Some of you may of thought I'd died or something but really I've just been enjoying my time in Switzerland for the past week. Its been AMAZING and I love my host family and all the other exchange students and just Switzerland in general. There won't be any pictures in this post (sososo sorry) because I'm using my host family's computer and I still don't know how to upload pictures onto it. Also the keyboard is German and reeeaaaly confusing (why do they switch the z and y!!!). In the future it will still be hard to update because I don't have my own computer and I don't want to use theirs all the time, sorry :(
I'm going to try and recap my first week, but I've done so many things already that this post would be way took long, you'd be scrolling for days. So I guess I'll first say my first international flight was quite good. There was a Swiss man sitting next to me who was very nice and talked with me about Switzerland and what I should expect, he was very helpful. After I got off the plane with a fellow exchange student (her name is Kat and she's really nice and super cool and ya you should follow her @ swiss_miss) we both tried to find our way out but it was confusing, too much German. My first day was really great, I rode the bike with my host parents along the Aare river (soooo pretty) and I just hung out with my host family and got to know them better. My host brother wasn't there at the time, but he's here now. My host family is very nice and since I'm there first exchange student they're always trying to do things for me when really I want help them all the time. So far they've been very helpful and welcoming and I already know that when I have to leave them, I'll be extremely sad and
This week I've traveled to Konstanz, Germany; Basel; and many other smaller towns around Switzerland. Konstanz was so much fun, and the lake there was beautiful! I had churros, which I was not expecting they had, and then we looked around the shops, but I didn't buy anything. I was too busy admiring all the old but beautiful buildings. In Basel the weather was perfect!!! A bit hot, but coming from Texas it was nothing I couldn't handle. I ate lunch along the river and saw the "tourist" spots. I also went to the Münster church and we paid to go up to the very top and oh my gosh it was amazing!!! There were A LOT of stairs and since it's an older building the stairs were very steep in I had to duck a few times. Overall Basel is sehr sehr schön and if you ever visit Switzerland, I highly recommend you visit there.
When I was preparing the last couple weeks, I believed my German was quite good. The Rosetta Stone was going well and I thought I was at least a little bit prepared to speak German. Turns out I'm horrible at having any conversation in German. My host dad, thankfully, is from South Africa, so his native language is english. The rest of the family speaks really good English, so I think I'm really lucky. Another plus is that my host mom is from German so she speaks "High German". The Swiss speak a different dialect of German, quite different to the German of Germany. This makes it easier for me to learn German, and not be confused with Swiss German, like other exchange students in Switzerland. I'm learning new words every day, but remembering them is another thing. German is sometimes hard for me to pronounce, so 60% of the time I don't even know if I'm saying the words right. On Monday I started my German language class with all the other Rotary Exchange students and it goes on for 3 weeks. I was put into the "advanced" group and I have literally no idea why because on the test they gave us I probably guessed 75% of it. The teacher speaks German to us most of the time and I hardly know what she's saying. Every day it gets easier, but I'm just hoping that by the end I can actually hold a conversation with my host family.
I think I will end it here, because it's late and I'm afraid my host family will come upstairs and ask what I'm doing. I'll try to update as much as possible, and I apologize for disappearing for the past week and a half. Next tim I post I will add some pictures to show you how beautiful Switzerland is.
Until next time! Tschüss!
(if you read to the end I love you and I applaud you. If you skimmed it I love you too, don't worry :D)
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