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!