Cold-weather Holidays

I bet you thought the title of this post was some sort of politically correct, non-denominational way to title a Christmas post. No, this post is really about Thanksgiving and Christmas. And this year I celebrated Thanksgiving in December. I hope you all saw the beginning of my Thanksgiving story (at the end of this post). Well, here's the continuation you have all been waiting for. Here we go:

So I went to the refrigerator and opened the door, and I saw the turkey, wrapped in plastic, thawed, and ready to go! The best part was that it was only 2.8 kilograms, approximately 6.2 pounds. Definitely the smallest whole turkey I have ever seen.

Now this whole cooking thing was quite an adventure. First, it was the first time I had ever attempted to cook so many things at once and try to time them to finish together. (Thanks for the lessons over Skype, mom!) Second, it was the first time most of my host family members had ever had these particular dishes, so it was fun to hear their reactions. Third, the available containers to cook things in were not necessarily what was called for; I had to improvise a little, but it all turned out okay in the end.

The menu: turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes and green beans. Plus an apple crisp that I made a day ahead. I don't know about the rest of you Americans, but I would consider this a relatively small Thanksgiving meal, which was on purpose. Even so, my host family thought it was a ton of food.

Unfortunately I don't know how to carve a turkey and before I could try, my host mom took some poultry scissors to the bird and cut it up into little pieces and put them in a bowl. Which is probably what my attempt at carving it would have looked like anyway. To make the stuffing, I bought a loaf of bread a few days before and let it harden, then cut it up into little squares. I don't think they have instant stuffing here. Also, upon tasting the mashed potatoes, my host family immediately noticed the little chunks of potato that were left my by hand-mashing technique. Apparently mashed potatoes here have absolutely no little chunks and are perfectly smooth. In fact, they are called a potato purée.

So. It was an adventure, and I'm looking forward to next year when I can celebrate Thanksgiving with my biological family and finally learn how to carve a turkey.

They suggested taking a picture of the whole table and then didn't acknowledge the camera.... Maybe they wanted it to look candid, I don't know.

The Christmas festivities were...extensive. On the 20th of December, we went to my host grandparents' house in Marly for dinner. They have a swimming pool--inside! Also, the room next to the pool was full of exercise equipment and had a couch with a projector for watching movies. It was pretty cool. We got there a bit early, so I ended up seeing most of Benjamin Button in German. One of the things about family gatherings is that as soon as anybody shows up, they have to greet each other person in the room separately. For most people, this entails a handshake or three cheek-kisses (starting on the left) or both, with a few words of greeting and small talk. At the beginning, this process is relatively simple, but as more people arrive, it can take a long time.

For dinner, we had fondue--not a cheese fondue, but an oil to cook little pieces of meat in. This was accompanied by mild Spanish rice (the grandmother is from Spain, but I doubt that she ever makes too much spicy food; the Swiss wouldn't go for it). After eating, we played cards. It was the same game that I learned how to play the last time this side of the family met, and I did better this time. The game was followed by caroling. It was fun to learn the Swiss German Christmas songs. Some of them you would recognize, like Stille Nacht (Silent Night) and O Tannenbaum (I think this doesn't need translation). There were also others I had never heard before. Unfortunately, we sounded terrible, but of course nobody minded. After this came the opening of presents. One little host cousin in particular was very eager to open hers, which was assuredly bigger than she was. I got some 75% dark chocolate. Intense. The reason we were already opening presents on the 20th is that there were many different groups of family that couldn't all celebrate together at the same time for a couple of reasons. First, if both sides of the family were included, you'd probably have to rent out Union Station or something. (My host dad is one of eight children, I think he said.) Second, one set of grandparents had divorced and remarried.

This would not be the first gathering. This would also not be the last chocolate somebody gave me. On the 24th, all the same people from the 20th came to our house, except it was a different set of grandparents. In order to fit all seventeen or so people, we had to move the couches against the walls and set up the outside table inside. We served raclette. It was delicious. If you have never tried this dish, you should. It involves melting cheese with various small vegetables or meat pieces and then eating it over potatoes or toasted bread. There's a traditional way of melting the cheese in a fireplace or something that I've heard about, but we just used special raclette ovens on the table. This was followed by another round of singing and present-opening. I personally like the German word for this: "auspacken." It basically means "to unpack." So it's like suitcases and presents are the same, except unpacking one can be a chore. I'll let you guess which one that is.

On Christmas Day, my host dad wanted to go to a museum in Fribourg and I came along. I suspected the museum would be closed, but he said there had been nothing posted on the website to that effect. We drove to Fribourg, and of course the museum was closed. So we went to a restaurant and got something to drink. I enjoyed a hot Ovomaltine. It's like hot chocolate but malty. Inside the restaurant was this funny tree with white bark. I'm guessing it continued on the next floor up.

Also, the weather was acting very strange. When we left, it was raining slightly. By the time we were approaching the city, it was a nasty mix of rain and snow and ice. On the drive back, the sun was shining, and upon arriving back at home, there was a thin layer of new snow on the ground. Weird.

We ate Christmas dinner with my host aunt, uncle, and cousins in Plaffeien. We had little homemade bite-sized pizza things before the meal, and then a savory pastry with mushrooms and sauce, salad, meat rolled up with saffron and some kind of tomato filling, carrots, pommes frites (which are sort of fancy here, not like in the US, hence my reluctance to call them French fries), green beans with bacon wrapped around them, about six different kinds of Christmas cookies, ice cream (bought in a log shape and cut into slices with a knife), fresh pineapple (served with one of those awesome pineapple corer things that makes pineapple rings), plus Christmas tea. A veritable feast!

This was followed by more familial festivities throughout the holiday break, but I'll save those for the next post.

Home, Sweet Home: Episode I

There it is: my house. Can you see it there, off to the right, all alone at the end of the road? And beyond, hills full of cows and trees, and then the border with Bern (the canton, not the city). Okay, I'll admit it. I did sort of set up the composition of this photo so it would look like we have no neighbors. We do have neighbors, but they don't exactly live next to us. Plus I have never met them. Anyway, there is it, the home of my first host family. I have been told that it originally was split into two living areas and housed two families: my host family and another one. One of my host sisters pointed out one of the previous occupants while we were on the bus. And I guess that sometime in the last several years, the house came to belong to my host family and they did some renovations. I think rooms might have been added, or some walls might have been taken out to create a bigger space downstairs. I thought you all would enjoy hearing about the place where I live. Instead of showing you photos (other than this one), I am just going to describe it. This is for a couple of different reasons. First, I have never taken any photos of the house. Second, I probably won't take any. It's not that photo-worthy. But this will be a fun description exercise for me. You guessed it, I am using my blog to try to keep my English up to par. I am going to have to use it next year, you know. I've heard that in college you have to write these things called papers.

Let's begin with the outside. As you can see, once the road passes our nearest neighbor's house, it turns into a gravel road, which narrows and turns into a gravel path which leads downhill into some woods and is actually part of the Swiss hiking trail system, which is extensive. Before the path goes downhill, there are some concrete stairs on the side of the house which lead to the front door. Yes, the front door is the one facing completely away from the street. I don't understand it either. Near the stairs is a giant woodpile covered with a blue tarp, which I assume will be used to heat the house in the coming winter months. Actually, let's just call them the winter months, since they have already arrived. Other items of interest on the outside of the house: the beehives that my host dad cares for, some random junk in a random shed, another random shed with bicycles and things like that in it, a big red collapsible clothes drying rack, the table we ate at when it was still warm outside, a red Peugeot, and a silver Honda. Yes, we have no garage. Song reference, anyone?

