Virtually Home

Friday, the two study abroad advisers from OU were in town to tweak the program, such as it is. All the OU kids were invited for lunch with them at the international relations office on campus, but I was the only one that showed up. I had a moment of panic when I arrived and the staff didn't know what I was talking about and told me the Americans had already been and gone -- it turns out that even though those staffers were invited, they hadn't been informed. Score one for French efficiency. And so we had a very French box lunch, and some red wine. Alcohol plus university officials on campus was odd. One of the French staffers confused me for French and didn't realize I was American until I started speaking with Jack and Kye in rapid English. That made me proud but a little incredulous. Dan and Mary came and picked me up from campus and we drove out into the outskirts of Bordeaux, where everything is much less rich- and idyllic-looking. There's a Nazi submarine base t...

These photos are all from Lauterbrunnen and on, I think. The one at the left is just after arrival on Lauterbrunnen on the 26th...Not the best photo ever, what with the light having been terrible, but I think it sort of portrays our feelings about the travelling and many aspects of Switzerland that turned out to be frustrating. But I'm getting ahead of myself. We slept in on Christmas day. I think we might have awakened and walked down for free breakfast at the hostel, and then returned to bed for another few hours. I think the afternoon was mostly uneventful. We walked around Geneva looking for cool things to do. I was still nursing a pretty terrible head cold and the beginnings of a frightful cough, so Rachel suggested we look for something spicy to eat for dinner. Spicy of course, is relative in Europe, though Switzerland turned out to offer more in the way of flavor than the UK, for sure. We found an Indian restaurant that we decided to return to later. Somewhere during th...