Andrea in Switzerland

It's all going so fast!

2010-06-26T02:23:00.000+02:00

As I get nearer and nearer to my return date, things happen more and more quickly. I've been so busy in the past couple of weeks that I literally haven't had the time to post anything. Even now I should be sleeping instead of posting because I'm leaving in five hours for a weekend adventure and I haven't started sleeping yet! (Obviously, unless this is really a lucid dream. I guess I'll have to check the blog later and see if this post really exists.) But I thought that if I don't take a bit of time now to catch you (and me) up on what I've been doing, I'll never have the chance to do it before I get back to the US. Seriously, my schedule is completely full until I get back.

So here are my last two weeks, narrated with short descriptions and very few photos. On Thursday the 10th, I visited CERN with a group of exchange students. I am very interested in science in general and also the research they are doing at CERN in particular, so it has been one of my dreams to visit CERN and I knew I had to go sometime this year. I did actually go there in the fall with my first host family but we hadn't planned it so we only saw the exhibit they had up but didn't get the tour. This time I organized for us to have the tour and everything, and it was really neat. Also, I think we went into France at one point, which would be the first time I have ever been to France! I've heard of a project that KU was helping with at CERN and I think it would be awesome to connect with this when I get to KU and possibly come back to be behind the scenes.

Part of the group in the shuttle that took us to the different sites: Brazil, Australia, California, India, Nevada, Arkansas, Louisiana.

The following weekend I went to spend Saturday with my third host family. It was my third host sister's 9th birthday on Sunday and they had invited over some family members for a surprise birthday dinner. I helped make the cakes, but unfortunately I had to leave before the dinner because I had planned on going to my school's jazz band concert, since some of my friends were playing in it. So I went to the concert and some of the songs were pretty good, but the jazz band is still a work in progress. At least it lasted longer than the school orchestra, which only survived long enough to accompany the choir when they sang Vivaldi's Gloria towards the beginning of the year.

That Sunday I had free so I took the afternoon to go to some of the museums in Fribourg. I thought it would be ridiculous to live in this town all year and never visit the museums. The ones I ended up going to were the Museum of Art and History, which has a lot of art from the canton of Fribourg, and that was pretty neat. And the second one was for Jean Tinguely, who made sculptures that move and make sound and light when you press a button. Those were a lot of fun. Unfortunately it was raining and chilly, which I find a bit strange for June weather.

The statue's hand with the statue's shadow.

Then last week I asked for permission not to come to school on Tuesday and Wednesday and went on some adventures with my friend Katie. On Tuesday we went to Domodossola, a little town in Italy that our Swiss train passes can get us to without our having to pay. Apparently when the weather is nice it is a cute little town, but it was raining and there was nothing to do, so we took a panoramic train to Locarno to pass the time. The train ride was nice, but when we arrived in Locarno we realized that we would have to take the same train back to get back to our side of the country in time for Katie to take her last bus home from Sion. So we did. Then that evening in Fribourg some other exchange students were meeting to watch a World Cup game. I joined them for a while but then I had to take my last bus home.

A view from the panoramic train: somewhere in Italy.

On Wednesday Katie and I went to St. Gallen, which is all the way on the East side of the country. My main goal was to visit a really cool historical library that Carly Putnam had made me aware of. Again, it was raining, but it was a really beautiful library and I managed to sneak in a photo when the lady wasn't looking. St. Gallen was a nice town. It was too bad to only spend one day there but it takes about three hours to get there from Fribourg, which is why I hadn't gone more often before.

Sometimes there are reasons to be thankful for the rain!

Interior of the Stiftsbibliothek.

On Friday I went to Bern for Elisa's goodbye party. She was going home to Mexico the next week. The original plan was to go to the roof of the train station. (I've never been there, but it's supposed to be cool.) But of course it was still raining, so we ended up going to this building outside of town where there were some of her Swiss friends as well. At one point the people in the next lot over were shooting off fireworks. I'm not sure why. I'm guessing it had something to do with the general giddiness associated with the World Cup.

Then last Saturday I had a rehearsal for my piano recital. Grace from Australia was looking for something to do and came to Fribourg and met me after my rehearsal, and we ended up at an ice cream place, enjoying ice cream, free wi-fi, and a World Cup game. I believe Australia was playing in this game because Grace was really into it. That evening I went to Katelyn's dance recital and her first host parents, one of whom is in Rotary, took me there so I wouldn't have to take the train. She had a solo at the end, and it was amazing! I think it's pretty cool that she was able to continue with dance this year, like I was able to continue with music.

Last Sunday I went to Interlaken with Katie and Grace because Katie's host dad and a friend from school were playing in a music festival of some sort. We didn't actually stay for very long because we spent so much time trying to find Katie's friend and then after we finally did we had missed the parade. So we decided we'd rather spend our afternoon in a heated train than out in the wet, cold city of Interlaken. We ended up going all the way to Basel, then coming back down through Bern, where we all switched trains. Katie and went to Lausanne, where she switched to get to Sion, and I stayed in Lausanne because I had to wait a while for my next bus from home from Fribourg. I decided to take the metro because I never had before, so I took it towards the lake, and when I arrived there was this whole World Cup setup with a projector and giant screen, food stands, free noisemakers, and even stands for the fans to sit in. I unfortunately didn't get to stay for the game because I had to go back and take my bus, but I did get some free noisemakers!

The temporary eating hall at Interlaken.

The nest of World Cup fans I found at Ouchy.

Last Tuesday I had my last piano recital here. It was all Chopin because 2010 is Chopin's 200th birthday. It was very nice, even though there were only seven of us that played. At the end was another of those good-bye moments where I wasn't sure whether I would see those people again. It turns out I did see one of the other piano students in the bus this morning, though. On Wednesday, Katelyn, Jessica and I had to give our presentations to our host Rotary club. It was a lunch meeting, and we got to eat the gourmet restaurant food with them. I think the best meals I have eaten this year have been with Rotary. If it's up to me to pay I usually just get some bread or yogurt or apples or salami or something from the grocery store and call it a meal. I didn't prepare a speech; I just had some photos from Kansas and from this year to share and then I made up the speech as I went. This worked surprisingly well since it was in French and I was barely nervous at all.

Today was the last day of normal classes at school and I think everyone in my class has now signed my Swiss flag. It's slowly filling up (at the least the red part is) and I think it will be a nice memory to have of my friends here. After school I went to a restaurant and watched the Portugal vs. Brazil game with a couple of friends from school. After the game I went to Bern for Matthew's viola recital. Matthew is American but he has been in Switzerland for a while and played / substitutes for the Bern Symphony Orchestra. I know him because he also substituted for my orchestra for our second concert. This recital was for his Master's Thesis and it was really nice to go hear some classical music. I feel like I've been cut off from concerts this year because I no longer have the Kansas City Symphony to usher at so if I wanted to attend concerts I would have to pay for tickets, plus most of them take place too late at night for me to get back to Fribourg in time for my last bus home. There is no professional symphony orchestra in Fribourg, unfortunately. Anyway, it was a nice recital and afterwards I walked down some stairs to the Aare River, walked along the river for a bit and then crossed a small bridge and walked up a steep street to get back to the train station. The weather is finally nice and it seems to have (at least temporarily) stopped raining.

So that's all I've been up to for the past two weeks. I hope you can understand why it was impossible for me to post. And tomorrow I"m going to Oberammergau to see the famous passion play. I figured I needed to get caught up before I had that to write about as well, so there you are. Next week is even busier than the last two so wish me luck! This last month or so is going to go by in a whirlwind and before I know it I'll be back in Kansas City. It's exciting to be coming back soon but at the same time I don't want to leave. The funny thing about being an exchange student somewhere for a year is that at the beginning you don't know anyone and you have to build up a life for yourself in the new country. Then by the end of the year you have friends, you have a new language (or two), you have habits and customs that you've gotten used to, and then just when you are starting to feel completely at home, you have to go back where you came from, tear up the roots you carefully spent all year planting, and return to a world that will be mostly the same except that you will be different.