Let's move to the interior. The bottom floor consists of a mud room, my host parents' bedroom and bathroom, and the kitchen/dining/living room area. The mud room can be found right inside the "front" back door. Seriously, why is the door there? It still bothers me. So, the room: lots and lots of dirty shoes are either drying out on the floor or on the rack thing or in the closet thing. Also, there is a hanging fabric sort of round shelf deal with lots of winter accessories in it, like gloves and hats and mittens and scarves. This room is below the level of the rest of the bottom floor, so there are a few steps up to the hallway. Between the mud room and the hallway is a sliding wooden door and a chair. The door is usually left partially open to allow the three cats to come and go as they please through the kitty door that is in the "front" back door. I have always assumed the chair was there to allow the sliding door to be partially open without letting the dog into the mud room. Also, to dump stuff on.

As you stand in this hallway, the door to my host parents' room is on the left and the door to their bathroom is on the right. I'll skip the description for these areas since I don't go in there. Which brings us to the last room on this floor, which is really three rooms in one. The only division between the rooms is a sort of square pillar thing that's approximately in the middle. Next to it is a piece of furniture with the radio on top of it. This radio usually plays news in Swiss German, which I can't understand very well when it's radio quality, or traditional Swiss music like yodeling, accordions, or Lady Gaga. Preferably all in a row. But seriously, the radio music is weird here. Once I heard five songs in a row, the first of which was in French, the second of which was in Italian, the third of which was in English, the fourth of which was in German, and the fifth of which was an instrumental version of the Swiss national anthem. Also, part of the square pillar wall thing is a pull-out pantry area with several shelves that hold ingredients of all sorts. The only things I usually take from the pantry are the cereal, the chocolate powder, and the cereal bars. The honey also stays in there, along with some boxes of Swiss cake mix and bread mix and such that don't ever seem to be used. Also, there is Grillsauce, which is a universal sauce that my host sister likes to eat with meat. And Kätzchenmilch (Kitten milk), which appears to some sort of powder resembling fish food that, when mixed with water, produces something to be fed to kittens. At least this is what I am guessing from looking at the label, which has a picture of kittens on it. I'm not sure what this is doing here. I assume it's safe for human consumption, because my host mom sprinkled it on her food once. I don't think I'll try it though, as open-minded about food as I generally am. I try to stick to human food most of the time.

So here we are, listening to the radio and standing in the kitchen. It's basically a regular old kitchen. There's a window above the kitchen sink, a refrigerator which never seems to be all that cold, a stove / oven combo, some counters, and some drawers. The main thing that can be found in the drawers is Tupperware. Other things that can be found in the drawers are utensils for eating and cooking, dry pasta, spices, saucepans, frying pans, and plates. But in all seriousness, there are 2.5 huge drawers dedicated entirely to Tupperware. Even most of the cooking utensils are plastic and probably come from Tupperware as well. And if there's anything we're missing, no worries! Just throw a Tupperware party and order away! Yes, I once came home from orchestra at 11 pm or so and walked into the end of a Tupperware party. Everyone was sitting around the table, drinking coffee and ordering Tupperware. Apparently this is the only way to buy the stuff in Switzerland.

Another important thing about the kitchen is the fruit bowl. It sits on the counter farthest from the mud room end of the house (the counters form a U-shape). The best kind of fruit to grace the fruit bowl is the Clementine. Once the host fam figured out I like these, there have almost always been Clementines in the fruit bowl, for which I am eternally grateful. Clementines are probably among my top three favorite fruits, along with raspberries and perhaps fresh peaches. Dried apricots are pretty good, too.

On the other side of the fruit bowl counter is the table. It's in the corner of the house, and along the two walls next to it are continuous benches forming an L-shape. Along the other two sides of the table are a few chairs. Right now there is a blue tablecloth. Also, there is a perpetual stack of papers on the end of the table that is closer to the kitchen. This consists mostly of mail but also of newspapers and flyers and things. Sometimes I look through it and find my bank statements and such.

The other part of the bottom floor is the living room area, which consists of two sofas covered in blue fabric, which is covered in cat and dog hair. The cats like to sit on the sofas and the dog often sleeps there. The sofas form an L-shape towards the TV, which is next to the "patio" real door. This door is also not facing the street but opens onto the area with the cars and beehives and other table, which is why it feels like the front door to me. It's only a sliding glass door, though, and has no keyhole, so it's not as official-looking as the other one. My host family has interesting TV habits. They mainly keep the TV on the same channel, and they watch three main types of shows, as far I as can tell: American crime shows dubbed into German, soap operas from Germany, and news. Half of the news shows they watch are celebrity news, which is even worse than local news. And Switzerland is so small that even national news is sort of like local news, at least from the point of view of an American. So, needless to say, I rarely watch TV with them. Oh, and I forgot to say that in front of the couch facing the TV is a coffee table with sudoku books on it. My host mom is obsessed with sudoku.

So I just looked back and realized that this post is getting really long. I think that I'm going to stop it here and write about the top floor later. I hope you didn't mind the length. Although I guess that if you're still reading, then you probably didn't and the apology will be lost on those who found it too long and stopped somewhere in the middle. Now I've got two loose ends to tie up: this and the turkey thing. Let's see how many loose ends I can create before the end of the year. Then I could do a big "season finale" blog post and tie them all up and everyone would feel so satisfied. That could get confusing, though. We'll see.

Four Months Later: Snow and St. Nick

Greetings to all of you readers out there. I heartily apologize to those of you who were waiting with bated breath for the blog post that never came. Well, here it is, complete with yet another new form of multimedia for you to enjoy! Don't scroll down and look: that would be cheating. Just keep reading and you'll get to it. I promise. This blog post is dedicated to Mrs. M. Ash, who told my mother I needed to update my blog, who then e-mailed me to that effect.

Yesterday was the four-month anniversary of my arrival in Switzerland! This means I have already finished more than a third of my "year," which is actually more like eleven months, since I arrived in August and will leave sometime in July. I've been pretty busy lately, which might explain the lack of frequent posts, but no worries, you will be filled in. Photos will be included. And I have the feeling it won't all fit into this post, because I don't have the stamina to write that much in one sitting and I doubt you have the stamina to read that much in one sitting.

Let's pull a Mr. Jones history experiment (Mission Valley, anyone?) and start with the most recent events, working backward. Okay, so I just ate dinner. Before that I rode the bus home and before that I went to a glasses shop in town and had my glasses adjusted for free, which I had thought impossible in the Land of the Swiss. Before that, I went to the library, and before that I practiced piano at school. And before that, I ... well, you get the picture.

Speaking of pictures, let me share with you a side-by-side comparison of a photo you have seen before and a new one of the same subject covered in SNOW! That's right, we had our first snow a couple of weeks ago in Zumholz. I noticed a strange phenomenon that day: as we neared the city, there appeared to be less and less snow visible out of the bus windows. And once I was in the city, there was no snow at all accumulated on the ground and I had to deal with precipitation in "winter mix" form. It was nasty. I guess Zumholz has a slightly higher elevation than Fribourg; it's tucked away in the pre-pre-Alps. So, the beehives in summer...and winter. I love snow. Good thing I picked Switzerland, right?

And here's one of my house I took during my early-morning walk to the bus stop, which explains the darkness, despite DST:

Last weekend was an eventful one. There were two events, in fact: the festival of St. Nicolas, and my belated Thanksgiving adventure. St. Nicolas is officially on December 6, which was a Sunday, so the festivities in Fribourg took place on the 5th, a Saturday. Not much ever takes place on a Sunday here. Anyway, I went to the St. Nicolas thing on Saturday with two girls from my class, Coline and Fitore, and an American exchange student, Katelyn. It was pretty chilly but I barely noticed because it was so crowded that I felt like I was huddling with the entire city of Fribourg to keep warm. We started off by Collège Saint-Michel, where the parade began. It consisted of a walking choir wearing some black epic costumes and in some cases carrying candles, followed by another walking choir wearing orange and red epic costumes, followed by St. Nicolas seated on his donkey plus his entourage of minions, who wore black robes, had their faces painted black, and carried switches which they supposedly use to beat children who have been naughty. (The nice ones get chocolate, clementines, and peanuts.) It was a little like the annual Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade on a smaller scale, what with the Santa character ending the parade. St. Nicolas threw gingerbread squares to outstretched hands. I snatched one off the ground and shared. It was delicious. And I was definitely obeying the 10-second rule because I guarantee every gingerbread square that fell to the ground was snatched up well within the space of ten seconds.

