There is a Maurice Lacroix factory in our town!! It was open to the public and we had a chance to visit and learn exactly what goes into making a watch. This is the watch that is unique to our province of Jura!! A watch is a million times more complicated than I ever expected. It was amazing to see such tiny pieces fit together so perfectly as if it was nothing. None of the workers spoke English too well, but we were fortunate that Benoit set us up with a friend to guide us thru. At the end of the tour they were selling watches for 70 percent off!!! They also had beer tasting of a beer that was unique to the region!!! I cant wait to get my watch!

us in our booties and coats!!

viewing the process of building the watch frame

I miss and love you all. Bizzzzzzz.

ps- the suisse people, upon seeing/leaving someone they know, kiss each other 3 times on alternating cheeks. ive discovered writing “biz” represents this, in short form. “bisous” and “bec” are the actual forms!

Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought.

The team won our first Swiss Cup match!! We also won the other League B match. We will play two more Swiss Cup matches before the League A teams enter into the bracket, which will be the quarterfinals. It is still be decided whether I will get to start practicing on Friday, as discussed, or if I will need another week. I stood on this weird machine at the doctor’s last Friday. I stood on metal foot plates and help two metal rods. It was explained to me as a way to measure the muscle mass of each side of my body. I had to enter my age and weight and height…… hmmm. Another interesting adventure yet again at the doctor’s.

We went to Luzern a while back. Our plan was to go there to ride one of the steepest trains in Europe…. but we got off to a late start and did not make it there until the afternoon. But of course, we made the most of it!!! We saw some great churches and a stone carving that is known to be the most sorrowful and passionate in all of Europe. We also got delicious mexican food. yum! Luzern was gorgeous. I thought Geneva was great, but compared to Luzern, Geneva is filthy! haha. To me, Luzern is a must see in Switzerland. We started at the tourist office again. They informed us that a lot of cities in the country have the “steep trains,” but it is something we should do. We decided on the walking tour…… which led us thru the city along the lake and helped us to locate all the significant stops along the way. The main stop, other than the lion carving, was the Musegg Wall. Climbing to the top of this wall and its nine towers gave us a spectacular panoramic view of the city. Although it was built in 1386, it stays nearly intact becasue of its location near the Alps! The view was truly breathtaking and gave us our first big taste of what the alps are really like. Being there gave me the uplift my gloomy soul needed.

the lake of Lucerne

the view from one of the towers

the clock tower of the Musegg Wall

dev emily and steph w mr. lion

commemorates the swiss guards who died during the French Revolution

gorgeous church on the water

flowers outside the church

emily entering the church's front doors

Zurich continued to further the process of the rebuilding of my mental state. Most of the other girls went to shop, but I went to sightsee!!! It is rare that you we see me on a day in which I feel like going shopping. hah. What a phenomenol experience I had simply walking around the city. The trees throughout the entire country are tremendously colorful, let alone in Zurich. I wound up in a wonderful little park. It was a little bit scary because at this point I was alone and there were quite a few characters in the park watching me. I walked briskly thru, taking pictures while I could. I wish I would have stumbled upon it sooner because I would have liked to spend more time there. I am sure I will return at some point.

downtown Zurich!

the sky is falling

museummmmmm

this lake runs thru the whole city

magical park

light rays shining thru the leaves

perfect.

rain on this great day= great rainbow

the rainbow and me

all trainstations should look like this one

shrubbery

fast action near the train/bus

We are fortunate to have made a lifelong friend in Loic, our “team manager.” He absolutely loves spending time with the team. Although our French tongue is coming along slowly, Loic remains persistent. When he discovered we wanted to go hiking in the Alps, during one of our lessons, he immediately volunteered to take us on one of our upcoming days off. It ended up taking some time to get there, which resulted in us trying to get Claude, VFM owner and Loic’s father, to cancel practice later that night. We were not successful, understandably. Loic had also made surprise plans to take us to get some famous dessert made in one of the towns we would pass thru on our way home. We ran out of time for this as well, but he still plans on taking us there at some point. We made it to one of the tallest dams in Europe. It was located next to a giant glacier!! This was the coldest day since we arrived in Switzerland. However, Loic managed to make sure we were prepared for this. We decided to take the trail that wrapped around the entire lake… it took us about 3 hours. What a great team bonding day!!

