This past week or so has been incredible. My mother came to visit me for a week on Wednesday the 13th, and the amount of things we packed into 7 short days should surely break some record. The first few hours were completely surreal, as if my two completely separate worlds had collided in a colossal mixture of joy and frantic hugs as I prepared to introduce my Mom to the life I've built here. As a self-centered teenager who is way too in touch with her feelings, I can say that seeing my mother for the first time in eighty days was certainly cause for some tearful celebration. To bring someone who is as much a part of my old world as is possible for one person to be into my new life where her (and the rest of my family's) prominent absence is a defining characteristic was one of the most joyful and confusing experiences I can say I've had. An interesting chapter to add to my adventure here, to be sure.
The first day I picked her up from the train station and took her home and gave her tea and held onto every word she spoke about home. On Thursday I showed her my high school. We went while classes were going on and, when no one was around, she was wont to take embarrassingly motherly pictures of me at my school. It's a good thing I am so patient. Friday I don't have school in the afternoons so we took a train and went to explore Bern, which was incredible. We wandered, drank tea, saw Einstein's house, and that night watched the coolest light show on the front of the Parliament Building. Saturday I showed her my haunts around the town and (tried to) demonstrate my newly acquired french skills. Sunday we put on a grand Thanksgiving feast for the whole family and some close friends, as a celebratory thank-you to all of the people here who have been so kind and wonderful to me. Instead of having customary turkey, however, we roasted four chickens for the meal. But the absence of the sleep-inducing poultry was not for lack of trying to acquire one. Two weeks prior, E had ordered a six kilogram turkey (huge in terms of the Swiss) from the local grocery store, had called twice to confirm it's existence, and arrived Friday before the feast with my mother expecting a bird the size of a small child, but instead found a very confused butcher. Our precious turkey was lost somewhere in Switzerland, but had entered the country and been delivered to some mystery location. I'm not sure what I enjoy more, the fact that they then gave us the chicken for free, or the image of a grocery store somewhere in Switzerland receiving an absolutely enormous turkey with no one to take it, and no explanation of it's existence. Those poor Swiss.
The last few days were spent frantically trying to make up for every hug I've missed out on, tie up loose ends on the homework and packing front, and face the imminent departure as gracefully as two people in our situations might. I won't pretend that putting my mom on a train and letting that train take her away from me was at all easy, and my day was a little rough after that, but the end of the week was lovely, and I had an exceptionally lovely weekend that made me love my life here even more. Simply being with friends, doing what we love, brought be back to realizing how charmed my life really is. Maybe its because the sun came out today and I made a new playlist on my ipod, but I can happily report that I am here, I am grateful, and I wouldn't change a thing about this trip. So far...
P.S.: Lyon this weekend. Will write with updates about that next adventure.
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