Climb Time

Yesterday afternoon I walked over to Natasha's house and we walked around the village to do a little exploring. There wasn't really much going on, but there were some really beautiful buildings and equally beautiful views. Needless to say, we took tons of pictures. After we came back to her house, her "mom" told us that there are two restaurants and one bakery in the village, but that they were closed on Saturday afternoons. On our journey we also went into the one small convenience store in town and discovered approximately six different wines that are all made in the village. A lot of the other products in the shop were local -- there was cheese from a village a few kilometers away and yogurt from another nearby village. Back at Natasha's house, her "mom" (Christine) put out three different fruit pies for us to eat and served us some mint tea, which was a very interesting beverage. After unnecessarily stuffing my face at Natasha's, I went back to my house. The rest of the family had been out and about all day, but everyone was returning for dinner. We ate dinner outside again, which was really nice, and had some kind of white plum dessert afterwards while watching the Wales-Germany football game. About halfway through the game I called home and then went to bed because I was totally exhausted and knew I was going to be busy Sunday.

On Sunday morning Christina, Olivier, Patrick, and I left the house around 11:00 for what turned out to be quite the adventure. (Josie had left Saturday morning for a Scouts camping trip and Ian stayed home to pick her up later in the day Sunday. Simon was off exploring different parts of Switzerland with a friend because he has some kind of generic rail pass... I think they went to Zurich and Luzern.) Olivier had chosen a mountainous destination for us to go to for the afternoon and do some climbing. The road to our destination, however, turned out to be much steeper and narrower than he thought it would, so Christina was a little stressed while driving up there. We were in the canton of Valais which has many valleys and required us to drive past Montreux to get there (don't worry Dad... Christina said we'll go back to Montreux one weekend). We finally made it to the lake Olivier wanted to get to, which was just above 2,000 meters. It took us about two hours to drive there, so the first thing we did when we arrived was have our picnic lunch on a huge boulder overlooking the lake. After lunch, Olivier, Patrick, and I went rock climbing while Christina rested and de-stressed on the boulder. We had about an hour until we had to leave in order to make it back to swim before dinner, so we got in two pretty easy climbs. I really have no idea how high we went, but it wasn't very high... maybe about 10 meters. The mountains and rock faces near the lake are (apparently) pretty famous and were quite popular in the 1980's and 90's (according to Olivier). They weren't too hard to climb, which was good considering it was my first climbing experience. Coming down was a bit unnerving on the first climb because the technique basically goes against your natural instincts, but the boys were really helpful and encouraging. By the end of the second climb it was time to go, so we drove two hours back to Morges and went to the pool for one last time because it closed today. The weather was actually quite nice, which was a nice change from Thursday's swim. After swimming, we came home and had dinner (really good lemon chicken and homemade tiramisu for dessert!!), and now I'm updating this and will soon be going to bed because I'm tired. Luckily, I have a late start tomorrow (10:45) because we're split into two groups on certain days for advising and I'm in the later session, but I think I may leave early and do some reading before class. Overall, this weekend was really good and Christina and Olivier said they'll take me climbing again another weekend, so I'm pretty excited about that! Au revoir!