I ain't got no MOOOOOONEEEEEEY

...day 2 as a House Frau...

I immediately got sick the second we moved into the loft. I've basically been stuck on the rented couch for the last 2 days (which is really fine because I don't have anything to do anyway and I have no money to spend). I've read basically 2 books in the last 2 days, wasted what seems like 1000 hours on the internet, and gotten a good start on my cross stitch project.

There have been about 5 people that have come through the loft to fix misc. items. None of them spoke English so if they didn't ask me for a 'desk' or 'carpet' we basically communicated through a series of clicks and grunts (and lots of pointing).

** Side note** I've noticed one universal trait among people. Once people realize that we don't understand German they just SCREAM at us, in German, very slowly, and expect us to understand. After my face turns beet red from embarrassment I have to laugh - the same thing happens in the states when people speak to someone who only knows Spanish...

...Back to not leaving the house...so apparently, in Switzerland, people don't like to give you goods and services unless you, in return, give them some sort of compensation - like money... (I know, come on, really?)

We were under the impression that there was going to be some money in our Swiss Bank account on 1 April, 2008 (someone had told us that at some time). They were going to give us a partial advance/partial bonus. Well after a couple of days around Zürich we realized that not everywhere takes our American Mastercard and there are really quite a few places that only take cash (which we don't have any of). We've burned through all the cash that we brought with us (which wasn't much because what were we going to do about it?) and luckily our credit card works as most places (don't forget to add on the 2% convenience fee, the conversion costs, and all the other fees).

Finally I think we've gotten everything figured out: we'll wire money from our Countrywide savings account into our new Oanda account where the funds will be transfered into CHF and then deposited into our Swiss account. We've been trying to do this for about 4 days (and now it's Friday) so hopefully we'll have some money by the middle of next week.

I'm DIEING to go to Ikea and actually buy something!!