Fribourgeois Adventures

This lovely photograph of the mountains in summer was taken just outside the St. Beatus caves (http://www.beatushoehlen.ch/index.php). The water in the foreground is Thunersee. It was kind of hazy today because it was so hot! In Celsius it was in the high 30s, which, for those of you who prefer Fahrenheit, is almost 100 degrees. So it was a relief to walk through the caves, where it is 8-10 Celsius yearround. To get there from my host family's house, we took the bus, then the train, then a boat. From there, we hiked up a mountain for twenty minutes or so until we reached a very touristy-looking area around the caves, where dragon-related souvenirs and such were for sale along with food and tour tickets. The inside of the cave looked like it had been manipulated quite a bit for the tourists, compared to some of the caves I have been in in Missouri and South Dakota. There was even a big model inside the cave of the colorful dragon that St. Beatus legendarily fought and conquered in the 6th century. Nevertheless, it was a pleasant escape from the heat.

Last weekend, I had the opportunity to meet a lot of interesting people. On Sunday it was the orientation for all the exchange students inbound to Switzerland, and on the same day my younger host sister Fabienne left for Michigan. I spent Saturday night with Katelyn, another American exchange student, at her host family's house, which may be one of my future host families this year. The change from speaking and hearing only German with my host family to speaking and hearing only French with the other host family and English with the American student was sudden. There are two other exchange students being hosted by my host Rotary club (Fribourg-Sarine) and they are both girls from America. So that makes three of us: me from Kansas, Jessica from Missouri, and Katelyn from Arkansas. The other two are here to learn French but they speak mostly English with their host families so far. Of course we all spoke English when we were together.

At the orientation, however, there was a total of about seventy-five inbound students from thirteen different countries. I would guess that more than half were from the US. There were many from South America, some from Canada, and some from Asia. There was even one from Germany, which was a bit surprising, but I guess she came to Switzerland to learn French. Everyone was wearing their Rotary blazers, of course, and we traded our pins and business cards. The lectures were conducted in English, and from talking to the other exchange students, I think most of them have very good English, even if it is not their first language. That means that some of the students from, say, Ecuador, learned Spanish first, are also fluent in English, and now have come to Switzerland to learn German. So that was the orientation. The Swiss Rotary people gave us rules and instructions and such, most of which was a repetition of what we have already read and signed and heard at our own orientations before we left. That part was not particularly engaging, but it was fun to see all the other exchange students.

Jessica's host parents drove the three of us to and from the orientation, which was in Olten, a central location about an hour's drive from Fribourg. Jessica's current host family is the third host family that may host me this year. In other words, the three of us have the same three possible host families and may just rotate around. They are all very nice, and it was fun to meet some other Americans in a Swiss context.

I have discovered that I cannot really get away with just going with the flow in my host family. Whenever we go shopping for groceries at Coop or Migros (the two main grocery chains), my host mother always asks me to tell her what I like so she can buy it. I really would just eat whatever they give me, because everything has been good so far, but I tried saying that anything is fine and it didn't work. So now I try to express some sort of opinion whenever they ask me, even if it is not a big deal or something I don't really care about. Another example is that I still have a week of summer vacation left, and they asked me where I wanted to go in Switzerland or what I wanted to see. Again, I would probably be happy going wherever they wanted to go, but I had to come up with something. I like art museums, so I said I would like to see the Kunsthaus in Zürich. Maybe we will go there next week. If anyone reading this has been to Switzerland and has some suggestions, I would be happy to hear them!

A couple of times during the week, Dominique and I and the dog (whose name I still don't know how to spell), went on a walk. The German phrase for what we were doing is "spazieren gehen," which basically means to take a walk, but it's also sort of like hiking around or walking around someplace. You could also say we went hiking because along the way were some yellow signs for hikers indicating the "Wanderweg," or the hiking trail. The hiking trails are very close to my host family's house. You can just walk out the front door and down a small hill and be in a hiking path in the forest. It was a good thing to have Dominique with me, or I would surely have gotten lost! It was nice to walk around and up and down in the countryside, in this warm weather. Taking the dog for a walk is quite different here than what you might do in America. We only used the leash when crossing a road, of which there were few, and every once in a while we would run across something kind of cool, like a little chapel in the woods or a stream with a waterfall or some cows.

Lastly, I went out and bought a mobile phone from Migros that I can use here. It would have been too expensive to use my American phone, so I just left that at home. Dominique and I went to the Migros in Düdingen, and I was surprised to find that I could do most of the talking during the purhase. I had very little trouble understanding the salesperson and was proud of myself for being able to have a conversation, or at least buy a phone, in German with very little help.