These were the parade members with epic orange and red costumes. Notice the decorated tree in the background.

Here's a closeup of the same decorated tree, a little later when it got a little darker. Nice, eh?

From Saint-Michel, we made our way through a "shortcut," which at least a third of the people there were also taking, to a crowded street further along in the parade route. We watched the same parade go past again but failed this time to get any gingerbread. Then we walked in the direction of the cathedral from which St. Nicolas would address the crowd. Unfortunately, we were a bit too late and ended up around a corner from the cathedral and couldn't see St. Nicolas. We could hear him, though, due to a lovely microphone setup. At least, we could hear his voice. It was a bit tricky to understand, though, for whatever reason. The speech was in French and German. This St. Nicolas had a terrible German accent. Clearly a native French speaker. I'm guessing he made some general remarks about the state of things in the world, etc. Every once in a while, there was a cheer from the people closer to the cathedral, so I'm assuming they could hear him better. After the speech was over and the crowd dissipated, we went and drank more cinnamon tea (black tea steeped with cinnamon stick). It's delicious. You should try it sometime. Then Katelyn and Fitore and I went to a restaurant and ate fries and sat around and talked for a couple of hours while Katelyn and I waited for our buses.

Here's St. Nicolas and one of his entourage, who actually had red eyes until I took the Picasa Redeye tool to them. This is a red-suited minion, not a black-suited one. Those were harder to photograph due to low light conditions.

Okay, I think I'm running out of steam. The Thanksgiving story is going to have to wait until next time. I'll give you a cliffhanger if you like, though. Then it would become really great episodic literature.

I had been wondering where exactly the turkey was. I never knew for sure whether it was frozen or fresh when purchased. All I knew was that my host mother had to go to five stores before she found one. About an hour before I wanted to start cooking, I ventured out and asked of the turkey's whereabouts. "It's in the fridge," they said. I asked if it was thawed. Affirmative. So I went to the refrigerator and opened the door, and I saw....

There's your cliffhanger. Don't you just love them?

And I know you've been thinking this whole time, what about the special multimedia thing? Well, here it is and it didn't come without hard work. I recorded myself playing the piano in the auditorium at school, which is where I practice since there is no piano at home. I apologize for the sound quality. I recorded it as a voice memo on my iPod. Once I got a recording I was happy with, I had to figure out how to get it into my blog. It took me a couple of days, and this is what I did: I changed a setting in iTunes and used it to change the file to mp3 format, then used a free file-hosting website to upload the file to the internet and give it its own url, then found the code for the Google Reader media player and pasted the mp3's url into the code. And here it is. If you just skipped the last sentence, I don't blame you. I wish I could have skipped it too.

This is the sixth movement of Brahm's Fantasies for Piano, Opus 116. It's an intermezzo.

Brahms Intermezzo Op. 116 No. 6

La Désalpe, or I Eat Raclette and Look at Cows

First off, let me apologize for the fact that this post is out of chronological order. I found pictures from it on my computer and remembered that I wanted to share them with you. I go to school in the city, and I go shopping in the city, and I go to orchestra rehearsals in the city, but I live in the country. My house is surrounded by rolling hills, on top of which are lots of trees, cows, and red-roofed houses. How picturesque. And to celebrate the cows (and the families who raise them), there is an event every year called the désalpe, which roughly means "coming down from the alpine pastures." The families that raise cows walk with their herds down to a town where there is a parade. This happens in multiple towns, but the one I went to is Plaffeien, about a fifteen-minute walk from where I live.

As you can see, it's pretty crowded. Animals and people are everywhere! There are stands selling food, shops selling traditional crafts, and a makeshift stage where musicians are playing and people are dancing in Swiss costumes. The families are announced as they arrive. The people and animals are all decorated. And it's not just cows: I also saw several goats.

And now I've gone all high-tech on you, and have included a video! Somewhere in the middle a group of men and boys walks by wearing the traditional Swiss cowboy outfit. Lots of the women also wore those blue shirts, as did some of the guys in my class when we had a class party. I hope you enjoy the video because it took forever to upload.

Fall Break: Week Two

I bet some of you are jealous that I had two weeks of fall break. I understand. I'm even kind of jealous. I mean, I never got a fall break in high school and as I understand it, I will never have this long of a fall break ever again. But let me qualify this with the fact that we almost always have a normal week of school here. There are no late starts, no early releases, no teacher workdays, no pep assemblies. There are field trips, though: once we went to see a play at the theater, and once there was a class day where all the classes did something different. But otherwise the schedule is very regular compared to what it was like in high school.

So, week two. Those of you who read about week one know that I spent it cavorting about Switzerland with my host family. During week two I spent more time exploring alone, which I quite enjoy. On Monday I slept late and spent the rest of the day hanging around the house, and then at dinner my host parents told me I should go somewhere since I have a GA. It sounded like a good idea, so the next day I went to Bern with Jessica, and we wandered around a bit. Bern's symbol is the bear, and there are a couple of bears that live there in a built habitat, but unfortunately when we went to find the bears, they were hiding out in their invisible-to-the-public area. I found these feet walking around in Bern.

The next day I went to my second Rotary meeting with my host club. This time it was at a restaurant for lunch. I like Rotary meetings because everyone is so nice there and there is usually good food. The speaker was a Swiss woman now living in Germany who did an exchange at Harvard University while she was a university student. She talked about the differences between American and Swiss university life, which I found pretty interesting. The main idea was that the campus is a central part of the American university experience, and even people that live off-campus still spend a lot of their free time on campus, but in Switzerland, university just consists of the classes, and many live at home. The way people spend their free time has nothing to do with their school, in general.

After the meeting I hopped on a train and went to Lausanne. I spent quite a while wandering around the suburbs and then got on a bus and went to the downtown area, where I found all of the shops. It was really crowded there, but it was a nice area. I hope to go back again when I have more time. One of the Rotary members had invited Jessica and I to go see the new movie about Michael Jackson that evening, so I came back to Fribourg in time for that. The movie was in English with German subtitles. It was all right. I've never been a huge fan of Michael Jackson; in fact, I found him pretty creepy. But the music was good. If you like the man or the music, you would probably enjoy the film.

The next day I went with my host mom and sister, plus a family friend and two guys that may or may not have been host cousins, to Zürich to see the Körperwelten exhibit. It's the one with the human bodies that have the skin removed so the organs can be seen. I found it fascinating. The descriptions were all in German and French, so it was an opportunity to learn some new words. After lunch I had to go back to Fribourg so I would have some time to rest before orchestra.

On Friday I once again hopped on the train for a day-long Geneva adventure. One of my favorite parts about the train ride to Geneva is that right before Lausanne there is a stunningly beautiful view through the windows. In the background is a lake, and on the land surrounding it, which is pleasantly hilly, are vineyards. And the best time to see it is just as the sun is setting. I love to watch the rows of grapevines as the train zooms past. So, I went to Geneva. And it was Halloween. Apparently they used to celebrate Halloween here around ten years ago, with costumes and decorations and candy, but they decided to give it up because they found it disgustingly commercialized. Well, maybe it is, but that never stopped me from enjoying it.

