Hiking and Working and Everything Else

So the last post, I didn't realize I had posted, hence its title was a bit off. So backing way up. I have found a really great hiking group here on Meetup. Just about every sunday they go hiking somewhere different in Switzerland leaving from Zurich. I went with them to Eggeberg, Ebenalp, Turbenthal, and Faido. The group is mostly foreigners although a few swiss people have come. The discussions are almost entirely in english, although if you sneak up on the swiss and germans you can catch them speaking in german. The weather for every trip has been fantastic thus enabling me to take wonderful pictures of everything. Today as it is raining/sleeting/snowing I am glad I seized the opportunity to get outside as much as possible when it was sunny.
Working has gone well, I have much more direction on my project now and have begun the process of taming the robot I am working with. Most of the work was already done my job is just to perfect it, integrate it, and scale it to large sets. Hopefully it wont be too difficult. It is easy to spend hours just tooling around with it.
Everything else? Well I have started swimming because I realized I can swim for free tuesday, wednesday, and thursday mornings with ASVZ (student sports association of zuri). They have someone there providing specific workouts to do, and today the workout involved pelvis thrusting, push-ups, and swimming lengths without breathing. We also did some backstroke where I learned that apparently I swim as though I was sitting in a chair and I shouldn't do that. Upon leaving the pool I read the sign on the outside rating the pool; it had several normal criteria like temperature and length, but my favorite was Flirtfaktor which it got 3 hearts, whatever that means.
I also found a german film group for students who want to learn german every wednesday night. The first time I went the film was in english with german subtitles (what?), so it was extremely easy to understand and not entirely useful. Last night, however, it was a german film with german subtitles, and an extremely nonlinear plot. To add to this they used extensive metaphor and complicated language. Needless to say, I had only the foggiest of ideas of what happened in that film. It was action packed, and the leading actress was quite cute though, so didn't bother me too much.

Finally back to the weather, It snowed last night and today. Currently it is above 0 (32) so it probably won't stay long, but there is some on the ground and all forms of public transportation are delayed. The city looked absolutely fantastic in the snow especially at night. I like snow much better than rain, but I think I will need to figure out better shoes as the waterproofness of my running shoes is nonexistant. They, in fact, would be more aptly described as thirsty much to my feet's dismay.

Running Lausanne

I ran the Lausanne Half-marathon today. It is a fantastic run. Just about as perfect as I could imagine. The marathon would also be good, except its an out-and-back which I am not a huge fan of. The course runs right along Lake Leman and you have hilly vineyards on one side and the lake with the French alps in the background on the other. They also had an interesting assortment of bands playing nearly every kilometer ranging from YMCA cover bands (of course saying why-em-see-ahh instead of aye) to a guy and his accordian. The food support along the course was excellent, and at the start they had $3 pumpkin soup which tasted fantastic. They also had organized warm-ups with crazy-ish techno music and moves that more closely resembled irish dancing than stretching. So if you are looking for a new run to do, I would say it was excellent.