comme ça

I have so much to tell you, so if you've thought that my other blog posts where long you should just turn around now. Here's the day's highlight: I met my cousins today!!!!! My second day in Switzerland has been my life's dream come true. When I was a little kid, I used to write to my cousin Stephanie who lives here in Switzerland. My mom and dad met her mother Marianne (my grandmother's sister's daughter) when they came to Switzerland years ago, and my mom suggested that I write to my cousin so that I could one day meet my family. Well today was the dream came true.

I still can't sleep so I was up at 7:33am sneaking potato chips and checking my facebook while my mom slept. By nine she was fluttering her eyes so I took the opportunity to make myself a cup of coffee  (two milks and two sugars for the first time since I was barely old enough to say coffee) and turn to Ludo (the French version of cartoon network that had Tom and Jerry, Scooby Doo, and Garfield cartoons on). I munched on madeleines for breakfast while I made a second cup of coffee. The madeleines are delicious; they're sponge cake that is lemon and butter flavored. I googled a few places to go sight seeing in Lausaunne, a church and a garden, and my mom and I headed off.

By the time this trip is over I am going to be an expert map reader. I've somehow turned into Louis and Clark despite my best attempt to google maps locations. Head west on Boulevard de Grancy means nothing to me, google!! We went in a loop around the train station and finally had to ask a woman on the street where the garden was; we had turned right at the fork instead of left despite a sign that indicated left was the way that we wanted to go. We finally found the garden and it was well worth the trouble. It was beautiful!!! Most people know that I love flowers, so this was the perfect afternoon for me. There was a huge children's park and, if you climbed all the way to the top of the garden, you could see all of Lausanne. It was amazing.

We were supposed to go see a cathedral after the garden, but thanks to my mother's lack of nagivating, we went on the wrong bus and ended up in Pulley. It was alread after one and we were meeting our cousins at 6:30 and we still hadn't had lunch so we gave up the hunt and went back to the hotel room.

Before reaching our room we discovered that the Chinese restaurant that was closed yesterday was finally open so we popped in there. It was delicious!!! We got shrimp and noodles with fried onions and it was like heaven. We then went to the COOP to find snacks and breakfast for our train ride to Geneva tomorrow.

We got a loaf of bread, more herbed cheese, water, coke, a pain au chocolat for me, and butter cookies at the market and headed for the checkout when we decided to stop at the chocolate section. There I saw them; the Kinder eggs that I've been looking for for years! After Elizabeth told me about these magical chocolate eggs with toys inside of them, I just had to find one. I snapped up a girl's box of eggs and we checked out.

I ate my chocolate egg within minutes of getting into our hotel room. It was a blissful moment as I cracked open my chocolate egg (white chocolate with milk chocolate on the outside) with a lock and key as the toy. I want to collect all the toys! Alas, my excitement could only keep my from napping for so long.

We awoke at 5 to get ready for our dinner with my cousins. Marianne and Stephanie picked us up from the train station at 6:45 in a car that they had rented for the occasion, and we drove to Chalet Suisse for traditional Swiss food. Marianne and Stephanie invited my cousins Dominique (Marianne's sister), Michel, and Karine to come with us. I was so surprised! Dinner was amazing. We talked about our family and memories of each other in broken French and English over raclette (a traditional Swiss dish of peeled potatoes and cheese) and my fondue (mostly wine with a hint of cheese and bread to dip it in which was totally worth my permanently burnt mouth) and a bottle of white wine.

My cousins taught me the proper way to eat fondue. You can't have cold drinks during or after eating it because it will shrink in your stomach into a glob of cheesy death. Also, drinking white wine with fondue is the only way to go. To eat fondue, you tear off pieces of bread, stab them with the fondue fork, stir it in the cheese to make sure that the cheese doesn't burn in the pot, and then twirl the fork (comme ca, michaela, do it like this) so that the cheese doesn't drip while you're eating it. Also, when you drink a bottle of wine with people, the person who finishes the bottle gets "la amour".

I had so much fun meeting my cousins.

Marianne, Michel, Dominique, Karine, and Stephanie at dinner

After dinner, Marianne and Stephanie took us to the church that we were trying to find earlier. It's an amazing Romanesque church on a hill overlooking Lausanne. It was breathtaking even in the dark.

Now it's time it's time for bed so that we can travel again tomorrow.