I forgot to look up beforehand what the touristy things are to do in Geneva, which I don't regret. Instead I got on a tram and rode it until I saw some cool shops outside the window and I got out there. It was a crowded place. I looked around in the shops for a while, and then I happened to look up at the sky and saw what appeared to be a stream of water falling from the sky between two buildings. I was naturally curious and went to find out what it was. What I had discovered was the jet d'eau, which is supposedly a sort of water monument. The water is pumped 140 meters high out of the lake. It's pretty impressive:

There's a walkway that goes out into the lake and past the jet d'eau, and for some reason I thought it would be a good idea to go to the end of this walkway. What I didn't realize is that the wind was strong enough to blow a lot of water onto the walkway. But I kept going even though it felt like a watered-down version of the Maid of the Mist boat ride at Niagara Falls (in case any of you are familiar with that). I would say "no pun intended," but it definitely was. And this is what I looked like once I had gone past the jet. Refreshed, rejuvenated, and very, very wet.

Unfortunately, it wasn't exactly warm outside. I seem to be adjusting to the colder weather, though. Also, I was wearing a wool jacket, which is supposedly warm when wet. But I was still a bit chilled. To warm myself up, I visited one of the top signs of American cultural imperialism in Europe: Starbucks. My hot chocolate cost about as much as three regular Shawnee Mission East lunches. Let's just say it was a special occasion. It was Halloween, after all.

A Viola and a Library Card

I have discovered a couple of things that I always look forward to doing: going to orchestra rehearsal and visiting the library. These were things I liked while back home as well, but here they are even better. I'm not exactly sure why, but it might have to do with the fact that I can find some really awesome things at the library, and some of my favorite people I have met here so far are in the orchestra.

Just to give you an idea, this is what I have checked out from the library right now:

Tintin in America (French and German editions), a book about digital photography (German), Calvin and Hobbes (French), a book about design (German), a translation of a John Updike novel (German), the piano works of Erik Satie, Dvorak's American Quartet and a quintet, and a French audio version of Roald Dahl's classic Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Let's just say it's enough to keep me entertained for a while. I always leave the library with something I'm really excited about, and the only downside is that I have to carry the heavy books around until I get to a bus stop. But it's definitely worthwhile.

About orchestra. In a previous post, I told you about how I finally found an orchestra I am happy with and that I might have the chance to play viola in it. Well, I now have the viola and it is functioning well. It was sort of like a scavenger hunt to find all the parts I needed and to get it to work properly. I had to get the music from one person, the actual viola and case from somebody else, a bow from yet another person in the orchestra who happened to have one she was willing to lend me. And the strings were very old and needed to be replaced; the concertmaster is a luthier and took the viola with him to work on it. I met him at the Conservatory the next week and he said that he had had to adjust the bridge and the sound post as well as replacing the strings. Fortunately the orchestra fund was willing to pick up the tab. And my violin shoulder rest, when adjusted to its largest size, was miraculously able to fit on the viola, saving me around 50 CHF. At the beginning I had some trouble with peg slippage, but it seems to be getting better now that the strings are stretched out. This paragraph is dedicated to my stringed-instrument-playing readers, who would have understood all the terms used, and to my non-muscially-inclined readers, who toughed it out and read all the way through even when encountering strange words like "luthier" and "sound post."

So that's the viola. And actually playing it has been a success so far. I only started viola last year, also because I was in an orchestra that needed another one and because there was somebody that was willing to lend me one, so it can still be difficult for me to read the clef. I'm getting better, though. And the section sounds better with another player. The director is pretty happy that I switched and throws me compliments on my playing here and there. Some of them are in the form of viola jokes yet still manage to be nice. Yesterday was my second rehearsal in the viola section and the section unanimously promoted me to the first stand.

Orchestra people are awesome. It's always nice to be part of a group, but there is something about playing music together that creates an instant bond. Even though we all speak different languages (quite literally, there are those who prefer German and those who prefer French), we get along very well. One time I actually spent the entire break talking to a group of university students in English, but I don't anticipate that happening again. In general, I try to discourage people from speaking English with me, with the exception of other exchange students whose first language is English. The only difficulties I have with the other orchestra members are that there are so many names to remember, and that it's hard to remember who prefers which language. But I'm sure it will get better after a while, once I have had more time to talk with them.

A Swiss Travel Guide, or I Hop on a Train with my GA

I thought I would let you in on my travel experiences in Switzerland. Rotary has generously paid for my general subscription ticket (Generalabonnement in German or abonnement général in French) which works on trains, buses, and boats throughout the country for the entire year. Thus, it is very easy for me to travel around when I have some time, like on weekends or breaks. And I have been all over the place.

On a Friday in the middle of September, each class in the school takes a day trip somewhere. My class rode the train to Bern and went to the Paul Klee Center in the morning and then spent the rest of the afternoon free. I walked around and took pictures with the two other girls in this picture, Fitore and Sophie. It was nice to spend time with classmates outside of school.

Another weekend, I went to Luzern with three other American exchange students that go to my school. I almost missed the train because the bus I thought I was going to take into Fribourg apparently doesn't run on Saturdays, and the next one came ten minutes late! But I managed to run to the train and jump on before it left. One of the students I was traveling with, Jessica, knows a girl that lives in Luzern because she spent an exchange year in Missouri, where Jessica is from. We met her there too and spent the day walking around and seeing what there was to see. We also took advantage of our GA tickets and hopped on a boat that went around the lake. Luzern is a beautiful city, especially when the lights reflect off the water at night. And, yes, those are swans at the bottom center of the photograph.

There is an organization, called Rotex, for people who recently did an exchange with Rotary, and they sponsor weekend outings for the inbound students. Our first one was in Chur, or Coire, and we were to bring a dessert from our home country to share. So a day or two beforehand, I made cookies in my host family's kitchen. It was something of an adventure. My host mom obviously had never made cookies, which didn't surprise me because they don't really exist here, and when she saw the finished batter in a bowl, she asked, "How many does that make?" And I told her it would be enough for four dozen cookies, which she didn't believe until she saw them. Also, my ingredients were slightly different from usual, plus I had to convert the recipe from cups to milliliters so I could measure my ingredients. I was originally offered a scale to weigh the ingredients, but since the American recipe gave the amounts in volume, I did not feel like looking up the densities of each ingredient to convert to grams. Anyway, I commented that they looked flatter than normal, and my host sister said, "Can you still eat them?" And my host dad, who was sampling one, said something along the lines of, "Yes, and they are pretty good!" So the cookies were a success.

And so was the Rotex weekend. We spent the night in a nuclear accident bunker under an elementary school. The bunks were three high. I was convinced I would hit my head upon waking up, but I managed not to somehow. It was great to see everyone, and it is a really unique group of people. Of course I hung out with some Americans, but also with people from Canada, Ecuador, Germany, and other countries. Most of the inbounds speak English as a first or second language, and the ones who speak it as a second language speak it surprisingly well. On the first day we competed in a scavenger hunt involving finding the price of a certain bakery product, taking a picture of the whole group in front of a monument, and finding people in the city to teach us a song in Swiss German and draw a picture for us. Since I was the only one in my group who could speak German (the others are here to learn French), I had to do all the talking. And it was raining, which led me to discover that what I thought was a rain jacket that I was wearing was just a simple windbreaker and didn't block the water out at all. But it was still fun, and I dried out eventually. The second day was spent at the Viamala Schlucht, the beautiful ravine pictured below.

