Day off!

Tobias leads the tour

The original hotel sign in storage

The other tour guide

Tobias

Sweet! Another great class with Dr. Diane Davis from UT Austin. Here's a link to her publications page: http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/~davis/pubs/index.html. The class was on the philosophy of Jacques Derrida a former faculty member here at EGS. Here's his wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Derrida. A really comprehensive class with Diane, she's a fantastic teacher and really nice person to boot. I'm feeling very inspired!
Last night some of the boys threw a party in their funky 70's Swiss chalet and I ended up staying up until 3am. I may have been one of the early to bed people, the party went well past 4am. I have a new roommate, Lauren a really cool architect from Clemson who is here with Victor Vitanza our next faculty.
Lauren, Steve (another Clemsonite and Washington State native) and I are about to take a hike down to Saas Balen which is a hamlet (I called it a town and Tobias the hotel owner corrected me) a ways below us. If we are too tired to walk back we can take the post bus. Today is the first day I haven't gone jogging so I think I'm ready for the trek. Tonight we are going out to dinner with Victor and Diane at the local Italian restaurant.
Last night after dinner Tobias took us on a tour of the house his father was born in and talked about what life used to be like here in the valley. His family has been here since the 13th century. It used to take them seven years to build a house because all the materials have to come from the valley and since everything is covered in snow much of the year they could only build a portion each season. Can you imagine?
I'm off now to get ready for our hike and get out and enjoy the beautiful day.