Number 21:

Hallo hallo hallo! Sorry it's been so long since I blogged. I've been really busy trying to keep some semblance of social life while going to school a million hours a week!!!

My first week of school after the holidays went really well. I have a new exchange student in my class from Mexico, and it's really nice to have someone to relate to in all of my classes. I can actually have a legitimate conversation with my classmates now, and they only laugh at me like 50% of the time for pronouncing things wrong or making a sentence that just doesn't make sense.

Last weekend Ana had a Spanisch in her studio, and she invited me because I'm obviously Latino. Can't you tell from my hair and skin and kick ass dance moves? ;)

 The only white kids at the party.... Ana tried to come in our picture but we kicked her away :)

 Petey and I making "commonwealth guac"

That night I slept over at Ana's house, and then on Sunday we went to Lausanne. It was a new canton and you know what that means......... Any poo made a blog about it!

Last week I had school again all week. It's finally getting normal to go to school, and I only get lost like half the time... Also, GOOD NEWS! I can now ride my bike to school and back without getting lost. YAY! It takes forever though... like 40 minutes there and almost an hour home. Ugh I am not going to get fat here as long as I keep that up! I started taking French, and a special "Deutsch für Austauschschüleren" class so now I have more school than my classmates!! I also started a contemporary dance class for 2 hours once a week which I'm really excited for because we're putting on a big show with singers and a band and stuff in April.

Healthy snacks with Ceci (from Mexico) between classes at schooooooooool

On Thursday night I ate dinner on the Niesen with my Rotary club. It was beautiful and the food was delish! Oh and ps. on Montag I did my presentation for my Rotary club... all in German!

 This is Wimmis (my village) from the top of the Nissen

Last Friday night I went with my dance class to Bern to watch a dance show in Bern for some inspiration. My class had a workshop from the choreographer of the show before I arrived, but the show wasn't exactly what any of us were expecting. It was more of a play, and guess what... it was in French with German subtitles! By the time I leave here I believe I will be completely trilingual! (my computer is telling me that's not a word but I swear it it...)

Then on Saturday I went to Basel with Ana, Alex, and Peter (aka my Bern kids) (aka CAAP) (aka Canadian American Australian Partners) (aka something else that Alex made up that I forget) (aka three of my favourite people in the entire world:)

On Sunday I went to Interlaken with my host family to watch an orchestra composed of young people (aged 15-20 or so) I'm not goona lie, I wasn't exactly pumped... But I was actually really impressed with how good they were! :)

Then today, which is Monday, I only had school from 9:30 until 3:00 (I pretty much cheer about that and it's like a normal school day in Canada...) so I went to Bern for the afternoon and went skating with Peter. Afterwards I got to see the Bundeshaus light show! Soooooo coooooool!!!!!!!!!!!

I've started applying for Universities now too, so at least for right now I barely have time to eat and sleep never mind think about anything at all.... but I think that's best. I'm still enjoying every minute here, and I'm coming up on my three months!!!


Viva la Svizzera <3
Until next time......

Number 20:

I've been really bad about updating this this week, and I still don't really feel like it, so here's the abridged  version of my last week and a half :

First on Saturday my friends had a big birthday celebration for me!!! We went to a cheese festival in Bern, then went to Ana's house in Muri, then we came to Thun and went to a bar with some of my Swiss friends.

Then on Sunday it was my actual birthday so I had my first host family over for cake in the afternoon, and then Sonja and Ana came over for Burritos and a sleepover.

On Tuesday I went to Basel with a bunch of people and we were in three countries in one day... OH EM GEE!

Wednesday I went hiking with my host mom in Lenk.

That evening I made chocolate chip cookies with my host sister. They were DELISH!!!!!!

On Thursday I went to Liechenstein! 

Then on Friday night I went to Thun, and today I went to Zurich and watched Cats (the show not the animal) which was my birthday present. It was really cool and all but I understood absolutely nothing.

Now I have to go to school on Monday :(

Number 19:

I know that Im a little bit late in making this (I‘ve just been so darn busy!) but Greece was absolutely amazing!

On Sunday afternoon my family and I finished packing up our bags, ate some lunch, and got on a train to the Zurich airport. By the time we arrived it was about seven o’clock, so we checked in our bags and ate some Chinese food for dinner. Then we decided to check into our room…….. my parents had a room reserved for us in the part of the airport where you already have your boarding pass checked (since our plane left at 6:30 or some ungodly hour)… but when we tried to go in they told us that in the morning we wouldn’t be allowed to leave until 6 because that’s when the front desk people came to work!! So by then we were all really tired but we had to go find a hotel room not in the airport so that in the morning we would be able to get through customs and everything before our plane left. The next morning we had a 5 am taxi from the hotel, but it was totally worth it when we arrived in Greece before lunch that day :)

We were staying in a small, not super touristy town (at least not at this time of year…) in north eastern Crete called Sissy. It was right on the beach and the food was good but I think the most exciting thing about it was that most of the staff could speak at least 4 languages!! They mostly spoke Greek, German, English, and Dutch. It was really amazing for me to be on vacation and having the other people on vacation not speaking English! Like for me, I automatically assumed that if someone doesn’t speak the native language of a place the next choice will be English (ignorant… I know) but here the tourists spoke mostly German, but tons of other languages as well from all over the world.