I have a fall break here, something I always wished I could have in high school. My host family wanted me to tell them where I wanted to go within Switzerland, but the problem was that I am unfamiliar with the country and didn't know what to tell them. I asked a lot of people for suggestions, but even the Swiss people I asked had very few ideas to give me. It made me think about how familiar people really are with their surroundings. When I asked my host sister if she had any places that she wanted to see, she said, "I don't really know what there is to see here." I think people get stuck in their daily routines and become familiar with just a few places, their homes, the office, school, the nearest grocery store. So I encourage all of you to find something new to do in your own cities or familiarize yourself with a new area somewhere near to you. It could come in handy if you ever host an exchange student!

Well, we ended up finding some places to visit, and it turned out to be a spectacular week. On Monday we visited the Aletsch Glacier, located in the heart of the Alps near Fiesch. The night before we left, my host mom said, "You aren't scared of riding on gondolas, are you?" I suppose that if I were, it would have been too late. So we rode on some trains, then some gondolas, and the glacier was beautiful. We were lucky enough to have chosen a very clear day with few clouds, and I could see the most famous Alps from there, including the Matterhorn, Jungfrau, Eiger, and Mönch. The two people in the photograph can give you an idea of its scale.

The next two days we spent in the canton of Ticino, in the southeast of the country, where Italian is the official language. Unfortunately, my Italian is sorely lacking. But fortunately, everyone in the service industries there also speaks German, meaning I could order my food in German. Ticino is apparently the warm, sunny place for Swiss people to go to on vacation if they don't want to leave the country. It wasn't terribly warm and sunny while we were there, but it was still very nice. Near Lugano, there is a miniature park (Swissminiatur) with representations of all the famous sites in the country. So if you ever come to Switzerland and want to be able to see everything there, just come to the Swissminiatur, and you won't have to go any farther to see buildings from all the major cities, small versions of the most famous mountains, and examples of architectural styles of the different regions.

We spent the night in Ascona. As we neared the hotel, my host mom said, "By the way, I'm using bank coupons to pay for the hotel room, and technically, it is supposed to be four family members listed, so if anyone asks, your name is Krista Tinguely and you only speak French and a little German, absolutely no English." I guess the idea is that the hotel people would be able to speak good German and English but not as much French. But nobody asked. Ascona is very pretty. It's on the edge of Lago Maggiore, which is a pretty big lake that extends into Italy. The town itself has a lot of narrow, twisting alleys full of shops. There is also a modern art museum, where my family left me for an hour. Either they aren't interested in art, or they ran out of coupons from the bank. Probably both.

Something I noticed at about this point in the trip is that being around my host family all the time had an interesting effect on my Swiss German. When not directly talking to me, they speak to each other in Swiss German. And hearing it almost constantly, while sitting in the train, while walking around, while eating, I began to understand it more and more. By the end of the week, Swiss German phrases were floating around in my head. Now, I am not at all boasting that I have a mastery of the language. In fact, I still have a lot of trouble understanding most of it. But I am making progress. The other thing about spending a week just with my host family is that I only spoke German all week, and I found that I have gotten comfortable enough with it that I can joke around. Jokes and puns are something I have always enjoyed in English, but at the beginning of my exchange, joking around rarely came to mind because it took so much effort to try to explain things seriously. And jokes are a completely different level of communication. So I really enjoyed being able to use my sense of humor in another language. It made the week that much more fun. Speaking of jokes, here's one from my host dad, who often tells me jokes in German, few of which I understand completely. But he tries. So the joke:

-Philosopher 1: Do you know what time it is?

-Philosopher 2: No, I don't have a watch. Sorry.

-Philosopher 1: That's okay. It was nice to discuss the matter with you anyway.

This is a rough translation. And it's not even that funny. It was just funny to me because I usually laugh when I think I'm supposed to, even if I don't get what's funny, and this time I actually understood the joke.

After we got back from Ticino, there was no set plan for the next day because it was supposed to be kind of rainy and nasty. One of my dreams in coming to Switzerland was to see CERN (Centre Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire), so of course I had been looking around on their website for ways to visit, and I found that tours of the LHC (Large Hadron Collider) have to be planned three to four months in advance. But there are also exhibits about the research that goes on there, and I suggested that we go to Geneva and see them. My family isn't really into science that much either, but they agreed to go and my host dad suggested we see the UN while we were there. We did, and the tour at that time was in English, so I understood it okay and so did Dominique, but the host parents were a little lost.

Finding CERN was a tram and bus adventure. It takes about thirty minutes to get there from the train station. This wooden dome was a gift for CERN's 50th anniversary. I guess I was surprised to learn that the research facility opened in the 1950s because it seems like most of the hype has been more recent. But the exhibits were pretty interesting, and I'm definitely going to look into taking a tour of the LHC sometime later this year.

The last day of the week was spent in Sion (Settin) and the surrounding area. In St. Léonard there is an underground lake that we visited. It was cold and rainy and nasty but kind of cool. The hills there are covered in vineyards. In Sion, or just next to the city, there are a few castles. We hiked up to two of them, the less elevated one first. The view from the top was beautiful, and at Château Tourbillon, part of which is pictured below, I finally found a place that felt magical to me. Don't go thinking of the Disney Castle, please. I think there are different places that speak to different people, and I found mine. Inside those walls on the top of a very high hill, surrounded by high grass, trees, and little yellow and purple flowers, I felt like I could have spent hours just sitting. The elevation somehow elevated my mood, which continued for the rest of the day. And just look at it! Doesn't it look a little magical to you too? And on the right, the cat was looking at me. I just had to take a picture.

Treatise on a Few Disconnected Topics, or How Ultimate Frisbee Came to Fribourg

This is a view from the inside of the bus stop looking out. I thought it was neat. I'm settling in here after a couple of months, and I keep doing things and thinking, hey that would make a cool blog post! And then I am busy doing something else and never actually wrote the blog post. So I have a list of things to write about, and I'm going to cover a few here for your reading entertainment.

First, something funny I noticed is that I don't really know how to answer my phone. A couple of times someone has called whose number wasn't already in the contacts list, and at those moments I was unsure of what to say when I picked up. I think I just defaulted to "Hello?" but theoretically anyone calling me could be wanting to speak any of three different languages. Once I called my piano teacher to change a lesson time, and he answered the phone simply with his first and last name. So while people answer house phones with the family name, I guess individuals answer cell phones with their full names here. So I guess that would solve my problem.

Another thing: whenever I have to approach someone and talk to them to ask a question or something, I always have to think beforehand of which words I might need to use. And if I'm in Fribourg, I usually have to do this in French and German so something intelligible comes out of my mouth if they don't understand the first one I try. So one day I thought, once I get back to Kansas and I can pretty safely assume that everyone I approach will understand if I speak English to them, it's going to be so easy to talk to people! I think that if I was ever nervous about asking for directions or whatever back home, it will be much less of a problem when I return because I won't have to plan everything I am going to say before the conversation even starts.

My host dad keeps bees. And, accordingly, he has a beekeeper outfit. It's so cool. What's more, one time he came down to dinner in a firefighter outfit! I think he's part of a volunteer fire department or something. Anton is full of surprises. One time he came to pick me up from an orchestra rehearsal and on the way back he gave me sort of a linguistic tour. He showed me the borders between French-speaking and German-speaking neighborhoods, and he gave me examples of French words that have been assimilated into the German spoken in Switzerland (not just Swiss German dialects, but also the words that are used in High German in Switzerland). He reminded me a little of Gus Portokalos, the father character in My Big Fat Greek Wedding, who likes to point out how every word has a Greek root. Anton likes to point things out. He's very proud of Switzerland. And when we went to pick up Dominique from a friend's house, he introduced me as "unsere American girl" with a big grin on his face. If he wears some other fun outfit in the future, I'll definitely let you know.

Cows. Left and right, here and there, and everywhere, on the hill, around the house, on the street in front of the bus. And the melody of their bells is there all night while I sleep. They ate the field next to the house. Zumholz is sort of in the countryside. There are a lot of agricultural buildings and vehicles and animals all over the place. I love cows.

