the rest of the week

The rest of the week was quite predictable - I tried to spend
a lot of time with my little baby siblings (both of them quite a lot taller then me BUT obviously much less mature!). My sister had this very very cool thing in her flat, of which im not quite sure what it should be good for, but anyway, its a standing skateboard...it sound harmless, but guess who was still able to fall down and hurt herself, dispite there not even being any wheels involved.

My little brother has been promomted in the Army, which made me rather unhappy but I must admited that Ive grown so much on an intellectual level, I didnt mention it to him. But coz I know he doesnt read this blog I can say how I really feel about that: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

Back to the fun things: We did some cooking in my sisters flat (Shes the headless in yellow). The guy in the background is Tobias, her male flatmate.

He took this next amazing picture: My sister kept quite a bit of my old stuff at her place, holding on to it until im coming back. As this doesnt seem to be the case in the very close future we went trough some of the boxes to see what we could dispose of. We found some clothes that were actually quite expensive - but just so much to big! We decided to take a picture looking like our grandparents (cant quite understand what the black hat on my sisters head had to do with it but she insisted...cant understand the youth!). Anyway, we asked lovely Tobias to take a very serious picture. There we were, standing while he was trying to find a good angle when he decided to bow down for a better picture - and farted really really loudly! We didnt manage to keep the seriouseness up.

One of the coolest people ever whom I obviously had to see was Clicko (hes name is Chrigu - I now tend to forget that - I am adapting to the english incapabillity to pronounce his name properly. He decided that we look like Pamela Anderson and David Hasslehoff in Baywatch - I think hes got a problem with his sight. Then we tried to be "Titanic", which didnt quite work either, but I like the picture anyway, so there.

Before I met Clicko, I had a friend called Mariette. Now Mariette was single and not very happy about that. We lost touch until one day, when I was in school with Clicko, I got a text from her, saying that she moved to a nearby town and if I would go for lunch with her. I went and we had a great time - except the fact that she still seemed quite unhappy about her singleness. The next day in school I told Clicko about that and he went: How old is she? I told him (But you dont expect me to write that in public, do you?) and he mentioned that he had a friend with the same "problem", a couple of years older than her. And there a plan was born:

I asked her out for coffe while he went shopping with Alex (his friend). Half way trough theyr shopping Clicko

all of sudden really wanted a cup of coffee...in the same place as Mariette and me were having our drink... They met and are getting married in June. Clicko and me then decided that we should open an agency for lonely hearts. Our second project was our mathsteacher with a friend from our choir - which failed because he was in a rather serious relationship. We decided to abandon the agency idea, but I think we werent too bad with a successrate of 50%. (The picture is Mariette with Alex in the Coffee shop where they first met).

There are so many other things I would like to tell you about, but I came to the conclusion that they are just not interesting to anyone but me - for example Astrid being rather pregnant, which is amazing and makes me really happy (and feeling a bit prgenant too).

Or Lilian, who gave birt to her second daughte, Anna Julia, just days before I went to see her. (Anna is the loud one - well done girl, you gonna make it in life! Learn from auntie Anna!)

While I was home we had snow! I mean real 20 cm snow! Amazing - we never have snow in March! It must have known how uch i missed my snowcapped mountains! Thank you! (Although my feet froze a bit...who cares)

I catched up with some of my dearest friends, like Jasmin (we took that in a restaurant, we got some weird looks from people...but we are used to famousness)

Or Martina, with whom I didnt get on for ages! I hated her coming to my aunties house, where we were living at the time, but it was unavoidable since she was my cousins girlfriend. But one day we decided to make our peaces for some reason (I think we both hated the same girl or something important like that). I cant imagine on how much fun and crazyness I would have missed out if I had held on to not liking her!

Luckily I had the chance to catch up with Steffu. When we left Brazil to live in Switzerland, most people avoided us...some people actually asked us if, after 4 years abroad, we still spoke the language, some probably just didnt know what to say, some were horrified about some stories they hear about us (yes, we are BAAAAADDDD!!!) and some just didnt care, which is fine. But Steffu cared. He walked up to me and said: Hi, Im Steffu, you must be Anna. If you had a house, what kind of furniture would you put into it? Bright or dark colours? He was so normal it was scary. And he remained scary, which is my main reason to love him so much.

