it's been forever since I blogged

but that is what happens once you actually develop a life in a place - you no longer have time to write about it. I mentally compared the phenomenon to taking pictures and some insight I once read about a photographer necessarily missing out on part of the experience (or maybe just experiencing things differently?).

Work still consists mostly of cleaning, although for the Christmas season we have a new menu and a new array of specialty wines (as my boss explained, you highlight the more expensive varieties around this time of the year).

Goodbye, Amarone!

My cappuccino and latte machiatto skills have become fairly impressive.

I hauled like 50 boxes of Prosecco (12 bottles/box) around the cellar last week.

Business is definitely picking up.

In fact, yesterday my boss sent me into the "lounge" where a banquet buffet was held for 60 people. My job was to stand behind the soups, explain that the one on the right was consommé with flatley and kurbiscreme suppe was on the left. Each guest picked a soup and I served them in what probably amounts to a 3-oz glass (who knows how many cl that is...).

Only one guy asked if I was American, and then, where I was from. Per usual, no one has heard of Oregon, but they are convinced I'm from LA as soon as I mention that it's north of California. Great.

Oh, and yesterday morning, after living here for 3-months, I got lost in the woods. I went running before work (trying to take advantage of a time when I could actually be outside while it's light out), went down a path I had never encountered before, ended up looping around over a little hill and finally asked an old man with trekking poles for the general direction of Dübendorf once I began to worry that I wouldn't find my way back in time for work at 10:30am.

In a way, it's reassuring that there is still so much to learn.

(Like how/why 57% of Swiss voters could possibly agree with a constitutional ban on building new minarets. Oh the shame.)