Lenzerheide

photos HERE

Less than a week after I got back from Juarez, Gera’s lab organized its annual ski trip (Jan 21). We didn’t go last year because we were in Sicily at the time so this year we had to go, before all the snow melts!
We went to an area called Lenzerheide, near the city of Chur. We knew we didn’t want to ski, since Gera has a bad knee and I am too afraid to do it alone, plus you need to take classes and it would be more time consuming and expensive. So we decided to try sledding instead! The weather was great, sunny and not too cold. We took a 90 minute train plus a 30 minute bus to get there. We payed for the ski lift and rented a couple of sleds. They were heavy, wooden, with no breaks, and no steering.
We got to the start of the run, and we, well, just started sliding down… I had no idea what I was doing, and I kinda just started gaining speed. We got to a point with a very sharp turn, and I couldn’t make it! But before I fell off into the woods, I jumped off and the sled kept going, until it was stopped by a tree. That was the only accident we had. After that, I was more careful and we got the hang of it: you have to steer and brake with your feet. The run was long, 3.8 km long! And when we reached the bottom, we got back on the lift and did it all over again. I think in total we did it like 8 times, but we also took a walk, and had lunch at the cafeteria. We thought about having some fondue to make it more swiss, but they didn’t have any…
It was a great day! We were so tired by the end of it, we could hardly walk. And the next day I felt like I was hit by a bus!

december trip recap

Sorry it took me a while to finally get this posted,…

the pictures are still HERE.



I will not bore you with many details of the 26 days I spent in Juarez, so I will split up my vacation into categories and talk about that in a more general way.

Family
I was super happy to see my parents, I don’t think I had ever spent so long without seeing them. My mom just started a new job as head nurse in a new fancy hospital in Juarez, and she is super busy getting her nursing degree AGAIN! (when she went to nursing school it was just a technical career and no degree was given, so she is studying it again! Way to go Mom!). She was a bit sick and hospitalized in November, so I was glad to see that her health is great and she is as pretty as ever! My dad is planning his first ever trip to Europe this july! I am super happy for him and most of his Christmas presents were trip-related (Ger and I got him an awesome day-trip bag). I hope I get a chance to travel a bit with him when he’s there.
We spent Christmas at Gera’s house. We ate turkey and had cheesecake for dessert. We were all together for the first time in years (by “all” I mean Gera’s parents, brothers, and nephews and my parents and siblings). Then we spent New Year’s at my parents’ house. We had tamales and carrot cake. Roberto’s plane left early on January 1st, so we had to celebrate midnight like an hour later, so they could be at home and in bed before midnight.

Friends
I had lots of time to visit with friends, and go out to parties. I even got to go to a Quinceañera!! Of course, the time spent is never enough and I was very sad to leave, specially because I left my very pregnant friend STILL pregnant (we were hoping she would pop while I was there). She had her baby almost 2 whole weeks later! Since I don’t have a car (nor a driver’s license, hehe) I spent a lot of time at home, and pretty much depended on friends to come pick me up (or on my sister to come home from work so we could go do something), so even though I did go out and had fun, I also spent a lot of time at home alone watching TV (hey! contrary to what you might think, the world does not revolve around me, and everybody has a life!)

Food
We ate a lot! We got fat, we knew that would happen and were ok with it. I fulfilled all the items on my list, except 1: yoghurt ice cream from a special place in Juarez (it was cold and I never really felt like ice cream…). Everything else was crossed off, sometimes even more than once! (Taco Bell, Arbys, dominos pizza, McDonalds, Sonic, Wendys, Hardees, Birthday cake, steak, shrimp/seafood, Barbacoa, tacos al pastor, tamales, sushi, carne asada, flaming hot cheetos, blue moon, root beer, vanilla coke). It was, as I said before, a gastronomical fest, and we enjoyed it all. Gera of course ate other things as well, like lamb and buche, which I really don’t like. Now that we’re back in Zurich, we’re eating better and going out for walks 3 times a week. I think we’re almost back to our initial weight, which was high to begin with, so we’ll keep going until we are thin, fit and fabulous!

Shopping
I’ve said before that stuff here is expensive… so when I went shopping in Dallas (and El Paso) I was going crazy with the super low prices!! And I wanted to buy everything! Of course I limited myself to things I needed, like clothes. Oh, and a luggage set, and a small shopping bag with wheels. And shoes. And Christmas presents. And hair products. I was concerned that my bags would be too heavy, so I really did not go overboard. Really.
The bags were not too heavy, and I even got to bring back a couple of mini blocks of Valveeta cheese (there’s no yellow cheese here! Its killing me), a bottle of Frank’s Red Hot Sauce (for wings), and a few packets of cornbread mix (thanks Adri!).