Fall Weekend

This past weekend was the Fall Weekend with Rotex. Rotex is an organization of exchange students from Switzerland that have now returned from their exchanges. They now organize weekends and fun activities for the current inbounds. So anyway, this weekend was the first of a few Rotex weekends we will have this year. This one took place in Alt Sankt Johann, not very far from where I live. After getting home from Italy on Friday, I had to unpack all my stuff and repack it right away to leave the next morning. I met up with Claire, Josh, and Lara (Lara is a member of Rotex) around 11:30 on Saturday morning on the train to Sargans. At Sargans we had to change to a different train headed for Buchs where we would then change to a bus to get to Alt Sankt Johann. Once we got off the bus we walked up to our hostel which was not far off the main road. There we met up with a bunch of other exchange students. It was so great to see so many of my friends again and it was also so great to meet so many new people. Once we were all at the hostel, we chose our rooms and our roommates and got settled in. We had a few minutes to change and socialize with everyone before we left for our hike. We got on a bus headed for Wildhaus where we then walked for a few minutes before taking off our shoes and continuing up the mountain. It was a very unique experience hiking with no shoes on, but it made it 10x as fun due to all the mud. When we eventually got to the top, we took a bunch of pictures and headed back down. This time we took a different route and got the chance to walk around in a knee-deep pool of mud. It was very dirty and gross but also one of my best moments in Switzerland so far. We walked a short way down the mountain and cleaned our feet from all the mud. We then headed back to our hostel for the evening where we had a little bit of free time before dinner. I took the time to catch up with my friends from Deutschkurs and meet a bunch of new people as well. For dinner we had pasta and salad. Typical easy meal. After that we got separated into groups to play a game. In my group I had Cam from Canada, and a bunch of people from spanish-speaking countries who didn't speak very good English. We could all communicate through German but the conversations aren't exactly thrilling. The first challenge was to dress up a member of your group in as many pieces of clothing as possible. Cam and I volunteered to do the challenge for our group. Cam would be the one putting on the cloths, I just had to help him. We only had three minutes to do that so as soon as the time started we raced to our room and pulled out every piece of clothing available, both his and mine, and put it on him. Unfortunately we didn't end up winning the challenge (Claire had over 20 pieces of clothing on) but we still had fun doing it. There were a few other tasks we had to do that night but those were handled by the other members in our group as Cam and I had already completed our task. After the games were finished, we had free time until midnight to socialize. We played some more games and just all got to know each other before heading off to bed. The next morning we were woken up at 8:00 by Rotex banging on pots and pans. We headed upstairs for a quick breakfast then cleaned out our rooms. After all the cleaning was done, we took a walk down the road to a waterfall which was so pretty!! After that we got on the bus to a small-ish town called Wattwil where we went on a scavenger hunt before saying our goodbyes and heading home. All in all, it was a great weekend with great people. I'm already excited for the next one! Until my next post, enjoy these pictures from the weekend. Tschüss!

Canada in the Alps

My American friend

Waterfall!

Sweden!!

Having fun with an Aussie

Team Canada ft. Austrailia

Kat!

Paige figured being over 1000 M above sea level
still wasn't high enough

Ruby!

Cam!

School Life/Trip to Italy

Hello again! Be sure to get comfy, this is a long post... :)

So for starters, the past two weeks have definitely been a changing experience. I somehow managed to survive my first week of school which actually wasn't all that bad (except for the 6am wake up everyday). The school system is very different here from how it is in Canada. First and foremost, every day is different. I have a schedule for the week with classes staged out throughout every day. My easiest day of the week is Wednesday, I start off with double math where I just kind of sit there and pretend to know what's going on and write down what the teacher writes on the board. After that is sports which is nice. My teacher is willing to explain anything in English should I get confused about what's going on. After that is double English which I completely rock at. The English is British English so it is a little different from what I speak but I know pretty much all the differences anyway so it's not a problem. When the teacher gives out work I usually finish it pretty fast then help others when they're stuck. After that class is lunch which is normally two hours, but because my class has Italian right after lunch, I get a three hour lunch. When I go back to school, we have a class with our main teacher where we talk about plans for the year. Last weeks topic: the upcoming trip to Italy, and by upcoming I mean exactly a week later... but more on that later. The rest of the school days are similar to that. Some days are harder but it's not a big problem. Besides the actual school work, I have been talking to more people from my class and have made some good friends. It's a little hard to talk to them sometimes because I don't want to speak so much English, but all I can do in German is make small talk about the weather and things like that. But they're usually willing to speak English if I want to talk about anything more interesting. Also another problem I have run into is the use of Swiss-German. The German that I am learning is the formal German that is spoken in Germany, called high German. It is what teachers use to teach so it's not a problem in classes, however between classes everyone speaks Swiss-German (A dialect of high german with less grammar rules and different words for many things) which I understand almost none of, so that makes it very hard to join in conversations. But when my class is talking to me they will use high German which is good.

Other than school, things are still awesome here. I have something to do almost every night, whether it be with my host parents or with friends. However I find I am almost always tired, even when I go to bed early. It's probably a combination of the constant translating and the fresh mountain air but I find most nights by 9pm I am totally worn out and ready for bed. Also I haven't really felt any sort of homesickness yet. Like of course I miss people and things from home (shoutout to Tim Hortons) but I haven't felt any genuine homesickness yet. But thats a good thing and I hope it holds out!

