almost 1 year...

yes, it will be almost 1 year since i last blogged.

lots of things have happened (as they usually do).

this blog is not dead, lets say its in a coma. or hibernating.

i think i have more time now. just ask my farmville neighbors.

i will try to retake the blog, maybe someone is still following...

'til later

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!).

my vacation is over

(photo: belgian wafles, before going to the airport in El Paso)

I've added a lot more photos to the flickr album


My vacation is over…
I write this waiting for my flight back at the Dallas airport. I arrived just a “bit” early…. 3 hours early … I could not be dropped off later due to schedule issues, but early is better than late, and it gave me a chance to write the blog, so yay for that!.
I had a super great time at home, and I was really sad to leave, but it was time to say good bye and be reunited with Gera, who has been back in zurich for a week.
A big part of our vacations is food. You will be able to see by the pictures on flickr that besides the mandatory family/friends catch-up our trip also consisted of a sampling of all kinds of culinary delights, from junk food like flamin’ hot cheetos, going trough fast-food, traditional Mexican, and mom home-made… and it was all delicious! The bad news is that all that deliciousness really shows! I guess we really need to start the year on a diet (like every year).

As I mentioned before, Dallas was a blur of a shopping spree and an fast-food frenzy. After that, I traveled to Louisiana (dec. 12-17), where I visited friends from grad school. We were honored to be asked to be godparents to their daughter, and that made the trip even more special. In Louisiana I had an amazing time just visiting my friends and spending time with them and their kids. They are a wonderful family and I am lucky to count them as friends. All this time in Zutrich I had really missed hanging out with friends just having dinner and talking. Our Ruston visit really brought back memories of Bloomington weekends. The baptism ceremony was beautiful and everything happened without a glitch (no crying baby!). Gera had arrived by car on Friday night, the baptism was on Sunday and we were on our way back to Dallas by car on Monday december 17th. I was on a plane to El Paso the very next day! (Gera would wait until our family in dallas traveled by car to el Paso right before Christmas to catch a ride with them).

I arrived to El Paso late on Tuesday Dec 18th, and Abril, Baba (my sister), and Paco (my brother) were there to greet me. It was an emotional reunion even though I had seen them (my sisters) a few months before when they visited Zurich in May. They had set out to cross the border to El Paso before dinner (because it usually takes more than 1 hour to cross) so by the time I arrived they were starving and so we headed to Whataburguer (a burguer chain popular in texas). Then we finally headed to Mexican soil! It took us a while to get there because we had to stop at the bridge and find out if I had to return my I94 or not (permit that goes along with my visa), but I was finally in mexico like at 2am! (I had been away for14 months and 14 days).

I am a bit sad to report that my reunion with Huevo was not as I expected. He was a bit hesitant to greet me at first and it took him a couple of seconds to recognize me, but once that little light bulb in his head went on, he was happy and jumping and all over me. He is very well taken care of and is very good friends with one of the Chihuahua dogs my parents have (they had 3 at that moment); they sleep together and keep each other company. While I was there I made them all new beds (sewn by hand!) and gave huevo a good bath (the weather was so nice I did it outside). Guilt was heavy in my heart, so I bought him lots of rawhide bones, and big cow knuckles no chew on. The morning I left I said goodbye to Huevo… I hope his little head understands that I will be back for him someday.

Gotta board my plane now, more later!

Anniversary!

Today it’s the anniversary of my arrival in Switzerland. Its incredible already a year has passed… so fast. The past year has been filled with lots of trips and adventures, german classes and “lost in translation” moments, new friends and home sickness. Here’s a recap.

Trips.
We have traveled a lot over this past year. We figured since we’re here, we should take advantage of having a home base right in the heart of Europe.
In the last year we’ve visited 12 cities in 4 countries There’s still plenty we want to see, if only we had more money… For now, we have out trip to Munich for the Oktoberfest this Sunday, and the big trip to the US and Mexico in December.

Language.
We started taking German classes in October of last year, and made it through 2 courses (that lasted about 4 months each) It was hard and time consuming, but fun and a great thing to do together. We learned enough to understand bits and pcs of tv shows, and words here and there on posters and advertisements. We stopped attending classes last july, and planned to take other (less expensive) classes later. We still haven’t signed up for anything… I don’t know if we will, since we’re a bit discouraged by the fact that even learning German, we still wouldn’t speak the “local” language, which is a swiss-german dialect… a bit frustrating. We get by with what we know, and with English (even though a lot of people are reluctant to speak English to you unless you ask them in German if they do… weird).

