Orchids for me!

Okay I lied. I didn't post on Saturday like I had promised. Mainly it was because we (and be we i mean Jorge) hadn't uploaded the pictures from Barcelona and I was procrastinating. Well the pictures are finally uploaded now but now I have to edit them which I should do by the end of the day (hopefully!).

I just wanted to write about a funny thing that happened before I forget it....

So the husband and I had come to an agreement before that the person that is home first would be the one making the dinner

(This would mainly apply to when we are both working or when I go back to school and am super busy)

So two Thursdays ago I had an appointment with Apple because my computer was acting up a bit and it ended up taking a couple of hours to get things uploaded and fixed. Jorge however got home a bit earlier than usual (around 6:00) and beat me home.

So according to our agreement he is supposed to make dinner, so he gives me a call to see how long I was going to take to get home and I tell him I am almost on my way and he asks me what I wanted him to make for dinner. I just tell him to surprise me and 10-15 minutes later I am out of Apple and waiting for the tram/bus to get home. By this point I am hungry because its about 7:30ish and I am thinking that I will have dinner waiting when I get home.

So I get a call from Jorge saying that he can't think of anything to make. I am two stops away from home and hungry and this does irritate me a bit because then I start thinking that if he can't handle dinner this once how is he supposed to do it on a daily basis when we go back to California. I am also half hoping that he was just kidding and he had in fact made dinner and just wanted to make me mad.

Well I walk into the apartment and no he was not kidding about not having made dinner. Well I wanted to be mad at him because it was his one turn cook mainly since we have been in Geneva but then he shows the flowers/plant he bought me while at the grocery store.

His explanation goes something like this:

Jorge: Well I didn't know what we had in the fridge (sidenote:and of course he didn't think about looking in the fridge either)... so I went to the store to buy stuff to make dinner but I was lacking imagination so I couldn' t think of what to make. So, instead I bought you these flowers so you wouldn't get mad at me.

And how am I supposed to get mad at that? So I let it slide this time and whipped up a quick dinner for the both of us but. He is a sneaky one.

I shall try to post the picture of the flowers today when I edit the ones from Barcelona

I am being lazy

It is raining cats and dogs outside. I don't think I will ever understand the swiss weather. One day it is hot like heck and the next day there is thunder and lightning and it's raining like crazy. Looks like it is going to be a very wet day today.

Anyhow I have been very lazy and haven't blogged anything in a while. As of right now my laziness hasn't gone away so I dont know if I will make a long blog (probably not) or if I will make one tomorrow. In this time, we did go to Barcelona which was tons of fun (post tomorrow I promise) and am currently attempting to make plans to go to Italy to see Edi because he is there right now.

Oh and we decided not to go with the apartment in Geneva, it was too expensive. But that still leaves us with no permanent apartment. I spent all day looking online if there are any potential apartments for us but no luck as of yet. Okay well I will continue either later today or tomorrow.

Swiss side or French side?

So for everyone back home, you probably dont know this but it is pretty much impossible to find housing in Geneva. There is like a 2% vacancy and there is tons of people coming in and out all the time so people are trying like crazy to find somewhere to stay, and Jorge and me are not the exception. When we first go here we were living in the French side in St. Genis de Pouilly, which we completely hated only because their transportation system kind of sucked. There was only 1 bus an hour, so if you missed it then you are pretty much screwed until the next one comes and hour later. And let me tell you Jorge and me (mainly my fault) nearly missed it plenty of times and had to run pretty much the whole way from the house we were staying in to the bus stop.

Here Jorge is waiting at the bus stop at posing for me in front on Champion

That and the fact that we were living in house were other CERN people were staying for random amounts of time made us decide to find a place as quick as we could so that we could have some privacy.
That is when we discovered that finding and apartment here is hard. We ended up getting an apartment (or actually studio) that is a bit small but enough room for the two of us in Meyrin, Switzerland, which is where we live now. Now, only thing is that since it is a CERN apartment they only allow you to be here for a maximum of 6 months and Jorge is scheduled to be here until at least October 2010 so in other words we need a place for longer than 6 months.
Which brings me to the point and where we are now. We met up with a couple on Sunday who also work at CERN and are from California that told us that they were leaving their apartment/studio next month and if we wanted to they could put in a good word to the landlord for us to try and improve our chances of getting the apartment (because it really is impossible to get an apartment unless you know people who are moving out). So we sent and email to the landlord and she wants to meet on Friday so that we can discuss details (which I think means we might have a good chance of getting it).
So I set up a list of pros and cons for the apartment:
Pros:
•it is in the Swiss side, which means better transportation
•it comes furnished
•it would mean we finally have somewhere stable and no more searching for housing
•it comes with tv (so I can finally have something to watch)

Cons:
•it is pretty expensive
•it doesn't come with an oven (okay not the end of the world and I could live without and oven but it would be nice if it had one)
•it doesn't come with a balcony so no more grilling for us
•We would not buy a car after all

So then I started reconsidering living in France because it is cheaper to live in France and I saw a place advertised so heres a list of Pros and Cons there:

French Place:
Pros:
•it is about half the rent of the other place
•we would be able to buy a car since we would save more money
•also comes furnished
•comes with internet

Cons:
•it is in the French side (I think biggest Con yet)
•there is crappy transportation there (although if we have a car perhaps it will be less of a big deal, but I haven't told you that parking in Geneva is a nightmare)

I have no idea what we are going to do. I guess we will talk about it more when Jorge gets home and we can finally make a decision before this weekend since we are leaving to BARCELONA this Friday and won't be back until Tuesday.

Here are a couple random pictures from Geneva:

This is Jorge and our friend Matt playing on these lifesize chess boards

This is us in Geneva when we explored it by ourselves for the first time

This is a super yummy Gelato that I had right by the lake. I still had long hair then!