The watch factory in Saignelegier, which I am amazed I had no knowledge of its location, is giving VFM a tour on Thursday!!!! It is the factory which the province of Jura is famous for, Maurice-Lacroix. Benoit, VFM president, just informed us they are giving a 70% disocunt on watches!!!! Woooooo. So, we will be going on a tour of the factory and learning first hand what watch making is all about, and hopefully picking up a Swiss watch!!! This is such an exciting offer!

Here are the public links to my facebook photo albums of Luzern, Zurich and The Alps!! You do not have to be apart of the facebook community to look at them
For Luzern and Zurich go to:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2320091&id=1817027&l=ebd02e8c79

For Les Alpes Suisse go to:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2320261&id=1817027&l=fcf2f23cfd

At the moment, I am not allowed to play volleyball. I ended up tearing a ligament in my ankle! It was found 9 days after the actual sprain in the MRI that was taken at a hospital in Bien. I was told the day I had the cast removed I will be allowed to fully participate in practice in 8 days!! That will be a total of 30 days since the injury, 30 days of not being able to run or jump!!! That sounds so crazy to me. Luckily, ever since I was taken out of the cast and put into the removeable brace I have been able to bike and weight lift. I am participating slightly in practice… mostly standing and serving, passing, and initiating drills. I have been the official assistant coach in out past two matches (injured players are not allowed to sit on the bench). I have written our lineups and taken stats on the bench. The last league match I will have to sit out of will be this coming weekend, hopefully. We are still undefeated and have been lucky to not have had tough competition these past few weeks.

However, the Swiss Cup starts Sunday!!!!! So this means we have two matches this weekend! Both at home! Both of which I can’t play. I did everything I could to try and get the doctor to clear me for this weekend, but I ended in failure. It must be for the best though. I am used to always playing thru injuries, but I have never torn or broken anything, so this must be different. The Swiss Cup is single elimination!!! It is the very first match that we will be entered in the Cup, so it is not expected to be hard. Remember, our goal is to WIN THE SWISS CUP!!!

Our schedule, as far as we know, is:
LNB
Nov 7th vs Therwil
Nov 14th vs Val de Travers
Nov 21st vs Muri Bern
Nov 28th vs Geneve
Dec 5th vs Ruswil
Dec 12th vs Cossonay
Dec 19th vs Fribourg
Jan 9th vs Therwil

SWISS CUP
Nov 8th vs Thurwil
Nov 22nd vs ???
Dec 6th vs ???(sweet 16)
Dec 20th vs ???(quarterfinals)
Jan 10th vs ???(semifinals)

So there it is……. it is up to us to make it happen.

In other news, our town hosted the Cheese Olympics recently!!! It is an anual European festival complete with a parade, a disco, bands, bars, booths, and tons of tents!! It was held in Germany last year! The first night my roommates and I attended the fondue party!!! It made more sense for me to eat cheese because I didn’t have a match to play in the next day. haha. So, I bought the fondue!!! We all shared it and it was delicious!! The next morning we walked around to all the booths tasting cheese before we left for our match. There were cheeses from Italy, France, Switzerland, Poland, Germany, Austria, Spain and a couple other flags I didn’t recognize. My Coach and I completed the full cheese olympics experience on Sunday by watching the parade and tasting, but this time buying cheese!!! We also bought these delicious sausages. I found this crazy cheese sandwhich making booth…. where I HAD to buy a cheese sandwhich. They had a grill set up particularly to make cheese sandwhiches, I swear!! That thing looked like it would stay hot for days. They would stick a slice of cheese and two slices of bread on these prongs then rotate them in the grill. Turned out perfect everytime!!!!

Right after it happened on Saturday, Mya, our team mom, asked if she could call a special lady for me. She said it is known as “the secret” around here and that most teams do it. Some people believe in it, some people do not. This lady is known to have special powers. I later found out she does magnetism. So Mya called the lady and she asked for my full name, birthdate, how much I weighed, where I lived, and maybe some other things I don’t remember. So as Mya was touching my leg, the lady said she was doing some things and saying some prayers for me. I was told she takes away pain and can even stop bleeding. She can also see dead people. I was asked if I believe in ghosts, and I said I didn’t know. I have no reason to or to not believe yet….. A man in the VFM Committee has a mother that is believed to have the power to heal burns. This woman was called after a girl on my team suffered a pretty large ice burn from an ice pack that ruptured. It has healed tremendously and the scar is diminishing rapidly. She will give her powers to her son just before she dies…..