Some of you might remember that the last time I went home, I went to attend a friends wedding. Now this friend was David. We used to lead our youthfellowship together and I think nobody will ever manage to have weirder meetings than we had. So now hes married, which is certainly a good thing excpet that now he says things like: I gotta go home now, my wife is waiting and she doesnt like me to be late...coming from the guy who used to proclaim: My wife has got to look good and cook good and mainly be quite and not interfere with my life... well well, David, seems that loves got to you...... shalala, shalala!

Being the sado I am, I didnt manage to stay away from the Army for such a long time. I went to see my friend Corinne in training college.

What made me a bit sad is to see how few people there are in our college: on the left you can see what is ment to be 3(!!!) sessions! 3 people who started in 06, 1 for 07 and 1 for 2008....

And then it was time to wave goodbye at the trainstation... you might not believe it, but I did manage not to cry until my siblings were out of sight - I deserve medal!

And now im completely back - whom of you english may I torment first???!!!

sunday, 2.3.

After a very very short night I went to the meeting in my homecorps in Thun. It was amazing, some of the reactions where just great...Like the Welcome Lady who didnt recognise me at firts, but as soon as she realised whose hand she was shaking she almost jumped. I must admit that I felt like the celebrity of the year, everbody wanting to talk to me and hug me and tell me how much they love me (even those who obviously dont love me, it was the kind of thing that didnt really matter) It didnt help that mrs. Major announced me as a "special guest". I liked it. Could I please have that kind of reception every sunday in Southend citadel? With clapping and the full program of aaawwwwing and oooohhhhing about how good I look? Thank you, much appreciated :-)

Some people just completely stood out for me, not because I like them more than others, but because they have changed so much since I last saw them. For example Chris. Chris used to belong to the Corps of Bern (Our capital, about half an hour from where my corps is). We she used to sing in the same choir as me (Shelomith) and we always got on really well, dispit not spending much time with each other. Now since I left Switzerland she felt that her way would be to become an officer. Now I have to say Ive never ever in my whole live seen a woman who makes the Army uniform look so absolutely sexy like she does. It helps that in Switzerland we dont have as strict rules as in england, so she gets away with her black boots.

(The lady on the right side with the white stripy blouse is my aunt, nice to know :-))

In my corps, there is probably more "older youth" than in Southend...I mean the people my age. The other thing is that people leave home much earlier, most of them move in with friends. Therefor sunday dinners dont have the same family-air about them than here. What we do is we hang around the coffee machine in one of the halls until somebody says something along the line of: Do you wanna come to our place for dinner? How many? Who brings what? or: I have such and such at home, what do you think? Now on that sunday it happened to be my sisters place we all went to. Its really realxed, you come and go whenever and however you like, maybe your asked for a little financial contribution or they ask someone to go and buy dessert.

The lovely colorful pic on the wall was a community thing they had in my sisters flat...everyone who went there had to draw something...my sisteris the one sitting right underneath the picture. She shares the flat with 2 girls and a guy - (un)lucky Tobias!

In the afternoon the sun came out and we had lovely weather, so we decided against the movie idea we had earlier on and went to a school playground (our schools dont have fences and the playgrounds are accesible to the public) to get rid of some energy. The young people go trough phases opf which sports they like. It used to be volley ball, then football...at the moment it seems they are all more into basketball - im well good at that!

Luki, the guy above, is coming to see me in April... finally someone I dont have to look up to, as we are the same height :-) And yes, my team lost! yes, it was my fault, coz im a sportish desaster - but - I did buy a hacky, and im gonna convert southend into the capital of the young people hacky players! (I dont know the english word for hacky, but its something i can play even wearing heels :-))

Some things made me really happy - like seeing Daenu. Before I left Switzerland over a year ago I had a minor argument with him. It didnt seem to be minor at the time, but looking back, it was really silly (mainly of him, he could just have accepted that i was absolutely right as usual :-)). He then sent me a message saying: I hope this stupid argument doesnt affect our relationship. Ever since we are having a very profound relationship that even survived the one he had with his girlfriend and which is mainly based on going out for bowling and kebab. The only thing that chanegd between us is that he grew a tiny little bit obver the last year and he is now officially taller then me. How sad.

