Disneyland Paris!

Me and Ceele in front of Thunder Mountain! (It was so much fun! The actual "mountain" was on an island in the middle of this lake, so to get to it, the ride shot under the lake and came out on the island! So fun!!)
The castle!

The maze that was closed :(

Ceele and I. This was one of our many times on Space Mountain! (It was so much more intense! It shot you up into the dark and had corkscrews and loops!)

During our stressful time in Paris, we got to see Notre Dame!

Since we had the field trip on Friday we couldn't do any big weekend traveling so we decided to take a day trip to Paris and go to Disneyland. Disneyland closes at 10pm and the last train going back to Lausanne left at 5pm. So we spent the night in Paris and planned on catching the 8am train back to Lausanne on Sunday morning. We spent all day Saturday from opening to closing at Disneyland. It was so much fun, and almost exactly like the Disneyland in Anaheim, except for the rides are so much more intense. We rode Space Mountain about 10 times and Thunder Mountain was just as fun. It was raining all day! But it was still so much fun! It reminded me of how much fun I had the first time I went to Disneyland Paris with my family. One very distinct memory I have of the park was this giant Alice and Wonderland maze that had this giant Queen of Hearts that was around one of the corners and she would jump up and yell when you ran around teh corner. I remember it scaring the life out of me and my sister. So I was looking foward to going in it again this trip, but when we got there it was closed. I was so disappointed but I took a picture of the outside for my sister! On Sunday morning we woke up early to catch the metro to the train station and then the train back to Lausanne. BUT, while on the metro, I realized that I left my phone in the hotel room so Ceele and I had to jump off and catch the metro back to the hotel. Ceele waited in the station until I got back and we caught the next metro to meet our other 2 friends at the train station. Our train left at 7:58 and we were going to have about 2 minutes to spare to run through the station and make it on our train. But with our luck the metro broke down in the middle of a tunnel for about 3 minutes and we missed our train. We ran up to the platform as the train was pulling away. I could have literally reached out and touched it, but we were about 10 seconds too late. To make things worse, that was the only train going back to Lausanne on Sunday. So every way we tried to get back home didn't work out and it looked like we were going to have to spend the night in Paris, with mid-terms the next morning. After 9 hours of trying to get back home we finally found a whack route back to Lausanne on a train where we had to switch 4 times. 18 hours later, we got back to Lausanne at 1am and had to study for our mid-term the next day. Little did we know that going to Disneyland for one day could cause so much drama. But while stuck in Paris we tried to make the best of it and walked down to the Notre Dame and took some pictures before catching our train. Even though it wasn’t the best circumstances, I still love Paris!!

Geneva!

The Front Of the United Nations Headquarters
The Giant Chair in front of the UN

United Nations

Ceele and I in the main conference room in the UN

Geneva Cathedral

Yvonne, Michele, and I in Geneva

Simon and I in front of the Reformation wall

Ceele and I at a park in Geneva.

One weekend we took a field trip as a group to the United Nations headquarters in Geneva and the Reformation Museum. It was really interesting to see the Reformation Museum because we had just learned about it in Humanities. That is one thing that makes studying abroad amazing! You can learn about something one day and see it the next! It makes this educational experience that much more meaningful. The United Nations headquarters was also very interesting. It was huge and we had this really cool tour guide who spoke like 10 languages! We then went over to the Reformation Wall. Then back to Lausanne!

Corsica!

The Palais des Papes

Ceele, Simon and me in Avignon!

Jenny, Sarah, Me, Yvonne, Ceele, and Michele at the beach!

Taylor, Cindy, Ceele, Sarah, and I on the boat!

Ceele, Josh, and I!

Me and Ceele at the port we stopped at for lunch!

Part of the coves we went by!

