Geneva, basically

Greetings from (basically) Geneva:

(Logic tells me that this keyboard should have an exclamation mark but I just can't find it. You should at least be happy to know that I finally found the apostrophe.)

We're actually currently in France, but the nearest major city to us is Geneva, Switzerland, and it's more exciting to write from another country. Besides, we did spend most of the day in Switzerland.

Our Christmas in Sweden was wonderful. We did lots of traditional Swedish Christmas things, such as:
Open gifts on December 24
Watch the Disney Christmas Eve special
Eat multiple types of pickled herring
Eat multiple types of salmon
Drink Julmust (Christmas soda)
Drink Schnapps
Drink glugg (Christmas wine)
Drink Christmas beer (There's a Christmas variety of every kind of drink)
Eat rice porridge
Go to church at 5 am on December 25
Did I mention that said church dates back to the 12th century?

All in all a good experience. Katie commented later that she'd never before appreciated the full meaning of "Swedish fish."

On the 27th we boarded a train at 6:20 am. We spent the day on trains, actually, finally boarding a night train for Switzerland at 8:45 pm. Our compartment on this train had only chairs, no beds, and 5 occupants (all under 25). We decided to arrange ourselves as best as possible for actually sleeping some. After a few suspensful moments when we thought we might aquire a sixth occupant, Katie wound up sleeping on the floor with a German guy we'd never met before, I curled up across two seats on one side of the compartment, another girl curled up on the two seats opposite me, and the final guy stretched himself over the remaining two seats (on opposite sides of the compartment). Katie's description of these sleeping arrangements was best: we looked like a game of human pick-up-sticks. But we did get far more sleep than either of us expected when we first realized that we had no beds at all:

We are now at the home of a friend of mine from Paris. Tonight we are headed out salsa dancing. Katie wanted to learn a "useful French phrase" for the evening. The original idea was to teach her one that would be an amusing way to refuse an unsolicited advance, but somehow the phrase she ended up learning was "Salut, beau garç." (Roughly: Hey, hot stuff). I suspect this phrase will not prove particularly useful...

Tomorrow we are headed up to the Alps for an afternoon of skiing. I am very excited, yet lack the appropriate punctuation for making this sentiment clear.