So, I sprained my ankle on Saturday and I woke up Tuesday morning to it looking the worst it had yet. I went to the Physio, Marc. He is from Vancouver and speaks the best English out of any one I have met here. He determined I should go to the doctor the next day….. little did I know I would be getting a cast when I agreed. While I was at the Physio, the secret lady came!! She asked to look at my ankle. She told me (thru Marc’s interpretations) that I was not allowing my energy to go thru my knee; my ankle was having trouble healing because the blood was not circulating down to my foot. She spent about 15 mins just hovering her hands over my leg, up and down. She squeezed a few of my toes, pressed on parts of my ankle, and mumbled a few things to herself…. then she was on her way. Marc came after she left to do stim, ultrasound and massage. He asked me to really focus on directing my blood all the way down to my foot thru my breathing. While I did this, he said he could really feel the swelling relaxing and the blood flowing all around. ?

Later that night, after I sat thru practice, the president of VFM was talking to Coach Kevin. He asked to see my ankle. I unwrapped the ace bandage….. and was shocked with what I saw. It went from a huge, awful looking swollen sprain, to an almost recovered and little bruised ankle in a MATTER OF HOURS! My coach had seen it earlier and even he was shocked… my body must just be that fast at healing. Regardless, I had a doctor’s appointment the next morning, and he still put the cast on even though I told him it looked 20 times better!! He also gave me an anti-inflammatory/pain perscription and self-injection blood thinner!!!! I was told to inject myself in the stomach every day. Since my foot was in a cast, he needed to make sure the blood was circulating. If it wasn’t circulating properly I could end up with a blood clot. So, my teammate, Kristin, wants to be a nurse, and I nominated her to give me the shots…

Mya told me a story about how she discovered there were ghosts in her house. She said she just had a bad feeling and asked the secret lady to come visit her house. The lady ended up saying all the rooms except for a couple she could feel spirits in. She gave Mya this glass orb filled with copper spirals to put in her house, and she also told Mya to light incense. Mya said when she took out her lighter to light the incense… she heard a “whooosh,” like the sound of someone blowing out a flame…. and her flame went out. ?? Loic, our team manager, said he has also witnessed miracles because of this lady.

I had an MRI and I got to keep the CD full of pictures!!! It was very cool to see my actual bones!! I returned to the doc right after my MRI at a hospital that was 40 mins away. He looked at the pictures real quick and pointed out a few things. He showed me all the important ligaments and pointed out that none of them were torn. yay. He located a bone contusion, which is simply a bruised bone. He also located, what he called, an artifact. He needs to read the radiologist’s report, which he won’t receive until Monday, in order to determine exactly what the artifact is. The picture can be described as what looks like a splinter in one of my bones. They took the MRI right thru my cast!!! I was hoping they would have to take it off and then I was going to convince them not to pu tit back on!!!! So that was unfortunate.

Significantly out of topic, but I have discovered that if you pay for gas with your bank card, some gas stations over charge you because they do not initially know how much gas you are getting when you put in your card. A gas station charged my card the maximum one day when I bought gas. This ended up meaning it wiped my whole bank account for four days until the money was finally returned. I tried to ask the bank about this when I noticed 2 days after I had bought gas, and they, in broken English, tried to ask me if maybe I spent it at some party!!! geeez!

Also, my cell phone is no longer in function due to soe unknown password it is asking me for. Not a PIN for the Sim Card, but a password! One that I have never set. Thank goodness for Skype! Oh wait, that doesn’t really work either…… hahaha! Looks like I will have to resort to good old fashioned e-mail! haha.

The first boat to Venice left at 9am and the last boat from Venice left at 1030pm. St. Mark’s plaza was unbelievable!!!!! It was our first stop the first night we got there, right after sunset. All four of us kind of just stood in awe for awhile, taking some pictures. The square was much bigger than I had imagined. It is much less crowded at night, which makes it pretty peaceful to just stand around and listen to all the performanes. There are at least three groups ready to perform at all times. The crowd just travels, all together, from each performance to the next. There were a lot of old couples dancing. It was very cute. The old men seemed to never tire but to liven up every time one of their dancing songs would come on. Long stem roses are being sold constantly all around. There were a lot of couples in general. The atmosphere was quite a romantic one. I did not ride in a gondola in hopes of one day returning and making it truly a romantic experience, the way I thought it should be.

