Another good week here, nothing too new to report except that Valerie has now arrived! For those reading who don't know Val, we've been friends for many, many years since we were little Girl Scouts. She was the one who kind of sparked the idea for me to be an Au Pair in the first place, since she spent 6 months as an Au Pair in Australia last year. As soon as she heard that I was going off to France, she decided she might want to do it again...one thing led to another, and now she is an Au pair about 45 minutes away from me!
I went over to see her and meet her host family on Saturday. She is living in another small countryside town called Lovagny with beautiful views a bit closer to Annecy. Her host parents are lovely as well, and they invited us to go "tree climbing" with them and some of their colleagues on Saturday afternoon. Translation: a high ropes course and zip-lines! It was super fun, mostly similar to courses I have done before in other various places except for one thing. They gave us a safety briefing after they hooked us into our equipment and showed us how to use everything...and then they left us alone to go off and swing from these zip-lines through the trees alone! You know how at every type of these places in the states you have people at each point guiding you throughout the course, hooking you in and telling you when to go, where to step, etc? Not here. They just trust that after they show you how everything works, you'll be able to do it yourself! You're wearing a harness, and they show you how to attach yourself, and then you're off! So you really can go at your own pace, have fun with it, go faster or slower depending on if there are other people around you or not. We went through 4 courses, each one becoming increasingly difficult, and a zip-line that got increasingly longer at the end of each course. Such a blast. And by the 3rd and 4th course, it really was challenging! And I did take a pretty decent fall at one point and was pretty happy to have that harness. Two lovely bruises on the insides of each of my arms. And lots of bruises and scrapes all over our legs from the brunt of the whole thing. Worth it though. It was right on Lake Annecy, so of course we had awesome views from up in these trees and it was a perfect day, like 70 degrees.
That night, we went and had dinner in downtown Annecy, and then found an Irish Pub to hang out at! Even more exciting than the Belgian beer was the amount of English speakers we befriended! Annecy ends up having a good amount of locals and tourists, but we met a lot of people, mostly from England, who work on ski resorts nearby, teach english, pick grapes on local farms...all sorts of people! We were the only Americans, which I think people also got a kick out of. Sunday we went back into Annecy to cafe hop for awhile. Trying to enjoy as much of the nice weather as we can because it's going to get cold pretty soon.
And my last quick note - Oktoberfest begins in Munich, Germany this Saturday, and we are thinking about going for the night. So, if anyone reading has ever been and has any tips, please let me know! The main issue for us right now is figuring out the best way to get there...it's about 5 hours away. Flights are too expensive, and even trains are a bit pricey. Neither of us are too keen on the idea of driving, but we'll see how we feel by the end of the week. There's a pretty legit rideshare program over here, so we're hoping that might come through and we could find someone to drive us! Fingers crossed. When again are we going to live 5 hours from Munich during Oktoberfest?!
Miss everyone!
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