We woke up early and got dressed and then waited for the Hangliding people to pick us up from our hostel. The guides were Bernie and Ed, and they were really awesome. They were both from Australia, and Bernie picked us up with his adorable little blonde daughter named Mayo, in the backseat, according to Bernie, "our flight instructor." She was too cute. We picked up the equipment as well as Ed and the other guy who works with them, Nick. All Aussies! Nick dropped us all off and we helped carry the equipment up this long hill and then had to begin help putting the actual hanglider together...no pressure. Then we took some pre-flight pictures and Chad and I rock paper scissored to see who would go first...best out of 3 and I won...got a little bit nervous to go first. When we took off though, it was AWESOME. It was such a surreal experience in general; I could not believe how high we were and that we were basically flying via a kite! Cows and people were tiny and the views of the mountains and the lake was amazing! We did all sorts of pictures while flying and then Bernie asked me if I wanted to do some more extreme, adventurous stuff, and with some hesitation, I said yes. He dipped us down and turned sharp and went up and down...it was just a tad bit crazy and scary! But still incredible. The total length of the flight wasn't too long but it was well worth it! Then we landed, got some grass stains on my jeans :( and took some post-flight pictures. This Indian family who had three kids flying later in the day were there watching us fly and land and immediately started asking me all sorts of questions about the flight right when I landed. Tried to escape from them. Bernie offered me a beer (yes, at 9am) so obviously I took it and gave one to Chad as well. We drank our beers while they burned our picture CD's and took down the equipment and then gave us a beer to go as well, informing us that we can drink on the streets in Interlaken. Hell yeahhh. The next flyers were late to show up so they had to drop us off a bit from our hostel, so we just wandered back to Balmers taking our time.
Once we dropped off our stuff and grabbed some free breakfast (tipsily), we headed out to do some souvenir shopping and get some lunch. We found this delicious looking chocolate shop that we decided was a must for later on, and then found a McDonalds to eat at...AMERICA. But, it ended up being the most expensive McDonalds yet! 2.50CHF for a cheeseburger, 3 something for medium fries, and they charged you for ketchup packets, .20 each.

After lunch, we walked over to this big open park area and watched para gliders land. It looks pretty fun, but not as awesome as hangliding! You could look up at any time during the day though, and spot the paragliders. Sometimes there's be as many as 10 up in the sky! It was ridiculous. We had some time to kill before we headed over for canyoning so we just hung around the hostel in the lounge areas until it was time to head over. Once we got to Outdoor Interlaken, we had to wait a bit for the other groups to get there, but eventually the guides gave us a quick introduction and then told us to go change into our bathing suits and put our stuff in the lockers. There was only one other girl in our group, so I started up a conversation with her...turns out she just graduated from A&M from PPA! So crazy. Once we had all put on wetsuits, jackets, water shoes, life jackets, and found a helmet with a name you were satisfied with (the guides call you by the name on your helmet during the trip- I was "Queen"), we headed up towards the mountain and got dropped off. We walked for a bit up a hill to the beginning spot and after going over some instructions, got into the water. Because it was such a warm day, the cold water actually felt really awesome! Canyoning was so much fun! We jumped off ledges into pools of water, repelled down cliffs, slid down some parts of waterfalls, swung around ledges, cannonballed into the water, and even superman-style jumped into the water. It was a bit terrifying at times, and if you did anything wrong, you could easily hurt yourself, but we made it out with only a few bumps and bruises! There was this Asian guy who didn't speak much English and we were specifically told not to jump straight into the water like a pencil because you would hit rock bottom; instead, you were supposed to tuck your feet in and lean back a little - like a cannonball. Guess who did it wrong all 3 times? He got lucky he didn't get hurt! The Aggie, Nikki, was on the trip with her boyfriend, John, who was pretty afraid of heights. He kept on having to go first because he was a bit bigger and would therefore be able to block people from going down bad parts of the waterfall or losing themselves to the river (like Chad did once). We hung out with them for a lot of the trip and really enjoyed it. Then there was a group of 3 guys from Georgia that were cool, and then a son, dad, and grandad all together. The granddad's helmet was accurately called "The Tank" and he did everything really well. I was super impressed with how athletic he was and fearless! The guides were also super fearless, literally just jumping around and landing in the water...either they know the river really well or they are just completely crazy. Canyoning was definitely the most active, extreme thing I've done. With hangliding, I wasn't in much control of what happened, but in canyoning, it's all dependent on how well you do yourself. I'm glad I survived both extreme sports!

When we got back to Outdoor Interlaken, we got a free drink coupon and hung out with Nikki and John for a bit and then walked back over to Balmers. We then walked over to Coop, the grocery store/convenient store here, to check out the food situation, and got a bottle of wine and some pretzel mix to hold us over till dinner and then decided on having burgers back at Balmers and cooking dinner tomorrow night. After showering and drinking our wine, we went out to the Beergarten and ordered our food. I got like a ham and cheese fried thing that was really good and it was Happy Hour for another 15 minutes where you could buy one get one free so both Chad and I went up and got two beers each...gotta take advantage of that! It was 4.50 franks for two beers, so it was quite the steal compared with everywhere else we've been! This guy Ben who we'd met last night while doing laundry came and joined us for dinner. He is traveling by himself for two months with no itinerary or plan of where he's going. Ridiculous. He must be loaded too because he's still in college and just roaming around for two months in Europe is not a cheap trip! Nikki and John then walked in because we had mentioned to them that our hostel was one of the cheapest places to eat in town. We all hung out there for a couple hours and continued to get drinks (it was now Happy Hour downstairs in the Metro Club) until they closed the Beergarten (10:00 curfew). We moved inside instead and got some cider that ended up not being as good as I was expecting, but it was still super cheap! Metro was having some big opening summer party downstairs but we heard it wasn't that great so we stuck to staying upstairs. Whenever Happy Hour started, these girls that worked there came around with water guns and made you take shots from them. The first time they did this it was pretty good alcohol, but the next one tasted like rubbing alcohol. Sickkkk. When Ben left to go somewhere, Nikki and John decided to leave too, but we exchanged numbers because we will be in Rome at the same time! Chad and I then went and passed out in our bunk rooms with our random neighbors!