So now onto the exciting part! As I said before, my class would be taking a trip to Italy and I happened to be able to go with them. I was told by my teacher that we would be leaving in exactly one week to go to Milan, Italy for the World Expo. I was so a little shocked at the short notice but that quickly turned into excitement when I realized that I would be in Italy in one week! So anyway, one week later we got on the 9:13 bus from Chur headed towards Lugano, in the Italian part of Switzerland. The weather was very bad on the way there but I still managed to get some good pictures.

Driving to Lugano

Once we got to Lugano, we were free to walk around the city for a few hours, but because of how hard it was raining we just went for pizza and sat in the restaurant for awhile.

City of Lugano

 After that we walked up to our hostel where we would be staying the next two nights. When we got there we had about five hours to do whatever we wanted. It was raining super hard outside so we all just stayed in our room and had fun. For dinner we went to a small Italian place where I had spaghetti which was sooo good. After that we had some free time so we went out into the city (it had stopped raining at this point) and had some fun. When we got back to the hostel we went to bed right away as we had to be up really early to catch the train to Milan. On the train I played some card games with my classmates and just relaxed.

Train ride to Milan

 Once we got to Milan, we headed straight for the Expo. We waited in a long line to get in but it was totally worth it. There were pavilions from countries all over the world and it was awesome to see all the innovations and specialities from all of these countries. Definitely a great opportunity to see many different cultures in one place.

My class (5Gf)

After the expo we headed back to Lugano for the evening. When we got to the city, our teacher said we were free to do what we wanted, as long as we were back at the hostel by 2am. This was an awesome opportunity as I was finally able to walk around the city and take it all in.

Lugano at night

 Also I got to know my classmates much more and get closer with them, which I think is super important for me to have a good year in the school. The next morning we woke up around 8:30 and after a quick breakfast, headed into Lugano. We had a short walk around the city and along the lake before heading to an art museum, which I found super boring. It was all in Italian so I wasn't able to understand a single word of what the tour guide was saying. However, at the end of the tour we headed into a final exhibit where art was made from solid light, which was actually very cool and fun to play in. I also managed to get some interesting pictures.

The Museum

Playing in solid light

After the tour we headed to McDonald's for a quick lunch before getting the train back to Chur. In the end, it was an awesome few days! I was so thankful to get the opportunity to bond with my classmates and see Italy for the first time, which is awesome seeing as I've only been here for five weeks.

So anyway that's all for now. Thanks for reading! Tomorrow I leave for Alt St. Johann for a weekend with all the other exchange students from the east side of Switzerland so expect another blog post about that early next week. Tschüss!

Bus ride back to Chur

First day of school

It has now almost been a month since I arrived here in Switzerland. It's so weird to think that I have already been here for that long,  it feels like just days ago that I arrived , but at the same time, when I look back at all I've done so far it feels like its been a lot longer than just a month. That being said, I am now completely finished language school! It feels so good to finally be done, however I will miss it a bit. I kind of enjoyed the sleepy train rides into Zurich every day and seeing all my friends from all over the world. Also our adventures through the city after class, especially swimming. I definitely feel like my German has improved a bit as a result of the course, I can now carry basic conversations with people and ask questions and things like that. I am trying to reduce the amount of English I use in a day, but that's not so easy when most of your friends are fluent in English and speak only broken German.

After class on Friday a bunch of us went swimming at our usual spot one last time before going out for dinner. We ate in the old part of Zurich then said our goodbyes to everyone for the next few weeks. Claire, Josh and I then headed back to Chur and walked around there for awhile before heading home for bed. Saturday was a lazy day, I just relaxed, watched some TV, and recovered from the week. On Sunday I went with my friend Lara and her family into Chur for an exhibition type thing called Gehla. It was very similar to the Ex in Toronto, but without all the rides.

Final adventures in Zurich

Old part of Zurich

When you give exchange students a selfie stick....

Today was my first day of real school. I was very nervous on my way there this morning but I stayed confident and positive. I met up with one of the principals of my school around 8:20 and she took me to my first class, which was art/graphic design. When I got there I was introduced to the class and the teacher who were all very welcoming. The teacher also told me he would only be speaking German to me, which sounded like a great idea until he explained what we had to do and I was totally lost. Fortunately some of the other students helped me out. Next was math. Seeing as I barely understand math in English, this class was very hard. We were working with equations I had never seen before so again I was completely lost. Once that period was over, my class went off to Italian class, so, because I didn't want to take Italian, I had a free period. I used it to walk around the school and try to map it all out in my head, which was very very hard because my school is HUGE!!! It has seven floors in the main building, the attached building has five floors. Then if you take the stairs down the mountain theres another building with four floors and another with three then four more buildings with one floor each and a sports complex area with another building and a pool and tennis courts and a soccer field. So needless to say, I was again very lost. But at the end of the spare period I still somehow managed to find my way to Physics. My physics teacher was full of energy and seemed very funny. If I could only understand what he was saying I think he'd be a great teacher. Next was lunch followed by a double period of German. But as it turned out, the rest of my class had a test today so my teacher told me I could just leave. So basically I got a three hour lunch today. When I came back to school I only had forty minutes of chemistry left. My teacher was great and translated a little bit of it for me which definitely helped.

All in all, today was a very confusing, overwhelming, exhausting, day. But somehow it all seemed to be great. I didn't have many chances to talk to my classmates today but I plan to over the course of this week. It's time to make some swiss friends!

So I guess thats all for now. Check back here soon! Until then, Tschüss von die Schweiz!

P.S. sorry for not having any pictures of my school. I was way too busy today to take any.