A Few Coincidental and Planned-at-the-Last-Minute Meetings

2010-06-08T22:47:00.001+02:00

A couple of weekends ago I was so busy that I had absolutely no time to blog. But I had a lot of fun adventures that I'd like to share with you.On Friday night, I went to Fribourg with the intention of taking the train to Luzern, but I arrived an hour before the train I was planning to take because there aren't many buses from where I live. While I was looking at the train schedule, a friend of mine that plays the flute in my orchestra here came up and said she had some Americans with her that I should meet. So I met the Americans - they were all from Alabama, and they studied law and were doing an exchange in Switzerland. My orchestra friend, Delia, also studies law and is going to Alabama this summer with the same program - that's how she knew these students. At the time, there was the Fête de Pérolles in Fribourg.So I hung out with Delia and the Alabamans for an hour before going back to the station. It was funny to see them react to the high food prices because that was also my reaction at first, though I would say I have gotten used to everything being so expensive. The Fête de Pérolles happened to be where I met my next host family. Their parents were hosting one of the Alabamans, and they agreed to take him into Fribourg because the parents didn't want to go out. I started talking to them in French and mentioned that I would need a host family for about a week in July before going home and they immediately said that I could stay with them. Since I met them I've gone to visit them a couple of times and we get along really well. So that was a really nice set of coincidences for me.

La Fête de Pérolles

Speaking of coincidences, as I went back to the train station to catch my train, I ran into these lovely people (plus Elisa, not pictured) who were going to a jazz concert in Fribourg. I ended up hanging out with them instead of going to Luzern. We walked back through the Fête de Pérolles then took a hiking path along the Sarine River, past the dam, and into the old town where the concert was. Unfortunately the concert was really full and there was no room left so we went and sat by the river instead.

Molly, Quinn and Joelle being spies behind the umbrella.

I did still end up going to Luzern on Saturday afternoon. I visited the city with my friends Paula and Sini, who are exchange students from Germany and Finland. We spoke German the whole time, which was nice. Paula speaks quickly sometimes and I didn't always understand her but I think she has the same problem understanding my English when I talk too fast.

Paula, Sini and I

It was Paula's first time to Luzern so she wanted to go see the sites. We walked along the wall and Sini wanted to climb up all of the towers, so we were pretty tired by the end and naturally had to go eat ice cream.

Luzern seen from one of the towers.

Sini and Paula going down the tower stairs.

The taste of summer.

Spring colors were everywhere.

It was nice weather until the very end when it began to rain. Then we took our trains home. I had to wait around in Fribourg because Katie was going to come spend the night so I was going to meet her at the station. I walked around the city and decided to take a short bike ride around the area by the stadium.

After that, I walked back past the cathedral towards the train station. It was the Nuit des Musées (Museum Night) so there were lots of people out going to the museums and wearing funny yellow hats. As I made my way toward the station I ran into my Alabaman friends again, who were eating a fondue dinner at an outisde table. It turned out that Katie's train was going to be late, so I stayed and talked with the Alabamans and Delia plus another Swiss law student that showed up. I used to be so excited to eat fondue but now I have eaten so much of it that I can definitely wait until next winter. Then Katie eventually arrived and we hung out with the Swiss and Alabaman law students for a bit before peeling off and taking the bus back to my host family's house.

The next day, Sunday, was a Fribourg adventure with Katie. We went into town in the afternoon after sleeping in and got ice cream at that awesome ice cream place. Then we saw Date Night in the movie theater. It's the first movie I had seen since the Michael Jackson movie that I saw with Jessica and the Rotary counsellor. Interestingly, the foreign title of the movie was "Crazy Night," because I guess that makes more sense to non-English speakers. The movie was dubbed into French. It was weird to see Tina Fey's mouth moving and to hear a different voice coming out. I think dubbing is a terrible idea. Everything (books, movies, etc) is better off in its original language, whether that be English, German, French, Russian, or Chinese. You get the point.

After the movie we headed over to Marly, a neighboring village, to see Katelyn's dance recital. I tried to take pictures but flash wasn't allowed, so this is all I've got:

After the show, we went to Katelyn's house and met her host family and ate dinner with them. Then we watched The Hangover (in English) and I really enjoyed it. Sadly, I had to miss the very end because I needed to catch my last bus home.

Papiliorama, Plus a Fribourgeois Afternoon

2010-06-05T20:42:00.003+02:00

Yesterday I went to a Rotary event in Kerzers at the Papiliorama, one of those greenhouses filled with a butterfly garden. The event turned out to be a volunteer experience, and my counselor had forgotten to tell the president of my host club that he had suggested that we come, so everyone was a bit surprised by they said I was welcome to stay and help out. The event was for disabled and very sick children to come to this place with their families and enjoy the butterflies, food, and activities for a night. I ended up cutting out paper butterflies for the kids to color on and I ended up talking to the kids about their drawings as they sat at the table. It was really nice to be around kids because I haven't had any contact with kids at all this year. The youngest host sibling I have had so far is 15! Although that will change with my 3rd host family, which I will blog about a bit later.

So I actually got there an hour early because my Rotary counselor also hadn't specified a time, and I went and took pictures of the plants and butterflies while I was waiting for the others to arrive.

Then today we had the final debriefing meeting with the people in charge of the Rotary exchange for my host district. For once we had a Rotary event in Fribourg, so I only had to take the bus in the morning! And to make things even better, some Rivella representatives were giving out free bottles of Rivella green at the train station. Rivella is a Swiss soft drink made with 35% milk whey. It's actually pretty good. It was a bit strange the first time I tasted it but now I like it.

Paula and I in front of the train station with our Rivellas.

After the Rotary meeting, during which we talked about our year and about what could be improved with the program, we all hung out in Fribourg.

A view of the Cathédrale St.-Nicholas and the Sarine River

We ate lunch in Fribourg, visited the flea market, went down to a very small beach by the river, got ice cream from the best ice cream store in town, and played basketball. Not everybody was there for all of this. A few kids had to leave Firbourg right after the meeting, which was sad. A lot of people took their trains home before basketball so by then there were only four of us. The beach was very small and strewn with bits of broken glass as well as more sinister things, and as it was pretty much as far as one could get from an expensive beach resort, we christened it the M-Budget Beach after the cheapest generic brand that Migros carries. Of course I have nothing against M-Budget itself. The products are very nice. I chew M-Budget gum, talk on an M-Budget phone, write with M-Budget pencils, etc. It just made us laugh to imagine the entire beach somehow covered with the green M-Budget logo like the rest of the M-Budget products.

Flea Market

The flea market was nice, too. I have gotten used to everything being really expensive here so I was astounded that it was even possible to pay such low prices, even for used goods. I ended up getting a Swiss patch and a pin for my Rotary jacket, plus all three of the Philip Pullman His Dark Materials books in German for four francs each, which is about a quarter of the price that you would pay for a new book. Yay for flea markets!

A Day in Zurich

2010-06-04T15:28:00.004+02:00

On Thursday there was no school for a Catholic holiday of some sort, so I was going to go to Interlaken with Katie, but she ended up having to go to some first communion with her host family and I ended up going to Zurich and exploring. The weather was supposed to be nice, and apparently in Fribourg it was, but in Zurich it rained all day! Luckily, I had not forgotten my umbrella.

Here we have the classic photo of the Zurich Bahnhof, so that's where I was. Sorry if this is going to disappoint you tourist types, but I have already been to Zurich and taken photos of the churches and the river and such, so if you want to see those you'll have to go elsewhere.

My first goal in Zurich was to make a pilgrimage to the flagship store of Freitag, a company that makes messenger bags and other products out of used materials. They are ecologically friendly, well-designed, very popular among the Swiss, and, unfortunately, a bit expensive. I am thinking about getting one before I leave, but I'll probably go back later when I'm sure I'll have the money. So I eventually found the place. This is what it looks like:

The umbrella you see at the top is a person up on the observation deck, which I also climbed up to. The view wasn't terribly exciting. It's in a rather industrial part of the city.

Freitag wallets - a nice burst of color on a rainy day.

