out for 15 min, I finally tried some machines.  I needed to get my membership soon because at the end of this month the cost will be 500 instead of 150- people are not happy about that and I dont think I will be either...

My internship- I still don't know details and maybe I'll be getting the contract soon but regardless, I start tomorrow.  I'm definitely looking forward to the income (and so is Paul) but I do enjoy being lazy.  I'll miss sitting on the couch in my sweats but better things will come out of this.  :)

I've been doing those experiement meals this week.  Today I had my last meals and I am so happy it is over!  I've been eating a cup of white rice with about a tablespoon of 'sauce' to mix with it for breakfast and lunch for 3 days.  And those days, I can only eat other things between 3-8pm and drink from 3pm-12am.  The rice reminds me of the rice orphanages in Africa feed the kids except with less stuff to mix with it.  Not the most appetizing.  It's especially hard since Paul's mom sent us a package with all these awesome goodies- jellybeans included!!  Thank you!!!  (The jellybeans here are nasty.)

We got rid of the temp cat yesterday.  All in all, he 1- ripped up our rug, 2- chewed our only ipod cord for charging, 3- broke a jar I decorated for Ursula for her biscotti, 4- woke us up (and kept us up) between 6 and 7 every morning, 5- pulled a huge pork loin off the counter and started eating it, 6- pulled his food bag out of the grocery bag and ate holes through it, 7- knocked off anything he could in the kitchen, bathroom, and bedroom, 8- ate one of my earrings, 9- has THE LOUDEST and weirdest meow since he is deaf... I won't go on just for the sake of this post.  But this cat was bad and supposedly that's all normal behaviour for him.  Not cool.  We made about Fr. 160 out of it though... not sure if it was worth it.  Here is how lovey he was when he wanted to be good:

Cinco de Mayo... how I wish I could celebrate.  I would give anything for a huge thing of salsa, gaucamole, and tostitos (or just Chilis bottomless chips and salsa) and huge margaritas!!  Maybe I'll have Paul find some salsa and chips.  We can splurge sometimes.  :)

So that's about it.  Paul's trying to think of something we should do for our anniversary and I'm super excited.  I can't believe 2 years is coming up.  Oh, and we have our first confirmed visitors!  Billy C. and his gf Jessica bought their plane tickets for the end of August and we are going to take a road trip.  Should be a lot of fun!  This summer will hoepfully be full of adventures.  :)

Some good things :)

Hey peoples!  So last week... hmmmmmm....

At the beginning of the week I sent off a few more resumes and applied to a few more jobs and emailed a few people.  I waited and waited but the only person I heard back from was for an internship at Rheinmetall Air Defense.  I went for an 'interview' on Friday and they were pretty much acting like I already got the job, introducing me to people, and showing me around the buildings and production areas.  I was never asked interview questions and really didnt have to prove myself at all I guess because my last job experience was almost exactly what I'd be doing.  So I sent HR the rest of my documents and I think I'll start next week.  I want to be super excited but it is an internship which is like a step down from a real job that I just had.  But I guess at this point I cant be picky.  It's 4-6 months and they cant gaurantee a permanent position in the end but Im hoping it will happen.  I love the company and have been trying to get in for awhile.  So hopefully at the end of the year I will be an employee.  Oh, and I still get paid.  So it could be worse!  :)

Last night there was a going away party for one of the Minnesota guys.  He's been here for a few months helping set up an instrument and they've been trying to convince him to stay but he's a Minnesota guy.  So we had a Raclette party.  Basically a ton of cheese that you melt in these little ovens and scrap off onto your food- pickles, onions, potatoes, bread, mushrooms, corn, sundried tomatoes, etc.  It was fun and really good and for dessert we had cherry schnapps and beer cake (definitely beer-y but very light).

This weekend and a lot of next week is going to be rainy.  So today is an inside day not to mention that there is always a May Day march/protest in Zurich where things can get a little too crazy.  :(  People tell you to stay inside and you pretty much dont have a choice unless you leave the city because almost everything is closed.  They treat it like a holiday.  But tonight is the Kentucky Derby and we'll attend a midnight gathering for it.  The only issue is that the regular trams/buses stop running at 1am.  We maybe could take the night bus but we'd have to pay extra so we might just walk the 30 min trek.  :)

Oh, and this morning we met a couple for some cat sitting.  They are only 10 min away and they are right next to my internship.  So I thought it would be an easy few extra bucks.  But the girl is from Georgia (US) and her husband is German.  So we had a fun conversation about the states- they are going to Georgia to visit.  And they are pretty much our same age we think.  Maybe we'll make a friendship out of it because they just moved here in January too.  I would love some friends here!

Ok, well I'll end before I keep rambling.  No pictures because I havent had anything to take pictures of!  We got a package from my parents and are loving the contents- p-nut butter, grits, coffee, trail mix, drink mix, vitamins, vanilla extract (I already made sugar cookies!) just to name a few!  Paul's parents sent us a package too but I was gone so we'll have to pick it up Monday.  Can't wait!