Zürich and Bilingualism

Dominique and I went to Zürich for a day. We spent a lot of time just walking around because neither of us knew the city very well. It was overcast but did not rain, which made for a nice, comfortable temperature. Here are some photos of the city.

Most of these were taken from the top of one of the towers of Grossmünster. For a nominal fee, you can climb a tight spiral staircase all the way up for a nice view of the city.

On a different day, I met Jessica and Katelyn and Katelyn's host sister Frédérique and five of her friends in Fribourg to go school supply shopping. During this trip I was reminded of how expensive everything is in Europe. My planner cost me 17 CHF; a pad of paper, which you can buy for 10 cents on sale in America just before school starts, cost 3 CHF. Swiss francs are comparable to USD, so I had a nice case of sticker shock.

On the other hand, it was nice to encounter some francophones. It is still difficult for me to switch between French and German or vice versa at the drop of a hat, but I suspect it will get easier as I improve in both languages. The nice thing about Swiss French is that it is not so different from the French I learned in school. Really the only thing I have noticed is that the numbers are different, and I find them more logical. Whereas with Swiss German, I can barely begin to understand what is being said. I am to the point where I can usually tell the general topic of conversation by hearing certain words here and there but I by no means can understand the details.

Something I had wondered about before coming here was how the city functioned in two languages, and I now have an answer. From what I can tell, each person that lives in this area has a main language, the first language they grew up speaking, which is German or French. However, everyone, or almost everyone, has studied the other language in school and has enough knowledge of it to hold a simple conversation or find someone who speaks their mother tongue. The city of Fribourg itself conducts its business mostly in French. The sales clerks at stores speak French, but there is often someone on staff who speaks German. On the train and in the buses, announcements are made first in French, then in German. There are free daily newspapers available in both languages at the train station. At school, there are German-speaking classes and French-speaking classes. I am in a French-speaking class, so everyone in that class has French as their first language and everything will be taught in French, but we will be studying German as a second language. The towns or suburbs around the city of Fribourg are generally divided by language. My host family lives in Zumholz, where everyone speaks German, but Katelyn's host family lives in Corminboeuf, where everyone speaks French. It's a lot to take in, but I find it interesting.

Yesterday, I went to the school for the meeting with the other exchange students. I now appreciate the excellent teaching I have experienced in my French classes, because I had no problem understanding everything that was being said, and I suspect the other students did not understand as much. Of the students at the meeting, there were several from the U.S., but also one from Germany and one from Ghana. Needless to say, the German student is here to learn French. I'm looking forward to meeting the rest of my class next week when school starts. I also choose my classes next week, and I really like the system here; every day has a different schedule, and you get to take classes in a lot of different subjects. So far it looks like I will be taking French, German, English (?), math, physics, chemistry, biology, history, geography, philosophy, visual arts, religion, and PE.

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.

Sunflowers

These are the sunflowers that greeted me in my new bedroom upon my arrival. Coming from the sunflower state, I was surprised to see so many sunflowers here along the roads in Zumholz and Fribourg.

Fabienne is about to leave for Michigan, and while her family sees her off, I am going to stay with the Rotary counselor and another inbound exchange student from the U.S., whom I will meet tonight. I am interested to hear what she thinks about Switzerland so far.

A couple of days ago we drove ten or fifteen minutes to a nearby mountain (although, as my host mother told me, at 1000 meters or so it was not very tall in comparison to others which go up to 5000 m or so). Dominique was playing football and did not come with us, but Fabienne and I and the dog hiked along a path further up the mountain. We got really close to the cows; in fact, some of them were standing on the path and we had to go around.

Last night we all went to the open-air Kino (cinema), where they were showing Angels and Demons dubbed in German. I understand the open-air concept when it's warm, but once the sun went down, it was freezing! Luckily, I had been warned and had two jackets to wear, so I was okay. It helped that I had seen the film before so I knew what was going on even though I couldn't understand all the German.

And...I am now the proud owner of a Swiss bank account. Apparently there are problems between American and Swiss banks because of the way some Americans abuse the fact that their Swiss funds are virtually invisible to the American government. This made it more difficult to set up an account for me, but they eventually got it figured out.

These are about half of the bees that reside in the yard. Inside the house are jars of honey from these bees. My host father has an awesome beekeeper costume that he wears when he takes care of the bees, but so far I have not taken any pictures of that. These bees are relatively bee-nign...no pun intended. When we eat outside (which we do often: lunch and dinner whenever it's not raining, since it's still so warm), a couple of bees sometimes hang around, but it is no problem to shoo them away.

Stephen Colbert has dubbed bees "a sound financial investment." For more information, entertain yourself with this video:

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Bears & Balls - Bees
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Meryl Streep

Arrived!

It was a long, long day spent in airports and on airplanes. A reasonable 1:20 pm departure from Kansas City, then on to Detroit, Amsterdam, and finally Geneva. I sat next to an interesting woman on the airbus to Amsterdam who was born in the Netherlands and was going back to visit her parents. If you're going to be on a flight for six or seven hours, it's nice to be sitting by someone who actually talks to you instead of sleeping the whole time!

When I finally got to Geneva, my host family was easy to recognize in the KU shirts I sent them. We rode the train to Fribourg and then took a bus to Zumholz where they live. The younger sister, Fabienne, leaves soon for Michigan to be an exchange student for a year so I'm using her bedroom. The weather is fantastic: comfortably warm, a little rainy, but sunny for the most part. Everything I've eaten here so far has been pretty similar to what I'm used to: rice, meat, vegetables, pasta. The only thing I'm not used to is soda water. I guess it's not normal to drink water from the tap, but I have because I seem to be always thirsty.

There are lots of animals here! My host family has a dog and three cats. When I was unpacking my suitcase, the clothes in the closet were moving around by themselves, which I thought was strange, but then I discovered a cat hiding in there! They also have bees outside. It's like a small apiary. I'll post some photos later.

Today my host sisters took me to the city of Fribourg to see where the school is and such. I found an adapter so now my computer works and I have set up wireless internet so I can keep you all posted.

They say my German is pretty good, and I can understand most of what is said to me in high German. I have trouble understanding Swiss German, as I expected, but I can pick up words here and there.

Bis später,

Andrea

Preparing for Departure

Today is August the 6th and I depart on the 9th. Excited as I am to discover a new continent, this being my first time to Europe, I will miss being around my friends and family. I encourage all of you to keep in touch through this blog, e-mail, Facebook, or Skype.

It has been a challenge to get ready to leave, and the challenge isn't over yet. I keep remembering little things I have forgotten to do or items I need to return to people. I have tomorrow morning and Saturday afternoon to tie up all the loose ends and finish packing.

Then it's off to Detroit, where I sense there will be a lack of free wi-fi in the airport, then Amsterdam, then Geneva, where my host family will meet me wearing the crimson and blue KU t-shirts I mailed to them last week. Beyond that, I don't know what to expect but will approach everything with an open mind. At least I was exempted from the month-long language course, which will save me 900 Swiss francs or so.

Until my next post, auf wiederlesen! (Unless you have skype, in which case, auf wiederhören!)