Green, green, green.
This whole recycling thing is hard core! I’ve mentioned this before, but I think its worth including on the anniversary recap.
So this is how the trash-recycling system works:
-Trash is picked up once a week and you have to buy special bags from the city or it won’t get picked up. (like $1.50 US per 30 lt bag). This gives you an incentive to recycle all you can so you only put actual trash in the bags.
-Paper gets picked up twice a month, and you have to bundle it up really nicely and put it on the curve the morning of pick up. (paper sheets, paper packing, phone books…)
-Cardboard gets picked up once month (egg cartons, cereal boxes, toilet paper tubes…)
-Clothes and shoes are picked up about once every 3 months. You get a special bag in the mail and you leave it out the day of pick up (or drop it off anytime at designated locations)
-Big items (like furniture, mattresses, garden things) are picked up about once every 2 months. You bring them to your neighborhood collection point.
-Glass bottles and aluminum you bring to the nearest collection center (separate glass by color)
-PET bottles are collected at the grocery store.
-garden waste is picked up once a month on a special green dumpster.
-Batteries and electronics you bring back to the store.
-hazardous waste (paint, paint thinners, chemicals) is picked up about twice a year at a neighborhood collection point.

Always on time
The public transport system is unbelievable reliable. Buses and trams arrive and depart on time (to the minute) and you can always count on it. When accidents happen and lines need to be diverted, you can always hear announcements on the speakers on every tram, bus and stop so you plan your route accordingly. I just renewed my one-year pass for about 650 CHF (around $550 US). I am sure this is one of the things I will miss the most when we leave Switzerland.

Prices
Yes, everything is Switzerland is expensive. Food, clothes, everything. Eating out is really not even an option (for us), and going out to bars is an activity that does not happen often. And everybody notices, not just us. But that is how it is, and people just deal with it. So do we.

Friends
We met some people in our German class, and hung out with them a few times. But ever since we stopped going to classes, we haven’t kept in touch. I met a couple of Mexican girls online (through a zuri-mex forum) and we hit it off right away. We are close friends now and get together once a week for lunch and conversation. There’s 4 of us now, and we have a good time talking about mexico and about living so far from home. We have special (evil) fun talking about the swiss, hehehe. Gera’s lab is not nearly as “active” as its predecessor, so contact with them is pretty much a work thing for Gera.

What have we been up to lately?

Gera went to Stokholm for a week (conference). This time I did not get to go, but according to him, it wasn’t so great (maybe he’s just saying…). He had a good time and came home with some nice pictures.

Remember I said I loooved youtube? Well, we have been watching an asian version of youtube, called todou.com. They have even MORE shows, and we’ve been watching them like crazy! Currently we’re all caught up with “The Office” (love Dwight!) and "How I Met your Mother” (love Barney!). There’s another site for shows called fanpop.com.

We have been thinking about going to Juarez for Christmas. When we left we said we would not go back until it was time to go back for good. We said that we’d rather spend the money traveling around Europe. Why go back to a place you already know when there’s still so much to discover, and everything is so close? Family and friends. We miss them like crazy and spending another Christmas alone is not painting a pretty picture. So I’ve been looking around for flights (YAY!). Unfortunately we would only be going to Juarez, so seeing a lot of you would not be possible, but still: YAY!

It took me forever to post the rest of the travel blog. That always seems to happen, hehe. I had some of it typed up, and I guess some is better than none, so I’ve posted that below.

We are finally done with our German course! We’ve officially completed sections A1 and A2, the entire program is A1, A2, B1, B2, C1. C2, so we’ve done 1/3 of it, not bad!. I will start looking into other courses for the fall, we really need a break for now.

I’ve just posted another recipe on my recipe bolg: jazibesrecipes.blogspot.com, go check it out!

I’ve been busy putting together an online portfolio and and website for my freelance business. The problem with the portfolio was that I did not have all the files I needed, and I had to make do with what I had on my hard drive (everything else is on storage in Juarez). Oh well. Hopefully that will bring me some work and keep me busy… I miss design! (so if you or someone you know need a website, let me know!)

We went to the Harry Potter movie premiere! I had mentioned before that going to the movies was really expensive, but my friend Flor has a cinecard and she gets a great discount, so she bought the tickets and we all went together. The movie was disappointing! I think it is the worse so far… the action scenes were great, its just that the plot was very shaky, uncertain, and very “choppy”. Maybe its because I’ve read the books, but I think it could have been much better. I am waiting for the new book: “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows”, it comes out this weekend.

Abril and Roberto are getting settled in their new apartment in Minneapolis. Roberto has started going to the hospital and Abril has someone to keep her company at home: our brother Paco is visiting for the summer. You can read about her (and her knitting habits) in her blog: knitting-en-spanish.blogspot.com

I think that is all for now… I will post new pictures soon.