A few things I miss: water fountains, Kleenex, and lunch boxes. And don't be offended if your name wasn't on the list. Notice I wrote "things" and not "people." So if you aren't on the list, you are probably not an inanimate object. I really was looking for water fountains for the first couple of weeks of school before I realized that you bring a water bottle and then fill it in the sinks inside the classrooms or in the bathroom. These sinks are also great for rinsing off the utensils that you bring from home to eat lunch with. There are utensils in the cafeteria, but both times I have used them, it was when I forget one from home, and I had to ask politely if I could borrow them. Kleenex boxes, as far as I can tell, are nonexistent. I haven't seen anything like this in my house, so I have just been using toilet paper. People have these little packets of ten or so tissues that they bring to school with them when they have a cold. I shudder to think how much it would cost, so when I had a cold I got through it on lengths of toilet paper and hope. Refrigeration here is, well, less powerful than it is in the States. Sometimes things from the refrigerator just don't feel cold when I take them out. And newly purchased items sometimes sit on the counter for a while before going in to the fridge. Maybe it's due to the generally low temperatures that food safety seems to be less of a concern. And I've definitely become less paranoid about food safety since I've come here. Like the thing about lunch boxes. You don't chill your food all morning before eating it, you just bring it in an old Coop or H&M bag and then eat it. Lots of people bring leftovers and microwave them. I usually have the same thing for lunch every day, unless there are leftovers, because the only food I know about that I can take for lunch is sandwiches (bread, butter, cheese, and lunch meat), yogurt, fruit, and Farmer cereal bars. So I eat these virtually every school day. Somehow I'm not tired of them yet.

I love ultimate frisbee. Many summers of learning from the best gave me a good basis on the proper rules and strategies of the game, and I had a chance to use my experience this month in gym class. I chose New Games as my gym subject, and with about twenty other girls, I played lacrosse, American football, and ultimate frisbee. One day we had a substitute teacher who tried to explain the rules of ultimate frisbee, and then we played a tournament of sorts for a couple of hours. There was an odd number of students, and the sub ended up on my team. After a while I figured out he didn't really know the rules, so I proceeded to explain them. And every time I came up with a rule as it applied to the situation, he would say something like, "This game is actually really cool. I had no idea it would be this much fun." So I was proud to have shared a bit of the expertise I gained at Village Thursday morning ultimate sessions with the Swiss. I think it's summed up well by something one of my teammates said every time we scored: "Kansas power!"

Musings on a Sunday Afternoon

This is a picture of the cat that is sitting on my lap as I write this post. I have discovered that I am more of a cat person than I thought. Thank you, allergy shots! And since my blog always looks cooler with a picture in the post, I thought I would throw it in.

Well, it's Sunday afternoon. I assume most of you inferred that from the title. It's that lazy time of day between lunch and dinner, when not a whole lot is going on. So I thought it would be a great time to write another blog post. I guess that makes my posting patterns irregular because they had been getting farther and farther apart, and now there are three in the course of one weekend! I, however, appreciate the break from all the weekend activity that had kept me from posting very often for the past couple of weeks, mostly because I am getting over a cold. Parents: don't worry, I am taking my medicine and drinking water and sleeping and all that. I would even gargle with saltwater if I knew where the salt was.

I think my project for this week is going to be figuring out the kitchen. I have a basic idea of where to find stuff, but I want to actually cook something. And I have the perfect opportunity, which is that next weekend is a Rotex weekend. Half of the inbounds to Switzerland go hang out in Chur for the weekend, and we all have to bring a dessert from our home country. So I will probably make the family cookie or coffee cake recipe. I also considered trying Rice Krispy Treats. I know for a fact there are Rice Krispies here, because I have eaten them for breakfast mixed with various flavors of yogurt. I am not sure, however, about the availability of marshmallows. So that recipe might have to wait until I have a chance to check for myself.

This morning I slept in quite late to give my immune system a chance to catch up, and as I was eating peanut butter toast and apple slices with peanut butter around noon (thank you, Rotary Leawood!), I thought about what Sundays meant before I came to Switzerland. In the morning, church. In the afternoon, homework and chores. In the evening, youth group. Here it's a bit different. My host family doesn't regularly go to church. The only time I went was shortly after I arrived and a church in Plaffeien was celebrating the hundredth anniversary of its being rebuilt after a fire. My host mom offered to visit a church with me a couple of weeks ago, but I have not yet been able to take her up on it. Maybe next week. I do have homework here, but so far I don't have that much, though I have been assured that it will get worse. And my responsibilities in terms of chores are very minimal here. It might seem weird for me to say this, but I kind of miss manual labor. There is something ever so gratifying about mowing the lawn, washing the dishes, folding the laundry, or scrubbing out the bathtub. Granted, once I return, I probably won't want to do those things. But here all I really do is clean my room every once in a while.

News from this week is orchestra-related. For the past few weeks, I have been researching and visiting different orchestras in the area. The first one was a youth orchestra, but the director thought that since I was only going to be here for a year, it was not a good idea for me to join. They have a concert pretty much every month, which is a lot. The first orchestra I actually visited and played with in rehearsal was in Düdingen, a town between Zumholz and Fribourg, and I really enjoyed meeting the people there and talking to them. Unfortunately, I was not as excited about their level of playing. The second was at the Conservatory where I take my piano lessons, but the level there was also not quite up to par, mostly because a lot of the musicians were very young. The third was also in Fribourg, and it's called l'Orchestre de la Ville et de l'Université de Fribourg. I was much more impressed, and I was not the only new person there. The orchestra seems to be continuously growing, which is a good sign. Also, I noticed that the viola section was proportionately smaller than the others and let slip the information that I can play the viola but that I didn't bring one with me. The person I was talking to (a bass player who is also the president of the orchestra, as I understood it) immediately ran off to find someone with an extra viola. So it looks like I may have a chance to continue the exploration I began last year on this instrument, which is exciting.

As my host sister does her religion homework in the next room, I'll think about starting my own homework (answering some complicated philosophical questions in French, plus some nice, simple limits and such for math). As for the rest of the day, I have borrowed copies of Lord of the Rings in French and The Little Price in German, so I might dig into those. And I brought some Shakespearean comedies with me, since we never managed to get around to them in school. If I want to keep reading in English after that, I will probably turn to www.gutenberg.org for some of the classics. I would send you all letters, but my host family doesn't have any stamps. Looks like it'll have to wait until Monday when I can go buy them myself. Another thing I need to do: translate names of ingredients into German so I can ask whether we have them or not when I want to bake something. So, until the next post, have a nice Sunday afternoon!

Snail Mail Cabbage Challenge

Dear Readers,

I love getting snail mail. Don't you? Other than the packages from my Rotary Club in Kansas (club flags I forgot to pick up before I left plus PB&J) and my family (computer backups and thank-you notes), I have happily received letters from two very good friends of mine. What I found interesting was that there was a common theme between the two letters: cabbage. Now, the whole cabbage thing is sort of an inside joke, and I know a lot of you aren't in on it, but here is your chance! I challenge you to write me a letter (if you want to send drawings or pictures or anything else, that would be cool too) and include somewhere either the word cabbage or a picture of a cabbage. No real cabbages, please. I think they would not stand up to the transportation. If you send me a letter in the mail, I promise to send something back. But wouldn't it be fun to get mail from Switzerland? Of course.

Here's my address:

Andrea Brown

c/o Fam. Tinguely

Allmend 62

CH-1719 Zumholz (FR)

Switzerland

I hope some of you will take me up on this challenge, because it would be fun for both of us.

Sincerely,

Andrea

Have an apple--and a nice day!

