Street Parade, Säntis, and Lots of Bruising

So it's been almost two weeks since I posted last....  Very sorry to all those who religiously follow my posts (if there are any of you).  This does, however, mean that I have a ton of things to write about, so I'm probably going to spread it through a couple of posts which I'll post within quick succession of each other.

First off: the Zurich Street Parade.  It was pretty awesome!  I got to hang out with my Rotary friends and have a great time hanging out and listening to music throughout Zurich, which was really nice.  The street parade was less of a "parade" and more like a city wide party.  Down one of the main roads they had vehicles with huge long trailers equipped with speakers, decorations, and a load of people as well as a DJ.   These trucks would drive slowly down the street, stopping occasionally.  They were sort of like smaller, mobile stages.  Throughout Zurich, along the lake, there 6 full sized stages.  There were all sorts of DJ's playing at each one of them, but the more notable ones included Skrillex, Klingande, and my personal favorite EDM (Electronic Dance Music) artist, Robin Schulz.  I have a bunch of pictures from the event, but in order to keep this post from getting super cluttered, I'm going to put all the pictures in a separate post that you can find underneath this one.

Our street parade group.

The moving "stages".

Second: climbing Säntis.  On Sunday I went with my host father and my host sister, Elena, to the mountain Säntis.  Säntis is the mountain that I saw when I hiked into the valley on the first Thursday that I was here.  It was very sunny out, and it was a great day to climb a mountain.  About halfway up the mountain, on the first ridge, there is a small restaurant where we stopped for a snack and something to drink.  On top of Säntis there is a huge telecommunications tower, along with a building with viewing decks and a gift shop.  After climbing all the way to the top of Säntis, we climbed back down the other side of it, into the valley that we can visited my first week.

We could see the Swiss Alps in the distance from the top.

The view halfway to the top.

A restaurant that we stopped at halfway to the top

The Säntis telecommunications tower.

The view from the top.

Finally, what I think is probably one of the most interesting things that've happened over my first month here: getting my arm stuck in an elevator door.  So, our classroom is on a higher floor of this large building that houses the classes as well as a shopping center and a restaurant.  My class was getting on the elevator, and the door started to close, but there was still plenty of room on the elevator.  Now, there are sensors throughout the elevator doors that sense when there is something in between them, and when they are triggered, the doors will open.  Because of this, we wave our hands through the doors all the time in order to keep them open so that people can get on.  However, when I stuck my arm through, the sensors must not have been triggered, because the doors closed on my arm.

My first thought was something like "oh, well this is interesting, but I'm sure the doors will open because there is an obstruction in between them".  This didn't happen, and the doors continued to get tighter on my arm.  My classmates in the elevator had started to freak out, understandable, because on their end they just see most of my arm wedged between the door.  My teacher, who was behind me, realized what happened, and really started to worry.  She started trying to pull the door open after it became apparent that the doors were not going to open themselves.  The other classmates behind me started to realize what was going on, and in all the commotion the other class came out of their classroom to see what was happening.  About 15-20 seconds had past at this point, and the entire time the door was squeezing tighter on my arm.  I don't remember a whole lot from this point, other than repeatedly saying "oh crap.... oh crap.... oh crap...." and my friend inside of the elevator saying "I'm spamming the open button, but it's not doing anything, I swear!".  To shorten the next 20-30 seconds, the door got tighter, my classmates were able to pull the door open enough for me to pull my arm out to my wrist, then a few seconds later get my entire arm out.

So, my teacher took me to the building reception, where I got a lecture in german which I think was about how I shouldn't wave my hand through elevator doors (which is probably true...).  They gave me a wrap for my arm which would act like an ice pack and keep it cold, which I was able to apply to myself thanks to watching casts being applied in Guatemala (Dan Baldini, if you read this, thank you very much).  Nothing was permanently damaged or broken, just a load of bruising which the above picture does not do justice showing.  What have I learned from this?  That, while it may not be very comfortable, experiences like these are almost worth it because of the value that provide as a story.

That basically wraps up last week for interesting things, other than Friday, where almost the entire group from the language camp went out to explore Zurich for our last day of the German course.  There should be another post following this one with stories from this past week in my Swiss school.

Bis Bald,

-Kiffy