Fastnacht

I am writing this one in German, it is about a Swiss (and German/ Austrian) holiday called Fasnacht. This is not my experience just some facts. Feel free to google translate it!! --> I may or may not write a little about my experience with Fasnacht in English later

In Europe:

Fasnacht ist anders in jedem Land, aber in Europa ist es ungefähr gleich. Hier ist wie Fasnacht in Basel (eine Stadt in der Schweiz) gefeiert wird. Fasnacht beginnt mit dem Morgestraich am Montag nach Aschermittwoch. Abertausend Leuten laufen durch die Straßen von Basel um 4 Uhr am Morgen. Sie tragen weiße Kleider und machen Tönen mit Kuhglocken.  Danach gibt es Paraden durch die Stadt, normalerweise am Montag und Mittwoch Abend. Die Paraden haben Guggemuusige. Guggemuusig sind Gruppen der Musikers, die Kostüme tragen. Sie spielen den ganzen Abend lang. Wenn man ein Zuschauer ist, werft man Konfetti, trinkt man viel Alkohol, und trägt man ein Kostüm. Fastnacht wird in den Katholischen teilen der Schweiz, Deutschland und Österreich gefeiert.  Es wird gefeiert, so man feiern kann bevor man fasten muss. Wenn es endet, muss man fasten – das heißt man muss etwas aufgeben (so wie Schokolade).

In den USA:

In den USA Feiern wir Fasnacht für die gleichen Gründe. In New Orlands feiert man am 28. Februar, vor Aschermittwoch. In den USA gibt es weniger Paraden, Kostümen und solche Sachen. Man tanzt, trinkt, und isst bevor man fassten muss und es nicht mehr machen darf. In den USA dauert es drei oder mehrere Tagen. Die Gründe hinter Mardi Gras und Fasnacht sind gleich, aber man feiert es anders.

Back again

It has been a long time since I have posted on here, but I guess it is time to start back up again. I think that it will be good to write about my memories from the times I didn't write about last year in high school here and what it is like being back with the people I have known for ever. I will also write about my plans for the future since I will be attending college next year and living alone!!! Send me an email or make a comment if you are still reading these, if not, then I'll just write to the endless abyss that makes the internet...

Und jetzt auf Deutsch:

Ich habe seit lange nichts geschrieben, aber jetzt fange ich wieder an. Zum teil werde ich nur auf Deutsch schrieben, zum Teil nur auf Englisch, zum Teil auf Deutsch und Englisch. Ich werde über die Schweiz schreiben, und auch über Amerika. Es ist so komisch zurück zu sein. Ich habe nur noch ein Jahr Hochschule, dann gehe ich an mit dem Uni. Schick ein Email oder kommentiere etwas, wenn du das liest. Wenn nicht, dann schreibe ich einfach für mich...

Cats and blind cows

This Saturday was wonderful! My host family and I left the house at 12:30 and hit the highway to Basel. Basel is one of the larger cities of Switzerland, the third largest after Zürich and Geneva, it has a Population about 165,000. It took us around an hour and a half to drive there, on the way my host sister and I did her English homework. She must read the novel 1984, she finds it quite disturbing, whereas I find it mind-twisting with an intelligent plot. We finished chapter 6 right before we pulled into the parking garage... perfect timing! Our first stop in Basel was the theater, it turned out to be quite crowded because we had chosen the exact same day as Switzerland's largest comic-con. The streets were filled with superhero, villains, jokers, and everything else imaginable. We left the fantasy filled streets and entered the theater. The musical we were going to see is the famous "Cats" based on a book of poetry written by T.S. Elliot. Cats is famous for dancing, costumes, and the beautiful song memory. The plot introduces different types of cats in this "clan" on the one night a year where they all meet. On this night on of the cats is chosen to go to cat heaven. I didn't understand the story completely, it might have needed some background information, however I very much enjoyed the costumes and dancing. It was well preformed. We exited the theater covering our eyes for the blinding sun, and weaved our way back through the swarms of cosplayers. After entering the automobile and driving a mile or two, we arrived at our next parking garage (side note: Switzerland has a lot more parking garages than Bend... then again Bend only had one parking garage)(second side note: I think Gretchen has at least 4 parking garages and it only has a population of 16,000 in comparison  to Bend's 85,000)(third side note: I think Bend might need another parking garage). Back to the story, sorry for all of the side notes... So our adventure continued with waiting. We arrived at our restaurant too early, so in order to pass the time we went into a second restaurant and ordered drinks. The clock ticked and slowly our reservation was upon us... it was time to walk into the "Blind Cow". The blind cow is a resturant, which provides jobs for blind people as waiters of waitresses. In order to make you understand how it feels to be blind, you are led into a completely dark room, you would not even be able to see your hand in front of your face. Our waitresses name was Julia, she guided us into the resturant via shoulder train (holding onto the sholders of the person in front of you). She guided us to our table, pulled the chairs out, and proceeded to take our order. She had a mind map of the whole resturant, she new exactly where each chair was, where to put the glasses no plates down, where to talk and face. I had no idea that a blind person would be able to be a waiter. We chose the sunrise menu for dinner and had to guess the whole night what we were eating. I am still not positive what I had, so I will just leave that description out. All in all it was a great day with lovely people.