One morning last week they were passing out free apples at the station. Having gotten over my reluctance to eat unwashed fruit, I gladly took one. It was accompanied by a friendly "bonne journée." I carried the apple in my left hand and my violin in my right as I walked to school. There are some things I really love about walking to school. One is that there is a chocolate factory a couple of blocks away from school (anyone thinking Roald Dahl right about now?) and the air in the morning smells accordingly of vats of melted chocolate. For those of you familiar with St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota, the smell is somewhat like that of the Malt-O-Meal factory there. The other thing I love about walking to school is that I walk past a Dominican convent on the way, and I often see a Dominican friar walking along the Boulevard de Pérolles. This time I saw not one but three--dressed in full Dominican regalia, full-length robes and all. I was surprised the first time I saw one; they look like nobody I have ever seen walking down Mission Road.

When I reached school, I dropped my violin off for its stay in the office during the day (the lockers here are about half the length of a violin case) and proceeded downstairs to do some homework and wait for class to start. Since I was still carrying my apple around, I figured I might as well just eat it then. I bit in--wow! The texture was crispy and crunchy; the flavor, sweet and tangy--in fact, a perfect combination of the two. Easily the best apple I had eaten here. As I neared the core, I didn't slow down. The normal phenomenon, in which the core area becomes relatively bland and flavorless and loses the crispy texture of the outside, didn't happen. I reached the seeds and decided that it was probably time to stop and disposed of the remains.

Maybe it seems extraneous to describe my apple-eating process in such detail, but it was no ordinary apple. There was something special about it. Maybe it was fresh from the orchard. Maybe it was genetically engineered (sorry, Jamie), although I kind of doubt it; it seems like that is less prevalent in Europe than in the States. But the most plausible explanation that came to me as I was consuming the sweet, crispy goodness, was that the apple was so special because it was given freely, with a smile and a wish for a nice day to come. And I stongly doubt that the woman who handed me an apple that morning in the train station will ever read my blog, but still, thank you, woman who gave me an apple one morning in the train station. It really did make my day.

As a side note, there are three things I would like to point out. The first is that dashes do not automatically appear here like they do in normal word processors, which disappoints me a bit. Still, thanks to junior year English, I know how to make dashes out of hyphens. Speaking of which, the second thing is that I totally just used a junior year sentence pattern. Can anyone find it? If so, you are either an English teacher or...well. And thirdly, I don't usually eat that much of the apple. Once I even get close to the core, I usually just stop there. But there is someone I know seems to always eat the entire apple, with the small exception of the seeds and stem. That's why I am giving the Top Apple Consumer Award to Mr. C. Poplawski. And the honorable mention goes to Mr. R. Royer for a memorable day in math class that one time.

Gruyères

Last Sunday I went to Gruyères with my host dad Anton and my host sister Fabienne. Anton drove, and I was once again reminded of how Americans tend to be able to tolerate long car trips. The trip to Gruyères was not long at all, probably forty-five minutes or so, but there were definitely a couple of Swiss German "Are we there yet?"s (not coming from me; I don't speak Swiss German yet). But I understand enough to know the trip seemed long to the other two. This is a theme that was brought up a couple of weekends ago at the family reunion. There was a host something-or-other that wanted to practice his English, so he spoke English to me and I tried to answer in German. The conversation went something like this:

Relative: How long did you drive to get here?

Me: Etwa zwei Stunden. (About two hours.)

Relative: Wow, that's long! I think that Americans take long car trips. You must be used to it.

Me: Ja. (Yes.)

Relative: We Swiss don't like long trips. We just get on the train and one hour is a long trip for us.

Me: Ja, ich finde zwei Stunden nicht so lang. Ich und meine Familie in Amerika fahren manchmal zwei oder drei Tage. Wie sagt man "roadtrip?" (Yes, I don't think two hours is that long. Sometimes my family in America and I drive for two or three days. How do you say "roadtrip?")

It must be because everything is so close together in Europe that everyone has this attitude about traveling. When I first mentioned roadtrips to my host family, my host dad said that if they spent that long on the train, they could already be in Spain. Unfortunately, train and Spain do not rhyme in German. (Zug, Spanien).

Anyway, my post is supposed to be about Gruyères, so let me tell you about that. After the short-by-American-standards drive, we found an illegal-by-American-standards parking space and proceeded to walk around. Next to Gruyères is a mountain town called Moléson. Maybe that is also the name of the mountain; I'm not sure. But there was a fun little cheese-making demonstration that Anton wanted to see, and then we went on a hike. Fabienne walks surprisingly fast considering how short she is (a good foot shorter than me!). Even with my long legs, I sometimes have trouble keeping up. So we went ahead while Anton lagged behind. I always enjoy my hikes with Fabienne. First, I find her High German very easy to understand, and second, she does most of the talking. It's not that I don't like to talk, it's just that it can be nice to sit back (or passively walk-run up the mountain) and listen, especially when it takes so much effort to think of how to formulate what you want to say in the other language. It is getting easier, but I am still far from fluent.

Anton and Fabienne were disappointed by the foggy weather, saying it would make for bad photography conditions. I beg to differ. Also, I did not realize the trees lined up in the middle of these two photos until I put them up here. Cool!

After Moléson was Gruyères. The touristy-town-area was filled with restaurants, souvenir shops, and artistically decorated motorcycles. I think the motorcycles were a temporary installment. Then we went into the castle and looked around. I used it as an opportunity to look for cool patterns to photograph. In a few of the rooms, there were paintings on exhibition, which I really liked.

My host family showed me a website (wilmaa.com) where you can watch the major Swiss TV channels online. It's pretty cool, because I can choose German, French, or Italian. Not that I'm really trying to learn Italian or anything like that. At least not yet. And it's nice when I'm in the mood for something other than what everybody else is watching. For those of you who would like this kind of thing, I am sorry to have to tell you it only works here. But wwitv.com is good for language learning, if you are interested.

This week: Oral presentation about the Milky Way for geography class on Thursday (I'm a little nervous! One, it will be in French. Two, I don't know how well the OpenOffice version of PowerPoint will work on the computer there.) On Friday, c'est la journée de classe. Each class chooses something to spend the day doing instead of going to school. My class is going to the Paul Klee museum in Bern, then eating and shopping. Yay for European fashion! Boo for European prices!

Food and Photo Quest

I thought it would be fun to write a bit about food. I will use everything I ate today to describe what the food is like here and how it is consumed. Let's start with breakfast. Today I had about seven minutes in which to make and eat breakfast or make lunch, and I chose to eat breakfast and buy lunch later. There are cornflakes, which may or may not be stale (something which I have begun to notice less and less), and it is possible that there is also milk in the refrigerator. However, the refrigerators here seem not to be very cold, and the milk is often expired by the time I find it. So I have begun to mix my cereal with yogurt. Today: strawberry.

Before you mentally jump to lunch, let me throw in the fifteen-minute morning break. Yes, between the 3rd and 4th classes of the day, there is a midmorning break. There are also five-minute breaks between classes during which eating is often possible because there is no need to waste time walking from one classroom to another in most cases, since a lot of the time, the teachers switch rooms instead of the students. During the break, there is a table at which various baked goods and drinks are available for purchase. I imagine that this serves as breakfast for some, but whenever I buy anything, I eat it hobbit-style (as a second breakfast). Today I had a nice roll with some type of sugar chunks on top. This is one of the more popular items. When I got back to the room, I remembered I had thrown a couple of bread pieces in my backpack and ate one of those. Water fountains are either invisible or nonexistent, and you refill water bottles from a sink that is in the room. Some people drink straight from the tap.

