My Last Few Weeks in the CH

The week after getting back from London was mostly spent working, as I only had a couple weeks left to finish my Independent Study Project. Friday I went with Ria, Erin, and Orlando, to a Christmas market in Montreux that was absolutely amazing. We chose to go on a most beautiful day, with the sun shining and it being totally clear across the lake, so we could see all the magnificent mountains. I’ve already put some pictures up, but they had some garden sculptures from Ice Age, a Village du Bucheron (Lumberjack’s Village), and tons of little chalet booths selling stuff. We saw tea, jewelry, toys, and more. Some of the more interesting things were tea balls that opened up into flowers after steeping in water, a booth of just all kinds of honey, and of course I can’t forget the abundance of mulled wine that was available. One of my new loves from being in Switzerland is wine, mulled included. Anyway, we had fondue for lunch, took beautiful pictures by the lake, and even found a statue of Freddie Mercury, who apparently had a recording studio in Montreux.

The weekend was also rather Filipino-themed, as I made adobo for my host mom and our neighbors that turned out delicious despite the fact that they don’t have regular white vinegar here, and I ended up using the next best thing which was vinaigre aux épices (spiced vinegar). I did more work Saturday then went to a Filipino Christmas party I had heard about from the person I’m working with at the Mission. A bunch of people from the program came with me, and we got to see some pretty traditional karaoke-type performances (traditional at family gatherings, at least), children’s performances (my mom told me Filipinos like to showcase their kids), and some traditional Filipino lantern-dancing too. One of the coolest performances was of a group of hand mimers, which is basically hard to explain but you must watch the video I found of an example:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-WWwiUfD7M
Unfortunately the food wasn’t terribly amazing, but I did get to have pancit and some Filipino desserts. Later in the week my host mom proved to be amazingly resourceful, using the rest of my adobo sabow (sauce) to flavor pasta, cook fresh mushrooms in, and cook with lamb. She insisted that there was no reason to waste it. I was pretty amazed at how many other delicious uses you can put adobo sauce to.

This week we started our Independent Study Project presentations, so I’ve been hearing about the research everyone else has been doing while trying to finish my own paper. I had raclette tonight with my host mom and our neighbor, and I am sure going to miss Swiss raclette and fondue. My host mom likes having raclette (which is melted cheese poured over boiled potatoes) with fruit, which I thought was different but tried it and I guess it wasn’t bad, just kinda weird. Anyway, the week is whizzing by and going by slowly because we’re actually doing stuff, and I’m awaiting my parents’ arrival on Sunday!! Christmas is in just 20 days, yayyyyy!