se perdre and paragliding

i got horribly horribly lost trying to find thomas's apartment friday evening. well, no, that's not entirely acurate---i knew exactly where i was, the problem was that i didn't know where i was going, since he told me his address was "chemin du stand 24." as it turns out, there isn't actually a number 24 on chemin du stand... and of course he just moved in, so his name isn't on the mailbox yet, and yeah, it was just a pretty bad situation. of course, once i did finally get there, fabius and jim were relentlessly mocking my continued refusal to buy a cellular telephone, but a guy's gotta stand by his principles, right? jim had finally found a set of cards for the game he was looking for (called "mille bornes"). it was an interesting game, but either we didn't quite understand the rules properly, or there was something slightly flawed in the gameplay, because we kept ending up in pseudo-stalemate positions. anyway, it was pretty fun.

oh, and on thursday i made samosas at markus's, which was awesome, because everybody loved them. :) yay tasty goodness.

saturday consisted of yoga in the morning and running in the evening. this time i ran all the way to epfl, which is about 8.6 kilometers as best as i can measure it on the map. what i thought was really interesting though, was that it only took me around 45 minutes, which is basically the same as it takes me using public transit. if i could find a convenient place on campus to shower and change, it almost seems like a good idea to try running in every morning (or even just some mornings). hrm. gonna have to look into that. oh, and i somehow convinced myself to sign up for the 1/4 marathon, which will be on the 23rd (next sunday). i'm not exactly sure why i did this, and i'm starting to freak out a little bit, but hopefully it won't turn out too bad.

now for the exciting story! on sunday, i went to meet thomas and his cousin in brig, and we went paragliding in fiesch! it was awesome. i had never been before, and i kinda thought it might be scary, but surprisingly, it wasn't---not even a little bit. i can't explain it, but i felt much more at ease there than i did in the airplane with jean-christophe. i'm even considering looking into what it would take to get a license to do it myself.

then in the afternoon we went on a "klandersteick" (the german term for "via feratta," as best as i can tell) around a resevoir in the area, which was also fun. and somewhere in there we ended up at the top of the eggishorn, which was a beautiful view.

we went back to his parents's house for dinner, and had a good time with them, even though my german is pitiful (and i know nothing of any kind of swiss german, not to mention oberwalliserdeutsch), and their english wasn't particularly good, but we were able to get by (and of course thomas was there to help out when it became necessary).

now i still just have to catch up with all the work i'm increasingly further behind in...