Sunny days

First of all, thank you to everyone who sent birthday wishes, cards or presents! I had a marvelously lazy day yesterday, watching anime, playing Final Fantasy IV (nearly finished...) and starting Skulduggery Pleasant: Playing With Fire that my brother and his other half sent me - and that UPS finally managed to deliver after I gave them the wrong house number.

Tuesday was full of action though - I got my hair cut at the supermarket in what seems to be a Supercuts kind of place, no appointments and relatively cheap (41 CHF). It was so, so nice to have my hair properly short again and not looking like an electrocuted bird's nest. Then I went on to the supermarket and bought some chicken to make into skewers as I'd decided to push the boat out and actually attempt to prepare something for the barbecue I'd been invited to. Swiss chicken was about 9 CHF for 250g, where the chicken "from selected European countries" (reading the back revealed this was Hungary) was 6 CHF. Even Swiss turkey was more expensive than the European chicken.

I had decided to mix and match a Jamie Oliver recipe where you cut courgettes into strips and blanch them, then wrap them around the chicken pieces for the skewers with a marinade that I preferred from another website. I loaded up with soy sauce, honey, garlic, ginger and dried chilli flakes which made an amazing marinade. Everything went together well, even if the process of cutting the courgettes was terribly uneven and meant I ended up breaking them into pieces and wedging them between the chicken pieces half the time.

When I was about to leave the house... I heard thunder. I grabbed my coat and headed out anyway, although the barbecue was due to be held in the local forest. Sure enough, by the time I got to the station there was thunder, lightning and rain. My new friend Mr Y picked me up and we headed off to his house, since there was no hope of being outside in this weather. A lot of other people had cancelled due to pressure of work (or possibly the weather) and for a while it looked like I would be the only guest. But a newly arrived Japanese - Canadian couple arrived with their son and we had a great time playing with the Y's three cats and talking (in a mix of English, Japanese and Swiss German) about life in Zurich, Swiss festivals, Japanese food shops and all manner of things.

We had pasta and bean salads, sausages, my skewers, steaks and then coffee and an amazing plum cake. Mrs Y works at the local supermarket and was full of advice on food and life in general and they're already helped me track down all kinds of things for which I am very grateful.

And all because he was making origami at the cultural festival on the day we happened to be passing through with himself's parents! It's enough to make you believe in 縁 (a Japanese concept of a tie or connection that brings people together).

So, today I've been making more progress on FFIV, writing thank-you letters and emails, and also need to do some exercise and probably get out of the house. I may go and find the Japanese food shop. And then - study, study, study! I got my first round of feedback yesterday, which I haven't opened yet. My supervisor said it was good but needed work, which is frankly better than I was hoping for. I just need to keep on keeping on.