Oh mon dieu

i’ve recently began to watch Friends in french, to help with my learning of the language. I’m very familiar with the dialogue in the show (sad I know) so I find that I already know what they’re saying, but simultaneously now learning the french version too.

La Fête Du Slip

I’d heard about a weekend long festival in Lausanne at the beginning of March, which featured artistic films and videos, and so I planned to check it out, however, during my search for more information I found that it was actually a festival of sexuality, and the film events that I had heard about were just a scratch on the surface! There are several venues across the city in which its held, and the one we visited at the Arsenic Theatre hosted pornography competitions, where throughout the day/night they would show screenings of several films to an audience and then we would vote at the end which film we preferred. Chelsea and I only made it in to one screening however as it was so busy! Afterwards we went to Le Bourg further up in town, which was the resident music venue for the night. It was an experience like none other, and would definitely like to go next year if possible.

International Women’s Day

My friend Jasmine, who also lives at the Auberge, was asked by someone back in her home of Argentina to photograph a women’s march in Switzerland. But, as it was highly unlikely that anything on that scale would be happening in our little town, or anywhere nearby, she resorted to the idea of taking photos of women she lives with - including me - and women on her course. She had left her trusty polaroid camera in Berlin, but luckily I had bought one and it had just been delivered that week, and lent it to her. Here is one of the photos she took with it

National hummus shortage

Seriously. Nowhere has had hummus in stock for weeks. We kind of had a spontaneous Inn film night on sunday, watching The Mummy and realising how awful the graphics/cgi were. Monday was back to same old 9-6 lectures, but afterwards we went down into the town to explore the ‘Foire de Ste Catherine’ (a fair celebrating St catherine). we had looked round some of the stalls on our lunch break, which consisted of speciality foods/sweets, clothes and other items. We had a taste of all the free samples we could, especially nougat, which i then went on to buy in denner (175g for 2.95.-!!) later on we met with a few friends from class and had some vin chaud (mulled wine, new favourite drink). There was a huge tent by the train station which seemed to be full of the entire population of Sierre and more, we left quite early because we were tired and hungry, and found out the next day that there had been a knife attack in that same tent! I think the victim survived… switzerland is sounding less sweet and innocent by the month

I now have a swiss bank account! Going to have to take out swiss franc using my british card as usual, and then pay the money into my new account, so to avoid the ridiculous £22 fee that incurs when sending money internationally through online banking (thanks natwest). Received my parcel from home which consisted of thermal underclothes and chocolate rice cakes, which didn’t last long.

Spent a lot of time in the studio this week throwing out some new ideas and trying to paint without using it all up. Kind of takes the fun and freedom out of it if you’re feeling limited by your materials. We went to have a look in another classmate’s studio, who has an entire room to himself, filled with random items and trinkets that he finds. He said he buys nothing but hot glue, for everything he finds he believes already is art itself and does not need major editing apart from maybe the combining of it with other items. very ‘one man’s trash is another man’s treasure’. With my work (finally decided) i am trying to explore the concept of the language barrier and communications being lost in translation, through a whole range of mediums, planning to attempt at some photography and sound, which isn’t normally my forte

It’s getting really cold now. Missing the brief warmth we had when we arrived

zZzZzzZzzzZ (arrival)

Never thought i’d be living in an Inn occupied solely by artists. It’s called Auberge des Collines, and situated above a Bella Italia restaurant! There are 14-15 rooms in the inn i think… my room handily has a sink and mirror, and a greedy three windows, though i suspect may get slightly irritating because of all the constant light entering through.

^This is the entrance around the back of the building. The house key magically open both the main door and the room door

We were welcomed with an amazing tea last night, made by one of our inn-mates of whom i can’t remember her name… but I know she was from South Africa.. there are also Venezuelans and Egyptians, and saying we’re “British” just sounds rather dull in comparison. There are mountains right outside my window, and a lake (which apparently we can swim in!) we’re going to the shops soon with one of the girls on our floor for groceries, she will shortly be finding out how awful our version of the student diet is