First Monday of the trip, we all could sleep in a bit before heading off to class. We walked to a main Platz about a 10 minute walk away to the Museum of Pharmacology. Our classroom is bordered with cabinets along the wall that are filled with glass jars full of miscellaneous natural herbs, twigs, spices, and probably animal/human parts. It looks like Snape's potions closet. Every jar has a browned label written in German.. I wish I could translate all of them. We had two lectures from our country coordinator, Caroline, about the History of the Swiss Health System and Alternative & Traditional Healing Methods (quite appropriate considering the atmosphere of learning that we have for the next two weeks!). The question and answer sessions were almost just as long as the lectures, which confirms the team-based learning aspect of this program. We will be learning a lot from eachother as we are from so many different educational and cultural backgrounds, which i'm sure will offer some great debate and discussion.
For lunch we escaped to the local market where we found fresh fruit, sandwiches and some precious little personal bottles of wine. We walked around the shopping district, explored some shops and sat in a small courtyard to chat and observe. We had free time where we trekked around the local chocolate shops (there were little cubes of chocolate that are served with a spoon and a little syringe of various alcohols to make personal spiked hot chocolate drink- YUM). Five of us went out into the courtyard/old filled moat of the midieval city wall for a long yoga practice, which would be playfully interrupted by dogs that were curious of why humans were trying to do their innate upward and downward stretches. Dinner was a lovely progression of cauliflower soup, salad, creamy veal and mushrooms utop of a flaky puff pastry, and ovaltine mouse (reminded me of visiting Grandma, Grandad and Chris in England). We all have been finishing our readings and doing research on affordable and local excursions for our weekend coming up- looks like a potential vineyard trip in Lucerne or maybe a bike to France/Germany? We'll see!!
That sounds like way too much fun to call it school. Are you SURE you're getting closer to a diploma this way? Ok, maybe I'm a little jealous.
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