After that adventure, I went back to the train station and from there walked through the old town. On one of the streets I encountered a Steinway showroom, so of course I went inside and played one of the pianos. I was the only one there besides the owner. It was really nice to get the chance to play on such a high-quality instrument after all the electric keyboards I've had to content myself with throughout the year. Not to say that I haven't played on any nice instruments at all, because I do during my lessons. There is also a grand piano at my school but it's often not available because there is something else going on in the auditorium.

Shiny, shiny, shiny!

More shiny.

Afterwards, I realized that I was hungry from all of that walking around and sat down on this (dry) bench to eat my sandwiches. I would have preferred to sit by the river, but none of those benches were covered, so I people-watched instead. The person writing on a clipboard in the middle of the bench was accosting people for Green Cross, and he came up and gave me his spiel in Zürideutsch, which I didn't understand very well. But I waited until the end of the spiel to tell him in high German that I had only understood half of what he said. He was going to repeat the spiel in high German, but then he thought to ask whether I was 18 yet (the age of majority which would legally allow you to make donations) and I replied, as I usually do if I don't want to be pressed into making a donation, that I would turn 18 next year but that I would have left Switzerland by then. Then I threw away my sandwich wrappers and continued my adventure.

A little bit of shopping and walking around later, I got back on the train to Fribourg in order to catch the last non-night-bus home. During the voyage, I sat across from an American couple from Washington State who were visiting Switzerland for a month. Apparently the husband had done an exchange when he was younger and they had both been to Switzerland several times before. It was weird to speak English.

Upon my return home, I was hungry so I looked in the refrigerator but there were no fruit yogurts left. My host family, and almost every Swiss person I know, is enamored with mocha yogurt, which I have been repulsed by ever since I tried my first one back in August. Since then I have periodically tried it again but every time I just can't eat the whole thing. Strangely enough, I went for it again and this time it wasn't terrible! Mocha yogurt will never replace, hazelnut, forest berries, or strawberry / coconut, but I didn't mind it. Perhaps my taste has changed. Or maybe I was just really hungry.

Sorry about the flash. It was starting to get dark so I didn't have much natural light to work with.

Lieder ohne Worte

2010-05-23T14:36:00.002+02:00

I just spent a good part of my Sunday morning trying to get this to work and I finally appear to have encountered success with the Yahoo! media player. This is the piece that I played in my piano recital not too long ago. I recorded it in the "auditorium" at my school with iPod Voice Notes. So the sound quality is pretty terrible, but if you ignore the noise that happens when there is a particularly loud note, it's not too bad. After a while I also figured out that I had to lower the piano bench all the way down when recording because otherwise it squeaked whenever I moved. So, without further ado, my best attempts at recording music without the use of music-recording equipment!

Mendelssohn: Songs Without Words Op.53 No. 3

Just for fun, here's an unrelated photo for you to enjoy, one of my first attempts at editing with Picnik. This was taken on the day I was in Geneva and then came back to Fribourg with three of my exchange-student buddies. It was raining, so the tour of Fribourg wasn't terribly successful. But I did get this nice picture of Jean Tinguely's Jo Siffert fountain. Translated, my caption says "Fribourg is my city, even in the rain!"

By the way, I just went back and changed the audio player from the other post where I tried embedding a piano recording. The original one had stopped working for some reason, and it had never worked in Internet Explorer, so feel free to go back and have another listen.

Château de Chillon and Montreux

2010-05-22T20:52:00.010+02:00

Last Wednesday we had no classes in the afternoon for some reason related to the TM / MA, the big project that all non-exchange-student third-years have to do. Being an exchange student, I have always been able to enjoy the time that everyone else spent working on this project in the form of free time. So this Wednesday afternoon I met Katie at Montreux and we headed over to the Château de Chillon. I'll spare you the suspense and show you the photo. It was pretty cool because I remembered that this was one of the sites on the list of world sites from my 9th-grade geography class. And here I am, just a few hours away on the train. We decided not to go inside because it cost money. Also the weather was cooperating for the first time in a couple of weeks and had decided not to rain, so we had to enjoy the sun while it lasted.

See those two ducks in the water to the right of the castle? They decided to come join us on the beach (from which the photo was taken). Also, there was a little boy that came with his mother and his beach toys to play there too. Granted, it was a very small beach with very little sand and very many little rocks that were painful to walk on with bare feet, but imagine living near this castle as a kid and then just coming to play with your bucket and shovel next to this view!

The ducks. I was surprised that they came so close but Katie pointed out that people probably fed them, which is probably true because this is a tourist site. I'd like to take this opportunity to discourage you readers from ever feeding wildlife wherever you go, whether it's a tourist site or in the woods or wherever you might encounter them. It's a terrible idea, and far from being good for the animals, it builds up their dependence on humans and can be very unhealthy for them.

So we spent a couple of hours on this little beach enjoying the lovely weather and then Katie had to leave because she needed to get back in time to take the last bus home at 7-something. I, however, still had a couple of hours before I needed to leave, so I went back to Montreux and walked around there for a while. It's a beautiful city. I got the impression that it was very aesthetically conscious. There are flowers everywhere, and I ran into all kinds of aesthetically pleasing objects, some of which I photographed. I have developed an appreciation for murals / graffiti this year. There have been some really cool ones I've run into in different cities. Here's one that appears to bill Montreux as more than just a Swiss city: "Montreux, Europe." At least that's my interpretation. And Montreux totally deserves this distinction, as far as I'm concerned. Not that I have seen any non-Swiss European cities, except for the ones in Liechtenstein, which weren't terribly interesting and not nearly as aesthetically pleasing as Montreux.

A couple of green things I found while walking around : a beautiful garden and a surprise waterfall! There's a sidewalk that goes just over this waterfall, so I heard running water and then all of a sudden, this was underneath where I was standing. Pretty cool.

Des choux: I wonder if they can fly? With a special shout-out to Xuan.

And the waterfall. Too bad I don't have one of those fancy cameras where you can lengthen the exposure to give the water that effect.

Things like this are why I have the city-exploring philosophy that I have come up with this year:

1. Wait for awesome weather.

2. Using your general subscription train ticket paid for by Rotary, hop on a train to go to a city you've never been to before.

3. Upon arrival, look for the sign in the train stations that points you toward the "city."

4. Take a totally random walking path, directed towards whatever catches your attention.

5. If you feel like you're getting into a boring residential area, turn around, or...

6. If you are tired, find a bus / tram stop and get on the next bus / tram. Get off if you feel yourself getting more lost or if you see something cool out of the window that you want to go check out.

7. If you can't find anything interesting, make it a point to find the city's H&M and go try on clothes until you have to catch the train back. Note: This also works if the weather turns nasty. Another great alternative to H&M is a bookstore like Payot or Stauffacher.

7. Always, always, always, remember how to find your way back to the train station.

8. Don't forget your camera.

9. This can also be fun with a friend or two. Or you can go ahead and bring all the Rotary exchange students along. Also a valid way to spend time alone.

Now you guys can see what I'm going to miss when I have to come home at the end of the year. Not to mention all of these awesome Swiss people I've met...

And as a parting image, this is why I love Montreux in the spring:

Liechtensteini Cacti

2010-05-19T23:57:00.000+02:00

The Great European Chocolate Exchange

2010-05-17T21:55:00.001+02:00

I don't get mail frequently, and when I do it's always really exciting. Except for when it's a bill from the doctor's office. But that only happened a couple of times, and then I shipped those bills off to Germany so the insurance people could take care of them. Anyway, today was three times as exciting as most days when I get mail because I got three things in the mail! Here they are:

A letter from my grandpa, a postcard from Florida, and a BOX from BELGIUM! When I saw the box, I was confused at first because I wasn't expecting any boxes. But then I looked at the stamp and it was from Belgium and I immediately remembered about the chocolate exchange. Before I get into this, I'd like to mention that the postcard from Florida isn't from anyone I actually know, it's part of a cool internet project that involves sending postcards to random people in the world and getting postcards from other random people in the world. Strangely enough, this random person signed the card as "Mimi B.," which is a version of my mother's name, although I highly doubt my mother secretly send me this card because I am positive she is not in Tampa right now. So this postcard thing is called Postcrossing and if you like postcards or other countries, you should check it out. The only costs are the postcards and stamps you send out.

Back to the chocolate exchange. Laura and I are both outbounds from the same Kansas Rotary District; she went to Belgium this year and I went to Switzerland. As most of you know, Belgium and Switzerland are the two European countries most renowned for their superb chocolate. In fact, there is even a chocolate factory in Fribourg called Villars that manufactures chocolate of the Villars brand. One day I found out that Laura's Belgian town also houses a chocolate factory and I proposed to her that we send each other samples of the chocolate made in our respective factories so we could compare between the two. And so the Great European Chocolate Exchange was born. I sent her some Villars chocolate in the mail a while ago, and then today I received her package of Belgian chocolate. This is what I saw when I first opened the box:

Apparently these are the two kinds of chocolate manufactured in Laura's town. The Kinder brand is apparently owned by Ferrero, the same company that created the Raffaello chocolate pictured below. So it's not exactly Belgian chocolate, but it was made in Belgium so it sort of is.

Here's a closer view of the loot.

Of course I had to try out the chocolate. That's the whole point, right? I have to let all of you readers out there know whether Belgian or Swiss chocolate is better. This is, after all, a competition, if not a "battle," as Laura literally referred to it in the note she wrote me. Speaking of notes, Laura's friend Tara also left me a note inside the package. She's Canadian. I have never met her. It was a nice note, though.

And here's my review. I tried the Italian one first because I was afraid of opening the Kinder package. Once it's open, I have to work hard to make it last a reasonable amount of time. The Italian chocolates have an almond in the middle surrounded by chocolate and are covered on the outside with shredded coconut. I must say, I was a little biased because coconut, in my opinion, is just about the best thing you can combine with chocolate. So these were like little Almond Joys, except the coconut was on the outside instead of the inside. And these were so much better. Like a thousand times better. I would use this equation to describe them: Raffaello = 1000 x Almond Joy. Meaning it would take you 1000 Almond Joys to equal the greatness of one Raffaello. Approximately.

Then for the Kinder ones: a chocolate outside filled with a milk and nuts sort of mixture. Also very good, but I'm sure that you can buy these in Switzerland because there are about 50 different kinds of Kinder chocolates. I am convinced, however, that these Kinder Schoko-Bons are special because they are Belgian, which is obvious, since the writing on the package is in French and Dutch instead of in German, French and Italian.

I think this is a battle that ends at a stalemate. Villars chocolate is amazing, of course, and I like to be loyal to my town, but the Belgian chocolate was good too. I do think it's cool that Villars manufactures their own brand, but they are both so good that they both have to be winners in my book. The conclusion: Belgian and Swiss chocolate are both better than American chocolate, which is why I'm going to try to take as much back with me as I can to share with all of you (and of course a little bit for myself). Unless, of course, you'd like to come visit me here in the next two months before I leave for Germany to try out Swiss chocolate in the correct geographical context. Somehow I think it is unlikely that you will. Plus Rotary probably wouldn't allow it. So be sure to come by and see me between my return to the States (July 29) and when I leave for KU (sometime in the middle-ish of August). While supplies last.

Country No. 5

2010-05-15T17:36:00.003+02:00

Yesterday, I went to Liechtenstein. It is officially the fifth country I have ever been to, following the United States (obviously), Canada, the Dominican Republic, and Switzerland. The weather for this outing was cold and rainy. I was a little disappointed because I thought Liechtenstein would be all cool and old-looking, but then all the houses were really new and boring-looking, almost the cookie-cutter style that we Americans are so familiar with. I did not take any pictures of these houses to share with you, but be assured that you are not missing anything.

There were a couple of highlights of the day that I did, however, photograph, the first being the train that we took from Sargans to Buchs. The seats were so colorful and it made me so happy!

Quinn and Jessica in Switzerland's coolest train. Quinn is from Arkansas and Jessica is from Australia.

The second highlight of the day was the castle. This is apparently the residence of the prince of Liechtenstein. We hiked all the way up there and then ate our bread, cheese, salami, spicy mustard, chocolate, etc. on some benches just below the castle.

Here's most of the group before the hike up the Schlossweg.

A view of the castle from afar. I especially like these particular trees.

And Liechtenstein is so small that between all the bus rides and walking around that we did, I ended up seeing the same places several times during the day. So now I have seen pretty much all there is to see of Liechtenstein and will probably not return in the near future. That is, unless the prince invites us back over for tea or something.

I'll give Wordless Wednesday a try.

2010-05-12T21:26:00.004+02:00

I'm looking forward to the flight home.

2010-05-10T22:23:00.007+02:00

But only because I will be wearing my Rotary blazer in the airports and will get some perplexed looks from a lot of people and amused smiles from others. Walking around somewhere with this garment on tends to attract a lot of attention and it's kind of funny. Katie and I had some experience with this phenomenon in Lausanne. Some random tourist-y guy took our picture as we walked past him in the train station. And while we were waiting for the train we got some funny looks from people. There was also a guitar-bearing, dreadlocks-sporting dude that approached us, but we ran away.

The front.

The back.

If not for the promise of future blazer / airport fun, I'd probably hang around in Switzerland a bit longer. Really, I can't decide whether I'm happy or sad to be leaving in three months. I'm excited to see everyone and to start a new adventure as a member of the "Jayhawk family," as it is called in so many promotional letters and e-mails. But I'm really going to miss Switzerland. I've made some amazing friends here, and it really does feel like home. Last weekend after my orchestra concert, I was riding the train back to Fribourg and had my first realization that since the orchestra season was over, I had just played music with those people for the last time and might not see them again before I leave.

I also realized that even as much as I sometimes miss the convenience of being able to drive a car, I am going to miss public transportation a lot upon my return. There's something really neat about being able to travel across the country at pretty much anytime of day and then just watch the scenery go by without having to worry about driving. You can also meet some very interesting people in the bus or the train. Once I and another Rotary exchange student met a Buddhist monk from Cambodia in the train who tried to explain Buddhism to us in broken German and English. And taking the train or the bus with friends is a lot of fun as well. Unfortunately the States are on such a large scale that it would be virtually impossible to construct a transportation infrastructure as widespread and at such a high quality level as the Swiss one. Of course public transportation does exist in the States, and there are some great metro systems in some cities, but it's just not the same.

In fact, I'm a bit afraid for everyone on the road when I come back. I may have to spend a weekend in the parking lot and side streets to regain my skills. I haven't been behind the wheel in exactly 9 months. (Today is the 9-month anniversary of my arrival.) So watch out, Kansas drivers!

La Fête des Mères

2010-05-10T00:12:00.007+02:00

Happy Mother's Day, everyone! Especially those of you who are mothers, with a special shout-out to mine in particular.

These roses were on the table and I photographed them this morning before I left for my choral adventure in La Chaux-de-Fonds. My real mother is overseas and my host mother was away for my host cousin's confirmation today, so it was sort of a motherless day for me, but nevertheless a good one.

To make a long story short, as the cliché goes, I played in an orchestra concert yesterday afternoon in Murten (a benefit concert for Terre des Hommes), then took the train back to Fribourg, took a bus to Marly, arrived a bit late for the pre-concert choir warm-up, then sang Fauré's "Cantique de Jean Racine," followed by the Requiem.

Today we all took a charter bus from our school to La Chaux-de-Fonds for the Écolades, a cultural sort of festival for students in French- and Italian-speaking Switzerland. The concert hall there doesn't look like much but apparently the acoustics are so good that multiple CDs are recorded there. We spent the time before our concert watching another choir sing, going to an artsy sort of museum, and generally walking around in the dismal rain. The concert went extremely well. Maybe it was the acoustics, maybe we were better prepared after having already sung a concert the day before, or maybe it was just a little bit of choral magic, but the sound was terrific. I realized that it's very physically demanding to be in the choir in a concert like this. Normally I would be playing in the orchestra but I sang this time around. It is a challenge to keep a high level of concentration and not move around too much. At the end of the day, I had sore feet and a sore throat.

Musically-inclined people are a nice bunch of folks. This café was on the 14th floor of a building. We took the elevator up and the stairs down. It was a bit dizzying. Below: my iced tea from above!

Episode VI: Return of the Blog

2010-05-03T19:56:00.004+02:00

Oh, hey. You still there? Well, I'm back to the blogosphere, at least for a short time, to give you another update. This post is dedicated to my mother, who keeps gently reminding me to post again. (Happy early Mother's Day, by the way!) I'm not going to bother with photos because my camera is in the other room and I'm too lazy to go get it right now. Maybe next time, which based on current patterns will be around the beginning of June.

So this pre-weekend (Thursday onwards) did not start off well. Thursday would have been a totally exciting day because it was the day of the Fribourg-Fribourg leg of the Tour de Romandie, which is the Swiss Tour de France. I did go see the start of the race after lunch and took some pictures, which you might get to see later. I guess these cyclists are some of the same who ride in the Tour de France, but I wouldn't really know. The biggest effect this event had was that it forced all of the bus stops to move to temporary bus stops about a block away from the normal route. This was only slightly annoying because I didn't have to use any of the displaced bus stops. Unfortunately, I began to feel worse and worse as the day wore on and ended up with a nasty stomach flu sort of thing at night, which I should have expected since some of my host family had been sick earlier in the week.

The next day I obviously didn't go to school but I did make it to the orchestra rehearsal in the evening (the Vorhauptprobe, which I guess would translate as the dress-dress-rehearsal). I think musicians are really special people. They just tend to be nicer, smarter, and, in the case of Swiss people, who are normally pretty closed-off, more outgoing than everyone else. This was proven when I was asked about twenty different times how I was feeling and if I was better. Out of all musicians, I would have to say organists are the smartest and most creative, based on the sample population of organists that I know. I think it has to do with the playing-with-both-hands-and-both-feet thing. But that's a whole 'nother post.

Thanks to a few well-placed doses of Coca Cola, I was pretty much healed by Friday evening, which left my weekend plans intact. These involved a Rotex version of Geneva, complete with UN tour, random walking around, Calvin's church, a park full of political party tents, food, and giant chess games, the flower clock, and the jet d'eau. Most of this I had experienced by myself or with my first host family already, but it was fun to go with about 40 inbounds and Rotexlers to see it all again. Unfortunately, it was raining.

A few of my exchange student friends came back with me to Fribourg that night and we ate dinner at a Tex-Mex restaurant, which I was a little surprised to find. I don't know the restaurants of Fribourg very well, because I usually eat at home or nourish myself straight from the shelves of Migros and Coop (and occasionally Denner). Then we picked up some ingredients from the undersized, overpriced grocery store in the train station because all the other grocery stores had closed at 4pm, and went back to my host family's place and made cookies. This was a great idea, except that we were so tired from walking around Geneva all day that we were about ready to fall asleep and had trouble staying up even to wait for the cookies to finish cooking. It was a bit pathetic. So the cookies were finally eaten in the pre-noon hours.

On Sunday afternoon we went into Fribourg. The plan had been to walk around and see what there was to see (which, in Fribourg, isn't much), but it was raining, so the tour was stopped a bit short for a trip to an ice cream place, where we cooled off even more from the ever-chillier weather with a frozen treat and then waited until I had to be at the concert place for the sound check. Afterwards was the concert, which I thought went pretty well. A couple of other exchange students who live in Fribourg came too, which was nice. I was a little disappointed that none of the Swiss people I invited (including my host family) ended up coming. Maybe the rain just made them want to stay home.

So with that, I wish you all rain-free and sun-filled spring days that you can enjoy outside, even if you don't have the option of walking around in Fribourg.

Easter Break, Episode II: Attack of the Cough

2010-04-25T15:23:00.010+02:00

I started writing this post a while ago and then abandoned it for some reason. Now that I've loaded and edited my photos, it's ready for publication!

The lovely mountains of Valais / Wallis!

As the second half of a two-part Easter Break blog series, this post will be covering the second half of Easter Break. As I noted earlier, this week involved going to the canton of Valais / Wallis, with skiing in mind. And we did go skiing, but not every day. Being Swiss, and therefore always within reasonable proximity to a ski area, Swiss people only go skiing when the weather's really nice for it. Because why go skiing every single day of the week when there are nasty conditions on some of the days? You could always go next week, so there's no reason to go now if the conditions aren't perfect. This is different from the Kansan mindset: we are spending three days in Colorado and will be on the slopes from morning to late afternoon on each of these days because who knows when we'll make it back here again? It might take years! (It did take me years: My first skiing experience was on a MLK weekend ski trip with the Village Church, which I repeated a couple of times, but then I stopped going because the combination of sleep deprivation, costs, and unfinished homework made it too difficult. So after that I went skiing once with my family but we all ended up getting sick, so I only skied for one day on that trip. Since then I haven't skied at all until I ended up in Switzerland. I think I have done more skiing here than all the times I went skiing in America combined.)

Me, Caroline (Swan's friend), and Swan (host brother)

It was the first time I had ever skied on spring snow. Spring snow has a different feeling from winter snow. It's kind of melty and slushy, especially in open areas with no trees and no shade, and when you turn on the skis it pushes the snow a lot more. So by the end of the day a slope that started out flat ends up covered with bumps, an unintentionally created mogul run. Unfortunately I still had a nasty cough at this point, so the enjoyment in skiing was a bit diminished. I was normally fine while actually skiing but once I stopped the cough would catch up with me. I tried everything: I carried a pocketful of Ricola candies with me at all times, plus a water bottle. One day I stayed home from skiing and then went into Sion while my host mom and her dad were visiting her mom / his wife there. I found anti-cough tea at the Coop and then drank it frequently at home. My host aunt gave me some homeopathic thing that was supposed to make the cough disappear and that didn't work either. Did I mention the medicine that I had already been prescribed the week before? Nothing seemed to work, so obviously I had to go to the doctor when I went back. But that's a different story.

The view out of the cute little window in my cute little room.

One of the things that I did a lot during this week was reading. I read John Irving's A Prayer for Owen Meany in its entirety. I had a lot of free time between the day I spent at home and the day I went to Sion and had to stop walking around because my cough was bothering me, plus all the times I was sitting and waiting around for something to happen, like for a meal to finish cooking or for some host siblings and their friends to show up. It was a very interesting book and I recommend it to all of you readers (double meaning: blog readers / people who like to read things in general and might take a book recommendation). On the penultimate day of the trip, we drove to Grimentz to celebrate my host grandfather's 80th birthday. We ate a multi-course meal in a hotel there. It was very nice. One of the food items was foie gras, which I thought pretty disgusting so I don't see what the big deal is about it. I mean, I guess some gourmet people think it's special but in my book, it involves animal cruelty and it doesn't even taste good and has a weird texture. The rest of the meal was delicious, though, and it was enough to last through dinner as well. We just met for cake around dinner time. But instead of cake cake, we had millefeuille / Cremeschnitten, which is pretty much my favorite dessert here. I don't think I've ever seen it in the States, but it's possible that it exists. If not I will be trying to make it some time when I get back, which could be really difficult and will probably end up not looking at all like the real thing but still tasting pretty good.

So that was my week in Valais. On Friday we drove back in the morning and I went back to the doctor, who said that my cough had gotten worse (surprise, surprise!) and that it was now a bacterial infection and therefore curable by antibiotics. It's a good thing that antibiotics are a miracle drug because I spent the next four days (Saturday through Tuesday) at a camp for the school choir and was singing pretty much nonstop. The antibiotics worked fast enough that I barely had any problems, even though we had rehearsal for some seven hours a day or something. Possibly more. I think it depended on the day. More choir stories to come in a later post.

Easter Break, Part One

2010-04-02T15:20:00.003+02:00

This internet situation is really bad for my blog. Well, I've been in this family for about a month now, so I'm giving up on any hope of wireless, considering that I will be leaving again not too long from now.

It's Easter break now. Not spring break. Easter break. This is presumably due to the fact that the canton, or at least the city of Fribourg, and perhaps the whole country generally speaking, is Catholic. Therefore it is not a problem to name breaks after Christian holidays, even if most people (or at least both of my host families so far) never attend church. They aren't even Christmas-and-Easter people, like a lot of Americans are. On Christmas Eve, we sat around the tree at home, opened presents, and sang in Swiss German. It's possible that we will go to church this Sunday, as it hasn't happened yet. However, considering that we'll be staying in a mountain chalet, I consider it unlikely. I'll update you when I get back.

So, the first week of break (yes, there are two!), was spent increasingly at home as the week went on. School ended on a Friday and that night was the birthday party of Katelyn, one of the Americans in Fribourg, plus her Swiss friend Julia that have birthdays around the same time. I think they went to a roller disco later, but I didn't come along because my last bus left too early. The next morning I went to Zürich to take a German language test, which Rotary wanted those of us not taking the language course to do in order to verify that we had picked up a reasonable amount of German. I passed the test, safely in the B2 zone of the European language level system (Common European Framework of Reference for Languages). This is as far as they tested us, although I doubt that I'm already in the C level because this is only the second year I've been learning German.

That afternoon after the test I went to Olten to visit Sini, an exchange student from Finland, in her home turf. Unfortunately, she had forgotten that I was coming and didn't hear her phone ringing. But she eventually called me back after I had taken something of a self-guided walking tour of the city. It's a very pleasant city, if small. And sometimes I prefer these smaller Swiss cities because I can get a feel for them in a small space of time, just walking around. Here are some of the pictures I took there:

Sini had told me that she had a violin lesson before I was coming, so after a while I found the music school on a map and walked to it. It looked empty, so I didn't bother going in, but there was a music shop nearby that was going out of business and had some really good prices. I ended up finding two of the pieces I am learning this year for piano at about half price, so of course I ended up buying them because playing from a good edition is infinitely preferable to playing from photocopied pages. Even if these pages are masterfully taped together. When Sini called, I was in the music shop, and it turns out she lives right by the music school so I had sort of found her house without knowing where it was. She came back to the shop with me and I bought the music. Then we went had drank tea at the Coop restaurant. I ended up having to run for my train, and once I got to the train, I realized that I had left my music in the restaurant. Unfortunately, it had closed so it was too late for her to go back and get it for me. Instead I ended up waiting until Monday, when it reopened, to go find the music myself. This entailed a 1.5-hour train ride to Olten, 30 minutes of walking to the restaurant, recovering the music, walking back to the station, and waiting for the train, then another hour in the train to Bern, 30 minutes in Bern, and then the train ride back to Fribourg. It's a good thing I really like trains.

On Tuesday morning I rode the bus to Treyvaux, about 10 minutes from Ependes, to play the piano at an acquaintance's house. We have the same piano teacher at the conservatory and she used to have the lesson after mine. After I switched lesson times, she now has the lesson before mine. In any case, I sort of knew who she was and when I saw her waiting for the same bus as me in Fribourg I asked her about the possibility of coming to play at her house, since I don't have a piano here and the school is closed during vacation. It was really nice of them to let me come play, especially since most Swiss are pretty closed to new people and I barely know her. After about an hour of playing I drank tea with Heidi (yes, just like the famous Swiss storybook character) and her mom and they gave me a list of the things I still needed to see in Switzerland before I leave. I'll have to work on that. That afternoon I went to Basel and walked around and took pictures, but then it started raining and my cough started bothering me more so I went home an hour earlier than I had planned. I will probably have to post the pictures for you later since my computer is taking forever to get up the pictures from Olten. It's amazing how much the architecture and feel of a city can be so different here. Basel feels totally different from the other cities I have visited. It's right by Germany, so it has more of a German influence, I guess. The trams there look sort of like old-style trolleys. It's really big. Big enough to have three different McDonald's restaurants and three different Migros that I saw. I'll probably go back some time if I have the time to because I was only there for a couple of hours.

The next day I went to the doctor. I had been coughing for two weeks, and it seemed to be getting worse. She told me it was probably a virus, so no antibiotic, and told me I could treat the symptoms but otherwise I would basically have to wait for it to go away. I sure hope it does, because it won't be fun to try skiing with this nasty cough.

Thursday morning was a repeat of Tuesday morning at Heidi's house. This time her eight-year-old brother had a couple of friends over and they were emptying out eggs in preparation to dye them for Easter. Her mom said they were going to make crepes with the yolks and whites that they removed with a syringe. She gave me tea that's supposed to treat a cough and some apple cake. Tart? It was like a flat apple pie with the apple slices arranged in rows. I've had it at home too. She also gave me a couple of the tea bags so I could try finding it at the store. They are a really nice family and I feel lucky to have randomly met them through the assignment of my piano teacher and lesson time. Plus I love listening to little kids speaking French. It's so cute.

That evening a couple of guests were over for dinner. I don't know how they know my host parents exactly. The man was very curious and asked me a lot of questions about America but said he had only been there once, in New York for a few days on business. They told me I don't have an American accent. I asked, which accent do I have, then? And they told me it was more German. So I guess that's a good thing. In fact, it was the second time somebody thought I was a native German speaker based on how my French sounded, which I find interesting. However, I am somewhat at a loss as to why I would have a German accent.

And today we are leaving for the canton of Valais to do some skiing. I'm not sure exactly where we are going yet. However, I'm not worried about the road trip. I think it's only one and a half hours away, which might seem like a lot to Europeans but is half of a driving-to-Colorado-from-Kansas-to-go-skiing-behind-the-wheel-shift to me. I doubt I'll have Internet access there, so I will just have to update you when I return.

New Family, New Language

2010-03-14T19:55:00.004+01:00

So. I totally haven't forgotten about you guys. My blog hiatus had nothing to do with my laziness, or business, or tiredness, or anything like that. It's just that it's harder for me to use the internet now. I have to carry my laptop (with its power cord because it's a old and doesn't hold its battery charge very well) into the office and plug an ethernet cable in. Since this office is actually the office my host dad runs his business out of, I can't always go in there. I thought about trying to write a post from school, but it takes me way longer there because I have to look for all the punctuation marks on the European keyboard.

Anyways, from the title you can probably tell I've changed host families. I think my situation is a bit unique, because I went from a German-speaking family to a French-speaking family. Most exchange students stay in the same language the whole time. But, as weird as it was for the first couple of days to be speaking a different language at home, it's really a lot easier than it was at the other host family. This is because I never could completely understand Swiss German and I had to pay really close attention all the time if I wanted to understand much. Also, it took me several months before I could understand anything more than the general topic of conversation. So now that there is no dialect to deal with, I can understand everything that my family members say to each other. It's pretty neat.

Another thing: as of March 10, I have been here for 7 months. Out of 11. It sure sounds like a lot, but it went by really fast! At this point I am split between not wanting to leave and being really excited about going home. There are definitely some things I'm looking forward to when I get back: seeing my family and friends, of course, but also driving again after a year spent away from the wheel, lower prices for everything, starting college. But I bet there are some things about America that I totally forgot about. And then when I get back I'll notice them, and I probably won't like some of them. Right now the only example I can think of is the food. But it's also going to be weird to speak English all the time. I really think my English has gotten worse. Not that you would notice by reading my blog, because I usually proofread. But when I'm talking to other English speakers over here, sometimes I stop suddenly, with the word for something in German or French in my mouth, but I can't think of the word in English. Or some host family member will ask me how you say something in English and I'll have to look it up because I can't think of the word off the top of my head. I'll definitely be looking for European exchange students when I get back so I can keep using the languages I've learned here.

And it looks like Rotary's 3-host-family thing is going to be more like a 2-host-family thing because I stayed with the first host family for 6 months. I guess that makes half a year split between two languages, with the rest of the year completely in French. I find this a bit strange, as I was officially placed in the German-speaking part of the country and was meant to learn German this year. I have learned German, but right now my school is in French and my host family speaks French. Weird.

Something really awesome that happened recently was the Rotex winter weekend in Engelberg, where we finally got to meet the newbies! The majority of them came from Australia, with a few from South Africa, New Zealand, and South America. The reason they come in January is that their school year goes starts in January instead of August. I really liked meeting them. Hearing their stories about their first impressions of the country and the language and what they had done made me feel like I've been here a long time. And since they are here now, that makes me one of the oldies. I still can't believe I'm leaving in four months.

On a celebratory note, today is Pi Day! Happy Pi Day to all of you! I must say, I think it is one of my top two favorite under-celebrated holidays, along with International Talk Like a Pirate Day on September 19. Make that three under-celebrated holidays if you want to include Mole Day (October 23). Mole Day is not under-celebrated among high-school chemistry students, but I think it's safe to say that it's under-celebrated among the majority of the population. Also in Europe because our dates are switched around here. So here a number like 6.022 x 10^23 would turn into a day like February 6 (06/02). And the reason Mole Day does not take place on June 2 in America is because that is not part of the school year there (although my school year this year lasts until July 2). This is obviously catered towards the high-school chemistry set. No pun intended. Man, I'd better stop now before it gets any worse and just let some pictures do the talking.

I took this one the time that I got on the wrong bus and had to walk from Le Mouret to Ependes, where I live. It took me about 45 minutes, and it was cold and hailing. But I got some good pictures out of it! Maybe I'll attempt the walk again when the weather's nicer.

The cookies I made for the Rotex weekend. I made the same cookies at my first host family's house and somehow they turned out really differently the second time. Not as flat. Although the second time I used chocolate flakes instead of chocolate chips, which was interesting and not at all bad.

The Jean Tinguely fountain in Fribourg. I had to get to town an hour before my train left for Engelberg because it was a Saturday bus schedule, so instead of leaving by myself an hour early I hung out in the park in Fribourg for an hour and took the train with everyone else.

A slide going down the hill! Whenever I have my own house I'll probably have one of these installed in my back yard. Or maybe I can rig up a slide coming out of the house....

Fribourg's old town seen from the stairs behind the park. I refrained from going too far down the stairs because I knew I would have to go back up.

We went ice skating! It was great fun except for the part where I forgot to wear long socks and ended up with red marks on my ankles.

The Aussies brought their flags! Yay! That was such a fun group of kids to meet.

In hindsight, this post is really long. I probably should have forgotten the captions and really just let the pictures take care of themselves. Whoops.

In Which I Envision My Career as a Swiss Diplomat and Get Covered in Confetti

2010-02-15T15:43:00.007+01:00

Last week the University of Fribourg hosted a career information thing that the third-year students from my school and the other two collèges in Fribourg were required to attend. I have the feeling I didn't have to go, but I thought it could be interesting so I went anyways. Approximately half of this ended up being at all useful to me, and the other half described the process of studying certain topics at the university level in Switzerland. I came away with a few possible career paths laid out in front of me: graphic design, pharmacy, chemistry, medicine, and, of course, Swiss diplomacy. As it turns out, though, I would actually have to be Swiss to become a Swiss diplomat, and I don't see that happening anytime soon. So maybe I'll have to see what the U.S. is offering.

This week I have a vacation from school, and the main two goals of this week off are celebrating Carnaval and skiing. I haven't been skiing yet, mostly because of the weather and the fact that I love to sleep in when I can, but I did go yesterday to Plaffeien with my host family for a Carnaval celebration. From this experience, I have concluded that, contrary to popular belief, the main purpose of Carnaval is to cover the ugly layer of slush in the streets with a colorful layer of confetti.

This was the first band of the parade. Also the scariest. Just look at those masks! No matter how many times I told myself there were real people underneath, I couldn't help but be filled with a feeling of dread as they approached and a feeling of relief as they turned off towards the left (my left, their right).

The Simpsons! Just another example of American cultural imperialism. (Thanks, Yoda!) Actually, speaking of Yoda, I just got a new history teacher that looks and talks and gestures just like her. But we won't get into that right now. I really love the Simpsons, though, even though I didn't really discover them until I started watching the show on Hulu, which happens not to work overseas. Curses!

My favorite part of the parade: the walking wind farm! Yay for alternative energy! And though some might describe wind farms as "ugly," I, on the contrary, find them an interesting aesthetic addition to the landscape. And without them, who knows what might happen to that landscape? Again, we won't get into that right now.

The man on the left just threw some confetti at the crowd. After the ground is already covered in it, some people walk around with bags of extra confetti and throw it at people that are looking too clean. Or something like that.

I just really liked this guy's costume. It looks like he put a lot of effort and time into it, and the result is pretty neat.

On the other hand, I wasn't so enthralled with these costumes. Smoking is prevalent here, and I don't think the existence of Marlboro Kid is doing much to stop the cycle. Seriously, it's going to take me a while once I get home to recover from all the secondhand smoke I've been forced to inhale this year.

Confetti! On the left, it's a garbage truck specially outfitted to spray confetti all over everything! On the right, a side view of the truck, complete with Swiss flag and MORE CONFETTI!!!

And here is a short 30-second video of what happened after the parade, namely the Monsterkonzert, in which all the bands that played in the parade combined into one giant band and made lots of noise while the people jumped up and down to try and keep from getting frostbite. (It was a bit chilly.) If you listen carefully, you can hear the leader count to four in Swiss German at around seven seconds in. Warning: it's a bit loud.

A Choral Concert and a Bit of Fasnacht Magic

2010-02-13T13:23:00.002+01:00

On Thursday I played the violin in my school's orchestra (supplemented with several hired professionals) in a concert combined with the school's choir. It's the orchestra's first year of existence, so we only have about ten members. The concert consisted of Mozart's piano concerto No. 12 in A Major (K 414) and Vivaldi's Gloria. I always enjoy playing an orchestra part in choral works; it's such a rich sound. And the soloist, a music teacher at my school who also directs the orchestra when he's not playing the solo in a piano concerto, was superb. And with the extra people we hired to play in the orchestra, it was an international event. There were two Hungarians, a Costa Rican (either that or a Puerto Rican, I can't remember which one he said), an American (me), plus quite a few Swiss. The Hungarians and the Costa / Puerto Rican couldn't speak German or French so they went with English, which I am assuming is a second language for them as well as for the Swiss members of the orchestra. I particularly enjoyed the conductor's attempts at giving measure numbers in English during rehearsals. So that was a really fun event. The only downside, really, was that the church we performed in was freezing. Apparently all European Catholic churches are cold in the winter, though, because they have such high ceilings and are basically just built with stone. So it's a really large space to heat and the two radiators at the front didn't quite cover it. As much as I enjoyed playing the concert, I was glad to get home at the end and warm myself up by putting on a few more layers of clothing and sitting on the floor in front of the radiator with a cat on my lap.

Then on Friday I had a rehearsal in Murten. And on the way to my rehearsal, I kept seeing strangely out-of-the-ordinary things. While I was waiting for the bus, a girl came down the sidewalk walking a horse and a smaller pony (Shetland?) and then turned with them down the steep icy hill I usually go down to get home after I get off the bus. Then when I got on the bus, I saw the biggest backpack I have ever seen in my life. I tried to estimate how many fully-inflated soccer balls would fit in it and I think I decided more than 20. I think I could fit in that backpack, probably along with a couple of little kids. Then I got to Fribourg and went to wait for my train, and when the train arrived and the people were coming out, I saw a man dressed in a feathery neon pink full-body costume. I thought that was weird, but then I realized it was actually normal for this particular time of year; it must have been a Fasnacht costume. (Fasnacht is German for Mardi Gras.) My suspicions were confirmed when I got back later at night and the floor of the train station was covered in blue confetti. So I have decided that these crazy things I saw were probably the results of a little Fasnacht magic.

Oh, sorry I have no pictures, but my memory card was full because of some viola audition videos I had to record to send to Italy. I'm applying for a chamber music camp in Cremona this summer and I have to send the DVD this week. Wish me luck!

I'm going to miss this domesticated zoo.

2010-02-10T20:54:00.004+01:00

I'm changing host families next week, as per Rotary rules. We exchange students are supposed to live with three different families during the year. I think the idea behind this is to present us with a few different portraits of family life. It's especially true here around the bilingual city of Fribourg, because there are some important cultural differences between French-speaking and German-speaking Switzerland. My first host family lives in Zumholz, a tiny town featuring a few blocks of houses, a gas station, a restaurant, a car repair shop, and an astounding view of the pre-Alps. When the weather is warm enough, there are cows to be seen as well as smelled. Here the elevation is higher than in the city so there is usually more snow. And of course they speak German.

My next host family lives in Épendes, a town about half as far away from Fribourg as Zumholz is. This will, in theory, allow me to sleep quite a bit later in the mornings by reducing my morning commute from 40 minutes to about 15. I am excited for this. The new family speaks French instead of German, has two boys instead of two girls, and has no animals that I am aware of.

The experience of living with my first host family here in Zumholz has been a chance to see what it's like to have pets. Growing up, my pet ownership only extended to fish and Sea Monkeys, which are just glorified brine shrimp. I always wanted a furry friend, but we never had one, for various reasons including allergies. So living here with three cats and a dog has been a lot of fun for me, and I'm really going to miss it when I move.

I'm going to have to guess how all the animals' names are spelled, because, well, I've never seen them written out. On the left is our dog, Daka, slipping around on the ice outside the side door. On the right, me and Wiki (pronounced like Vicky but spelled phonetically and therefore cooler), the cat who has attached herself to me and my room and my bed. She is often sleeping on my bed when I come home from school and then she will come sit on my lap and keep me company and keep me warm. I never let her stay in my room at night, though, because if I did she would climb on me while I'm sleeping and wake me up. Instead I kick her out of the room before I go to sleep (not literally, of course) and block the otherwise easily-opened=by-a-cat door with my heavy violin case, but even so she sometimes wakes me up at night with wailing and scratching. Despite this, it has been nice to have a warm fuzzy companion, especially in the winter. The other two cats are Félix (not pictured here) and Speedy (whom I have never successfully photographed).

So that's the domesticated zoo that I will so miss when I move next week. Oh, and I might miss the people here as well.

Wow.

2010-02-09T22:31:00.003+01:00

Wow! It's been a really long time since I last posted. I guess I'm just getting used to living here or something and forget that I have to share my adventures with my loyal readers. I hope my sporadic posting habits aren't throwing you guys off.

What I have been doing a lot of recently is skiing. One of the coolest things about Switzerland is that there are so many different ski areas within a morning's train ride from where I live. There is even one that's only twenty minutes away by car, although it is pretty small. This first picture is from the second time I went skiing here. I met two other exchange students and we went to a ski area called Crans-Montana. It was Katelyn's first time on skis (she's from Arkansas), and Katie and I tried to teach her. Katie was really the one teaching, actually. I just tried to give helpful suggestions, because I'm not actually that great at skiing. My host uncle gave me his old skis and boots (we have the same shoe size!) and I was thrilled to discover that the color of the boots matches my coat.

This second picture was taken at Grimentz, which is where I went last week for the winter sport days with my school. Skiing isn't the only option for winter sports: I could have also done self defense, dance, hiking, or any number of other choices. But I was lucky and my host Rotary club agreed to pay for me to go to one of the ski camps. All the students that choose to ski are split up between four different ski areas. My group went to Grimentz. It was an interesting combination of lots of people I didn't know and one person I did: Katelyn, another exchange student at my school. Needless to say, we probably spoke more English in those three days than we should have.

I also got a chance to speak German with some other people from my school, though, which was nice. Most of the people I know at school are French-speakers, but all the other girls on this trip were in the German section. It was a good opportunity to make some friends on the other side of the school and I found it really enjoyable to meet everybody over the course of the three days. Since Katelyn and I were the least experienced skiers (which stands to reason, since most Swiss start learning how to ski around the age of three or so), we were carefully watched over and instructed. It was nice to get some tips and instruction from people my own age. And I think that I received this instruction in all three of my languages at some point. It was a really neat experience to ski in the Swiss Alps with Swiss friends.

Oh, and we ate fondue for lunch on the last day. Jealous?

I <3 Books

2010-01-18T20:03:00.004+01:00

I love books. I always have: you can ask my parents. This weekend I went to Bern for a literature-tastic adventure. For Christmas, my host family gave me a gift certificate to a book store, which I was excited about because the book stores here naturally sell non-English books, which are almost impossible to find in the US of A without ordering online. Though I have had some luck at the giant Johnson Country Library used book sale, which is held during the summer.

Even though I was excited for the non-English books, I have been craving the kind of reading experience I often had before I came here, which involved my picking up a good book and devouring it quickly. It's quite enjoyable, and I recommend it to those of you who have not yet experienced this. Of course, I am sure there are several of you who have and know exactly what I'm talking about. And although I can read well in French and pretty well in German, I usually can't pick up all the details at the speed I can in English. I had knowledge of a library in Bern that carries English-language books, because when I went to Bern a couple of weeks ago to visit a quasi-Australian friend who was about to return home from her exchange year in Switzerland, she showed me this library. It's called Kornhaus. Naturally I went and signed up for a card.

The card has a pretty cool design on it. But what was better were the books I found. I never got around to finishing the epic tale of the Baudelaire orphans, and since the entire series was on the shelf, I thought I would start back at the Bad Beginning and read all of them. Also, I read Fellowship this year in French but I had never finished the series in English (stop smirking, Jamie, Joseph, and others). And there were the Bond books. Incidentally, I quite enjoyed the film of Casino Royale, and while I often prefer to read the book before seeing the film, it didn't happen this time. But I guess it's better to read the book after seeing the film than never to read it at all.

And this is the result of my shopping quest. I told myself it would be lame to buy books in English here since they will be easy to find when I get back. So I went for the original language version of The Reader, the film of which I have not yet seen. Plus those two red books which are part of a publishing thing called Reclam, which publishes books in the original language with footnotes in German for more difficult vocabulary words, and bilingual books in German and the original language. These two are a set of scripts from Monty Python's Flying Circus (I'm the kind of person that will probably end up memorizing some of these with my friends for fun in college), and the screenplay of La vita è bella, or Life is Beautiful, for which there is only a film and no book. This film inspired my interest in Italian, which I hope to further with the Italian grammar book. I may actually need Italian this summer because I am applying to participate in a Rotary-sponsored chamber music camp in the city of Cremona, home of Stradivarius, the Amati family, and other famous luthiers.

This particular book was something I found today while rummaging around the sale bins at FNAC and waiting for my next bus to arrive. It was only five francs, which is a real bargain here. I think the original price was 35. It's in French and German and is about the barrier between the francophone and germanophone regions of the country. I find this particularly interesting since I am learning both languages, and I live in the area that this book is talking about. I'll share any interesting details with you once I get around to reading it.

Cold-weather Holidays

2009-12-27T16:49:00.007+01:00

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

2009-12-13T23:33:00.005+01:00

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

2009-12-11T20:04:00.014+01:00

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

2009-11-17T19:11:00.005+01:00

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

2009-11-04T20:28:00.011+01:00

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

2009-10-30T17:25:00.005+01:00

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

2009-10-26T14:04:00.015+01:00

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

2009-10-17T21:18:00.004+02:00

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

2009-10-04T14:04:00.004+02:00

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

2009-10-03T17:48:00.005+02:00

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!

2009-09-25T12:56:00.005+02:00

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

2009-09-15T18:52:00.006+02:00

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

2009-09-10T19:19:00.012+02:00

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

2009-09-03T20:11:00.002+02:00

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!

Zürich and Bilingualism

2009-08-29T13:41:00.006+02:00

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

2009-08-20T19:49:00.005+02:00

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

2009-08-14T13:51:00.014+02:00

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!

2009-08-11T17:20:00.003+02:00

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

2009-08-07T03:55:00.002+02:00

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!)