I know it has been a very long time, but things have been so crazy and busy here! So in October we had our first Educational Field Trip. This semester it was to Corsica. Corsica is a fairly large island in the Mediterranean, south of France and west of Italy. We stayed in the capital of Corsica, Ajaccio. It was absolutely beautiful! It reminded me a lot of Malta and we had such a blast! So on Tuesday, we met in the lobby of our building at 4:30am!!! Two buses picked up our group and set out on our 7 hour journey to Avignon, France. We arrived in Avignon around 11am to tour the Palais des Papes (Palace of the Popes). During the 1300's the popes relocated to Avignon to escape the violent chaos in Rome. Many Popes lived in the palace up until 1377 when they went back to Rome. We took a walking tour through the palace and a little bit around the town. If the weather had been better it would have been enjoyable, but it was hard to focus on anything when it was about 45 degrees plus heavy winds. I swear I thought I was going to fly away! After touring the palace we went to a group lunch at a nice restaurant in town. After lunch we headed back to the buses for another 3 hour drive to Marseilles to catch the ferry to Corsica. We had been told that we were taking an overnight ferry to Corsica, and that we had cabins with beds to sleep in for the night. Of course, I start freaking out because I think we are going to end up on some sort of tiny boat that we are paddling ourselves, but it turned out to be a huge cruise ship! We boarded around 7pm and after getting settled in had dinner on the boat. I knew we had a big day the next day so Ceele and I decided to go to bed early so we were both asleep before we even left the port!

On Wednesday, we arrived at 7am on the ferry in Corsica and once again our buses took us to our hotels. The group was so large that we had been split up into 2 different hotels that were about 15 minutes apart. One was right on the water, and the other was directly in the center of town. Although the seaside one would have been nice, I was satisfied with ours being in the middle, it meant that everyone had to walk to us! Our hotel was Hotel Napoleon. So once upon a time, there was a man named Napoleon Bonaparte and he was born on the island of Corsica. Then he died and Corsica realized he was their only claim to fame so they dedicated everything to him. I mean everything. Hotels, restaurants, streets, squares, museums, beaches. Everything. In the afternoon, we toured the house of Napoleon Bonaparte. Shocker.

On Thursday, we boarded our buses once again for a 3 hour drive into the center of the island to a place called Corte. It is a university town of supposedly one of the most historic universities of the island. Again the weather was not the best with low temperatures and wind chill. We spent most of the day in museums and shops except for the train ride we took around the town. And when I say train I mean a tiny super embarrassing trolley that took us through the time. It was buried into the mountains and was actually a very quaint, pretty town. I just wish the museum was more interesting. It was so boring even our program staff was complaining! That’s when you know it’s bad. We then had a long bus ride back. It was too windy and we all ended up getting carsick! Ugh!

Friday was the best day of the trip. We boarded a tour boat at 8:30am and didn't come back to port until 5pm. We spent all day touring the coast of Corsica and sailing through the Mediterranean. It was absolutely gorgeous! The boat was pulling in between huge caverns and rocks that had never been touched by man. The water was so blue you could see for days to the bottom! We stopped at a small village on the way that only had 18 people living there. It was so tiny. There were just cows roaming around on the beach. We had packed sack lunches that morning to take with us and eat when we stopped at the village. There were also bees there who like my lunch as much as I did! A few of us found a small swimming cove that was just a little bit of a hike around the hillside, but it was well worth it. After getting back from the boat tour we were on our own for dinner so of course we resorted to a Panini stand that we found. Paninis never fail!

Saturday was check-out day. The plan was to check out at 11am and have free time for the rest of the day until we had to be at the airport at 6. So my roommate and I decided to sleep in that morning and go down for breakfast, then pack our bags, checkout and roam the city. A stress free morning right? Wrong. We got a call from our director at 8:50am who was frantically trying to get a hold of all the students to tell them that the hotel had just informed her that our checkout time was 9am and that breakfast was also closing at 9am instead of 10am. Yay. We had no time to shower, no time to get ready. It was basically, jump out of bed, run down to breakfast, run back up throw clothes in the bag without folding, sit on bag to zip it shut, checkout and then try to have a nice day on the town. Luckily it all worked out and we ended up having a really nice day. I went shopping around the town and then sat at the beach for a while. It turned out to be a very relaxing day! At 5pm we loaded the buses and headed for the airport. It was back to Lausanne! It was definitely a trip to remember!!