In Greece we stayed very busy! We had a car so we could drive all over the island exploring cool places like….

Beaches: we went to a few totally different beaches. Some were totally rocky while others had sand. Some had BIG waves (like in Kona) and some had barely any waves at all.

We also had a mega stormy day while we were in Greece. We went to the beach and it was so windy that we had to put giant rocks on our stuff to keep it from blowing away! Then the next morning there was a boat washed up on the shore. 

Taverns (restaurants): Holy moly we ate some delicious food! We had greek salad almost every day because it is obviously delicious, and we also had some really good stuffed veggies (with no shortage of olive oil ;), and interesting Greek coffees. Oh! And we went to a Greek night thing at our hotel and I learnt how to dance :)

Historical places: One day we drove a few hours up a mountain to walk down into a big huge cave! This cave was apparently where Zeus (you know… the god from Greek mythology…) was born. It was super eery and green and soooooo cool!! We also went to Knossos, the site of the giant archeological excavation of King Midas’s castle. We had a tour (IN GERMAN!!) and it was absolutely amazing seeing all of the super advanced technologies they had in ancient Greece (like plumbing! This castle was built like a thousand years ago and they had three water lines: one for rain water collection, one for purified drinking water, and the other for dirty water)

Like I said before… I had a really really great time, and it was so good to see the ocean again <3 I still can’t believe how lucky I am that my host family took me with them.

We got back from Greece on Monday evening, then on Tuesday I went to Wallis, and yesterday I went to Tessin…. I would write about both of those adventures but I think they’re already well enough documented in Ana’s vlogs!

Wallis: 

Tessin: 

Number 18:

Kalimera! That‘s Greek for good morning... except people say it all day so more like HELLO!  I just got back from a marvelous week in Greece with my host family! Before I tell you all about it, I have to tell you about the few days in between my last blog post and when I left!

On Friday I went to Brig for the very first time! Well… actually it was the second time, but the first I was only in the Banhof (that’s German for train station) so it doesn’t really count. I visited my friend and saw a castle but most importantly I bought about a year’s supply of chocolate (it was on sale at Denner)!!!!!!!! Yay Schweiz! I came home with my purse literally overflowing, and now I have a drawer in my room solely devoted to chocolate. Don’t worry though mom and dad, I won’t eat it all in one sitting… hopefully.

The next day I went to Bern for some fun in the sun at Marzili for probably the last time until next summer :'(  The river was sooooo cold that we were numb almost instantaneously… but we were troopers and toughed it out… twice.

 Three other AWESOME things about the day were: 

   #1-  an exchange student from California found peanut butter (it’s not that common here, and no one eats it) so we had peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on Sunday bread (aka the best bread in theworld)

      #2- an exchange student from Canada (the Yukon to be exact! And want to know something funny? I know exactly ONE other person from the Yukon… and they know each other!!!!!) Anyways, he just happened to have Bob and Doug Mckenzie movie on his ipod so we watched some of it and I swelled with pride at being a Canadian (that’s only half sarcasm)

And #3- ANA MADE A VIDEO BLOG ABOUT IT so I can re live every second of it (well the seconds she got on camera at least) over and over and over and over until Youtube shuts down.

Then on Sunday morning I made banana pancakes with my host sister (my personal fave) and brought out TWO bottles of maple syrup which we finished. They were delicioso if I may say so myself! (ps that’s Spanish, not German or Greek ;) 

After that I went into Thun with the famjam (in case you didn’t get the memo I live in Wimmis now which is NOT Thun… it’s a half hour by bus or 20 minutes by train if you can get a good connection) to watch my host sister play with her band in a big parade and then later on stage. She plays the saxophone, and the jumbo huge bass sax which is pretty cool, as well as about 20 thousand other instruments… she’s pretty talented. Anyways, the parade was for a festival which I’ll have to explain to you when I get home (or give me a call if you’re not from home) because it’s more words than I can type out in the limited time that I have in internet land… but the most important part of it is that there’s a lot of music and beer and young children dress up like dogs and hit you with sticks with balloons on the end! I wish I was around to stay for more, but poor old me had to go to Greece ;)

 Ahhh I will never get tired of this town <3

I think I’ll wait until tomorrow to tell you about Greece because I have to get pictures from my host dad and sister first because I have minimal pictures of myself…. And those are of the utmost importance.