Just the city of Vencie in general was an amazing experience in itself, however, I think my favorite place we visited was Saint Mark’s Basilica. I was absolutely blown away. The museum inside the Basilica was gorgeous. There were sculptures, paintings and tons of mosaics!! We spent at least a good 2 hours in there. I could have definitely spent more, but I think the other girls wanted to move on. There was a mass going on while we were inside. I wonder how you get the privilege to attend mass there?! You could only see the people inside thru the cracks in the portable walls there to provide privacy for the mass. There were so many different mosaics of animals and different scriptures in the domes. There were also so many different types of marble used to build the whole building. It was most definitely an enchanting place. It was well worth the line to get in and the crowdedness.

The city of Venice was not extremely dirty like I had heard and read about. I was actually impressed by the cleanliness of all the water passageways. It rained the last day we were there, which was unfortunate. I had planned out which souvenirs I was going to buy and from where. However, because of the rain, all the outside booths were closed. Throughout this day, we saw sooooo many people wearing green. A lot of them just had these green hankerchiefs. To me, it looked like there was a picture of a marijuana leaf on them. Old people, young kids, babies, everyone seemed to be participating in this festivity. We finally discovered it was some type of political event. It was described to us as a protest against the government, and that was it. Some people even had their faces painted and held huge green flags with the “leaf” desgin on it. Strange……. wish I had figured that one out.

We ended up taking the train back to Chiasso right out of Venice……. but when we bought our ticket the ticket lady decided it wasnt important to tell us we had to make a 5 min station transfer via the subway!!! We barely made our transfer on the way home. The last of our adventure was when we got lost driving home. Well, we didn’t exactly get lost, one of the tunnels we take to get home that goes under the mountains was closed! So we took the detour which sent us driving OVER the alps. When we got to the top it was snowing!!!!! It was our first experience of driving stick in the snow and on hills!!!

photo shoot in the park

We play each of the 7 other teams in the west twice…. this brings us to the end of December. Starting in January, the top four teams from each of the west and the east will play each other. The winner of this little playoff is announced to be the number one team in the league and automatically moves up to LNA!!! The Swiss Cup is a whole new story. It has supposedly already started???? We will not move into the Swiss Cup until after the little playoff thing(Feb maybe)…. it will actually be the Swiss Cup Sweet 16. LNA begins Swiss Cup play in the quarterfinals. There are around 200 teams involved. All of the teams in Switzerland!! The draws for who you play are random. So, all the LNA teams could draw each other and then knock each other out!! haha. But this is true. The winner of the Swiss Cup is the number one team in Switzerland!!!! This is all I know about the Swiss Cup…..

First home match!

The top picture is the whole team with our Masseuse, Glen.

Shopping in Neuchatel

The five of us walking thru Lausanne

The big city of Geneva after dinner

Geveva was the biggest city in Switzerland we had visited so far. We were planning on renting bikes, but the bike rental we knew of was closed when we got there. Geneva is kind of dirty and there are people and scooters everywhere!! We proceded to walk and ran into the Tourist Info place!! They told u about this giant fountain that was a popular place, and a garden. One of my swiss teammates, Melissa, had mentioned the fountain to me when she heard we were going to Geneva. I was expecting the fountain to be a natural sort of geiser. But we couldn’t find it, and this thing is supposed to be huge!!! We were a little confused. We stopped in a chocolate store, which was soooo delicious and surprisingly not too expensive. We did some more shopping. A few of the girls don’t have winter jackets (Californians) and were looking for some good ones becasue they are worried about the winter. haha. Then we ate at this outdoor italian place. My teammate, Devon, ordered a pizza “American style.” It was served with an egg over easy on top of it. I recommend this!!! On our walk back to the cars, we saw the fountain!!!! Apparently, they can turn it off and on. Strange. It is at the end of the jetti, in the middle of the lake, so hopefully they are not wasting gallons and gallons of water every second!!!! I coudln’t really find too much information about it, but I am sure we will be back!!!! Our two little Hyundai stick shifts are holding up fabulous.

Here is the public URL to my facebook photo album of the 3 trips……….

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2311006&l=1608f539c9&id=1817027