Someone else who has changed a lot over the last few month is Matt. When I left he was a little teenager, someone I always thought of never growing older than 15. The day I left and said goodbye to everybody he just gave me a bored look and kind of half lifted his hand to wave bye. When I saw him there that sunday i just had 2 thoughts: Hes tall and Should I botter going there to say Hi? He took that difficult decision off me coz he came running as soon as he spotted me. That was really really nice! Hes now a proper grown up!

Now someone who hasnt changed at all (well, not in an obvious way anyway) Is Rafi. Hes number 3 of the majors 5 sons and one of the most peacful and easyest to please people you could imagine! I once told him that he was one of my favourite people and he blushed! How cute! As opposed to Paul who said: Am I really and then walked away to talk to Josh. Anyway, what I wanted to illustrate with this little story is that Rafi is rather shy. As you can see on Facebook (Those who can) in most of the picters its me huging someone. Its like the normal thing to do. Camera=Hugs. Not with Rafi. When I said: Would you mind if my sister took a picture of me and you he said: ja, but didnt move an inch closer! How funny! Well, maybe its not as funny for you as it is for me ;-)

In the evening we decided to go and watch the movie we had planned for the afternoon. So we went to our youthfellowship room and watched drummline.

One of the main things you need to surcice in the Corps of Thun is the abillity to stay on top in pillowfights...this is mainly because pillows is what we most have in our room. As you can see, I havent lost my skills :-) And now for all of you who think just because im a pictionaryal desater (which I am) i cant be called artistic, please look at the pictures above and tell me you wouldnt pay loads for them! I think they are amazing! And i hate doing it but I think I have to take the biggest part of the credits! Those of you who have seen princess diary may remember the scene where her mum throws arrows on a white wall on which she pinned colorfilled baloons. Now, when I was a youthleader we were given a budget to do something with our room. One of the things we did was painting the room pink (its not really pink, but I am trying to shok you, its just a very tiny bit of a pinkish shade. We thought that would be the best thing coz we couldnt agree on a colour so we took the one nobody wanted...that way at least nobody was happy with our decision). Then we told people to bring poster, but obviously they would never have agreed on anything we put up, there would always be someone who would want something different. So there I went, bought a bag of baloons, bins, dart arrows and colours...we had so much fun, it really worked...well...till the rain came...

Saturday, 1.3.

As I made you all aware by unceasingly talking about it, I have been to Switzerland for a week. You may ask why I love Switzerland that much... here's the answer:

It is just the absolutely most beautiful country in the whole world...And im really ashamed of never appreciateing it much while living there. I think my swiss friends thought I was kind of nuts because i couldnt stop aaawwwing and oooohhhhhing at the view of the mountains, the river, the lake...even the streets amazed me (and they arent that different to the british ones, except the people all driving on the right and proper side of the road)

I had a great time, I catched up with tons of people... For example with Simu and Martina (whom I had to mention as they now discovered this blog, hallo simu, nachtraeglech no aus guete zum geburi!!!!). They had been away from Thun for a while, so sunday in our corps consisted mainly in welcoming and being welcomed (does this word exist? If I made it up I wanna have all the copyrights, coz its great!)

But from the beginning: I left the UK on Saturday the first after helping in the xstream in the morning and driving several of the other helpers slightly mad with my inner unstillness.... I just managed to calm down when Andy threatened not to take me to the airport if I didnt shut up immediately...Im not sure about the psyco-social effect this comment might have on my future!

But he did drive me to the airport, with Tracy, who took a big box of shortbread all the way there to give it to me, just to find out that I just didnt have any space at all...she then took it back home... hope she didnt eat it, I dont mind getting it a week late (Trac, this is a hint!)Anyway, they were great and we ate pizza after checking in (theres loads of food involved in going on holiday, as my scales are telling me...:-( ) and then I left...yippiiee!

Arriving in Switzerland, I had my very own welcoming team....

Dont judge them by theyr appearance, theyre luvely people :-) I thought it was great of Jasmin and Marco to come and pick me up, I would have hated to take the train alone at this time of night... Thank you guys...

On my way home I saw this board advertising cheese and I couldnt resist... I had to kiss the guy... i know its quite sad, we shared this special moment and he didnt even ask my name... MEN!

Arriving in Thun I went straight to my sisters house... We missed a train in Basel and therefore only arrived at 0.30.

My Sister and my Brother were half asleep on the couch, but it was nice of them to wait for me. Im not convinced my brother was happy at all to see me: