Past Two Weeks

Hello again all. It has been awhile since I have been able to write on here. A combination of business, laziness, and lack of super interesting things to write about are to blame for this. Also, I apologize for the randomness of when I post. I'm not really on a schedule, I just update when I can so just make sure to check back here every few days (or in my Nanna's case, everyday at Tim Horton's). So anyway, my last post ended with me talking about the fall weekend so I guess I'll just go from there...

The week following the fall weekend was just another week in school like any other (no random trip to Italy to cut it in half this time). Although the schedule is different everyday, most days are the same. Wake up at 6am, get ready, leave with my host dad at 7am to go to Chur, get dropped of at his business, then take the bus up the road to the school. Most days I start at Halde (the campus half way up the mountain) except for Mondays and Tuesdays. On Mondays I have art first period so I start at Plessur (the campus at the base of the mountain), and on Tuesdays I have sports first period so I start at Sand (the sports complex campus thing tucked around the side of the mountain). For lunch I usually go into the city with some friends and look for something good to eat. Most days however we usually end up at the restaurant in Coop, which is fine because the food is very good. The typical amount of time I should have for lunch is two hours (be jealous Sinclair students) however on Mondays and Fridays it's only one hour. But that's fine because on Wednesdays and Thursdays it's three hours, so that makes up for it. After lunch everyday I only have about one or two lessons left before the day is over. After school I sometimes walk around the city with friends or just catch the next train home.

The view from my school

Last weekend, there was a follow up orientation for all the August inbounds to this district in St. Gallen. I met up with Claire on the train in Landquart and together we headed to St. Gallen. When we got there we realized we had no idea where we had to go next and ended up getting stuck at the train station for awhile before I was finally able to get in contact with one of the other exchange students who actually knew the way.

St. Gallen train station

In the end, a rotarian ended up picking us up because if we were to walk, we would have been very late. The meeting wasn't too bad. It was mostly in German and I was very proud of myself because I understood about 95% of it. The meeting was just so rotary could check up on us and make sure everything was going smooth. They just asked us questions about host family life, learning the language, making friends with Swiss people, etc. Near the end they gave us the sex talk which was kind of awkward when explained in another language but other than that the meeting wasn't half bad. After the meeting all the exchange students stuck together for awhile and climbed to the top of a really big hill where we got to take some great pictures, as well as some typical tacky exchange student pictures.

The district 2000 Canadians

See "tacky exchange student pictures" referenced above

After that we all headed down into the city and walked around for awhile. We attempted to visit some stores, however because it was a Saturday, all stores closed at 5:30 so we didn't have much time. Instead we went into a church and had a look around. It was so beautiful in there but we were not allowed to take pictures so heres one of the outside instead:

Eventually we all had to split up as some of us had longer trips than others to get home. I stayed with Claire, Nikki (Canada) and Ethan (USA) as late as we could so we could see as much as possible. We just walked around some more and grabbed dinner at McDonalds before we all had to split up as well. When I got back to Malans, the town's "Winefest" was in full swing. I met up with my host parents in the middle of the town and we had some Ziegeunerspeiss (thats the proper name of the meat stick thing that I could never remember the name of) and also got to try a few different kinds of wine. I then met up with one of my friends from Malans who then introduced me to basically everyone else in the village around my age (it's a small village) which was super awesome.

The next day, I went with my host dad to the village of Bad Ragaz where we got to take a look at a really cool Swiss/Russian bi-plane and get a brief history lesson on it. Here's some pictures of it:

After that we headed back to Malans for the final evening of Winefest where we had some more Ziegeunerspiess and, of course, wine. All in all, it was a good weekend.

The next week of school was more of the same. It pretty much all feels normal now as far as school goes. I do however find it much harder to stay awake during lessons here. In a class where the teacher is speaking really fast and I can only pick up a few phrases, I find myself dosing off every now and then. Its so much harder to take an interest in the lessons when you have absolutely no idea what is going on. 

Yesterday after school, I went to Zürich to meet up with some exchange friends of mine, Cam (Canada), Jacob (USA), and another guy named Rafael from Brazil who I hadn't met before. In Zürich we just had dinner and explored the city. We got lost a few times but also managed to find some pretty cool spots. For example, a park on top of a hill where you could sit on the wall and overlook the entire city. It was such a beautiful place and it put me into one of those "this is what life is all about" kind of moods. To see what I mean, heres pictures:

So anyway, thats all for this post. I hope you enjoyed it. This coming week in my school is "theme week" followed by two weeks of fall holidays so I'm sure I'll have a lot more to write about in the near future. Until then, tschüss!