Now for lunch. I had a two-hour break today, and I, with a couple of other exchange students, hopped on a bus and went to the old part of the city (Altstadt in German, vielle ville in French). We thought we would wander for a bit and then pick a place to patronize. We ended up choosing a Lebanese-style fast food restaurant. I had a kebap, which is some kind of bread filled with some kind of meat, lettuce, sauce of some sort, and perhaps other things that I did not notice. Also offered for sale here were hamburgers. One of the other exchange students ordered one. It was...well, how do you think a Lebanese-style Swiss imitation-American hamburger would be? It was like that. In close proximity to the restaurant was an ice cream stand. The ice cream here is intense. This is no Dairy Queen. It's even a step up from Baskin Robbins. Both of the ice cream places I've tried here have signs to the effect that the ice cream is homemade and worthy of being labeled art. Today's flavors: pistachio and dark chocolate (70%). Another thing: dark chocolate is called black chocolate here. Schwarzeschokolade in German, chocolat noir in French. And don't think I eat like this every day for lunch. Usually I just bring a sandwich or two from home, along with a yogurt or fresh fruit and water.

After such a lunch, I hardly had the appetite for a snack in the afternoon. In fact, I usually just save up my hunger for dinner, because it is usually delicious. There are two types of dinner that exist at my host family's house. The first is for days when a hot meal was eaten for lunch, days such as Saturday and Sunday, and this meal consists of a pick-and-choose-your-own spread of bread, butter, jam, Nutella, cold cuts, cheese, and the like. Today's dinner was of the other type: hot meal. I made sure to ask what everything was called so I could properly write about it. There were pieces of chicken that appeared to have been grilled. There was salad (always the same dressing, so it's a good thing I like it). There was something called Fleischkäse. When I first heard the word, I laughed because it means, quite literally, "meat cheese." It tastes like meat, though, so I'm not sure where the cheese part came from. And there was Spätzli, my favorite, which is made from flour, water, and eggs. It's very like pasta, but it has a chewy texture. For some reason, nobody else usually drinks anything with dinner, except for sometimes beer or coffee. I like to have ice tea, and I have recently discovered green Rivella, which is mixed with green tea and is quite delicious, so they always set out a cup for me. An interesting social aspect is that everyone always eats dinner together here, which is different from how many families handle dinner in the United States. Also, if there is still someone eating, everyone else sits and talks, and this even happens once everybody has finished.

So, that's food. In other news, my younger host sister is back, for reasons that will remain undisclosed on the web of the wide world, so don't be surprised if she shows up in some subsequent blog posts. Also, I joined the school choir this week. It meets during lunch time, which is no big deal, because I still have thirty minutes to eat before the practice starts. I have not been in a choir for a long time, but I thought this would be a good way to meet other students at the school. The music from the first practice included songs in English and Swiss German. Also Vivaldi's Gloria, which is in Latin. Soon I will look into joining (or at least auditioning for) l'orchestre des jeunes de Fribourg (Fribourg Youth Orchestra).

Yesterday was my first meeting with the Rotary club that is hosting me here. It was scheduled for 6:00 pm, and I got out of school at 4:10, so I didn't have enough time to go home in between. I decided to spend that time walking around the city and taking pictures. It was a photo quest of sorts, and these are some of my favorites:

The countryside on the top left is obviously not part of the city. This was taken at a stop on the way to a family reunion last weekend. We drove through the Emmental region, which is pictured here. This is where Emmentaler comes from (what Americans called Swiss cheese). On the top right is a fountain outside of the cathedral in Fribourg. The bottom left is a view of a street going through the old city (Altstadt, vielle ville). The bottom right is a detail of the cathedral.

This is one of my favorite pictures of the city. On the right, you can see the red-roofed buildings of the old city (Altstadt, vielle ville). If I understood my host father correctly, the old city dates from the 13th century, so it is around 700 years old. The tall building just above the vanishing point of the bridge is the cathedral. On the left is the new part of the city. I like the juxtaposition of the two parts of Fribourg, the old and the new.

School

This is my first week of school. I have really only had three full days of school because on Monday we only had to go for an hour to meet the class and get basic information. The way schedules work is that everyone is divided into classes of about 20, according to language. There are seven francophone classes in the third year, and I am in one of them. It's a nice system for me as an exchange student because I am with the same people in most of my classes, so it gives me a chance to learn everyone's name and get to know them better.

My schedule is different every day. These are the classes and hours per week of each class: philosophy (3), English (3), physics (2), homeroom (1, and this is "maître de classe," roughly translated), music (5), math (4), gym (3), German (3), French (4), art (2), history (2), geography (2), religion (1). School starts for me at 8:05 or 8:50, depending on the day. There is a project called le travail de maturité or Maturarbeit which everyone starts in the third year, but I don't have to do it, so that gives me Monday afternoons off. On the rest of the days, school ends at 3:30 pm or 4:20 pm.

Getting to school is quite different from what I did last year, which involved something like jumping out of bed, pulling on some clothes, shoving down some breakfast, throwing together a lunch, brushing my teeth, and driving ten minutes to school. Here I get up at 6:30 or so, and we leave the house at 6:45. (I shower at night to give myself more sleep time in the morning.) It's a five minute walk to the bus stop, which involves climbing a steep gravel path. There are two buses that come one after the other, and we always get on the second. I suppose it is less crowded. Thirty minutes later, I am at the train station, and from there I can take another bus or walk ten or fifteen minutes to school. So far I have been walking because the weather has been nice, but once it gets cold I will probably take the bus.

My easiest class by far is English; I talked to the proviseur and was told I am not obliged to attend my English classes, though I might still show up for the discussion hour anyway. We are supposed to keep the same schedule as our classes for a month before we can switch. After a month, I want to try to take something else in the place of English, perhaps Italian. My math class is also really easy. I am not sure whether the teacher knows I am an exchange student yet because I have managed to answer his questions in French so far. But the material being covered is really what I learned in the first couple of years of high school. I don't know what all is to be covered in that class, but so far we have been "learning" about inverse functions. I miss calculus! But on the other hand, it is nice to know everything that is going on and have no trouble with the material.

So far I have found the music class promising. The school has no official orchestra, but I understand that there is some kind of collaboration at some point with other collèges in the city. Choosing music as my specific option may open the door to music lessons with professors from the conservatory of Fribourg or being able to play in an orchestra, which the school supposedly pays for. What we have done up to this point in the class, though, has been theory- and singing-related. They use the solfège system, which I have not learned before, so that will be fun.

It was only a year ago (plus a couple of months) that I started to learn German on my own. I took it last year as a class at my high school, and for the past three weeks I have been hearing it and speaking it a lot, since that is what my host family speaks. This combination of factors must have worked, because I appear to be at the same level of German as my francophone classmates who have been studying it for eight years. The teacher told me that among the francophone students, it is not generally considered cool to speak German or to learn to speak it well, so my attitude must have made the difference.

Gym is different from what I am used to. I satisfied my physical education requirements in high school by spending a total of six weeks during the summers taking gym classes for five hours a day during summer school. Here, everyone does gym every year in school. My first gym class consisted of a lot of students sitting on the floor while the teachers gave a computer presentation about the winter sport days and the available sports to choose from. Yes, that's right, my school has a week during the year where everyone spends Wednesday through Friday at sort of a sports camp. There are many different activities to choose from: ski, snowboard, dance, hiking, rock climbing, martial arts, scuba diving, and several more. Also, there are choices as to what you do during your gym class at school. Among my favorite choices: trampoline, juggling, new sports (including ultimate frisbee!), and yoga. I have not actually done anything in gym yet, but I'll keep you posted.

Another difference: when a teacher is sick and cannot come to school, the class is cancelled. Unless the school knows that the teacher is going to be gone for a long time, there is not a substitute. For this reason, I have not yet been to my art class, and I just got to go home early that day. Early meaning 2:45 pm, which is when I got out of school every day last year!