B1 Test

I got the results back for my B1 German test:

Speaking score- 75/75

Writing/reading score- 210.5/225

Total score- 285.5/300

This is definitely a passing score and I am satisfied with it! I will receive my 'diploma' in May!

Nadja

Nadja is one of my good friends, she has been nice to me since day one, weather or not I could speak German. Today she said I wasn't writing enough on my blog... So here you go Nadja!

France

In the second week of spring vacation I got to go to south France! It was another camp, this time a conformation camp. I was able to tag along even though I'm not getting confirmed (if that is how it is phrased...). South France is beautiful. It is made up of small stone houses that are falling apart. It has little towns in forests of green. Castles can be seen peaking out behind hillsides, and old churches resting in the middle of the small villages. Our house wasn't the prettiest or the cleanest, and although that bothered other people, it didn't bother me. I like the homey feeling of hostels, plus they're less expensive which is always a bonus! Here is what I learned and saw in France:

Day One:
We drove about 7-8 hours in a small van to our destination. At one point on the way there we stopped at a rest stop. In a store there it had a touch screen vending machine. It looked like it had cereal as an option on it. My host sister decided to buy it because it looked interesting, and who wounding like to say that they bought cereal out of a vending machine? It turned out to be hot coco with coco rice Krispies on top of hot chocolate, my host sister did not like it at all, yet I found it quite good. It was hot coco with a crunch... on second thought that does not sound very appealing, still strongly recommended. We arrived around 3 in the afternoon in France and were greeted at our house by a crowd of French people. There was one woman who owned the house, for teenagers from the church, two Belgians (I have no idea why they were there), a few other people, and one teacher. We ate waffles as a snack, they were superb, and than went down to the river. At the river we played a game. In groups we tried to see who could stack stones the highest. Later we went back for dinner, outside once again, and than to sleep.

Day Two:
In the morning we went to a museum about the Protestants in France. It turns out they lived a pretty rough life. After one of the Louis became king (I don't remember which one) he decided to ban the religion. Anyone who would not change to catholic would be killed. In an effort to save their faith they hiked up mountains and lived in caves away from civilization. While moving into a cave is a little extreme, I found it courageous that they would not convert their religion. After we learned about this we had a picnic, than hiked up a cliffside to check out one of the caves for ourselves. It was dark, and cold. I would have not liked to live there. In the afternoon we planned for the conformation, than went to a crepe restaurant for dinner. It was simply delicious! During dinner I tried to talk to the franchise, however I cannot speak French, and they could not speak English. We ended up trying to communicate in Spanish, which did not work our well either. Never the less we shared quite a few laughs and had a great time together.

Day Three:
After waking up early and driving two hours to the coast, we exited our small van. I thought we were going direct to the beach so I wore my flip-flops and sunglasses as we walked towards... a tower? Misunderstanding people is a side effect of being bilingual. We ended up touring a tower. The tower was an entrance to a wall surrounded town. A long long time ago (like King Louis and only one religion era) they locked up the non-catholic women in this jail. Women were held there until the converted their religion. One group of women decided to go against the King and would sing songs and riot against the guards. They would carve the words resist into the stone every day to show that they would not give in. Eventually the escaped by climbing down from they tippy top of the tower with a rope at night. I'm not sure if I could do that. After lunch we went to the beach, this is when my flip-flops came in handy. It wan't warm enough to go swimming, but we splashed around in the water, played soccer, and took a bunch of photos. The whole ride home the two French boys sang as loud as possible to the music. We danced and sang the key words to songs, considering the fact that a majority of the lyrics were hummed due to lack of lyrical knowlage.

Day Four:
On our last full day we started off the morning by walking through a garden and looking at all sorts of plants. It was interesting, but a little boring after the second hour. When we were finished learning about plants we had lunch at the train station. In the afternoon we took a steam train ride. Everyone got in the same cart and we danced to music as the train slowly chugged along. We played card games, took photos, and much more before the ride was over. That evening was once again conformation preparation, and than a restaurant. After dinner we had to say good bye to the Frenchies, and than went back to the house alone. That night we stayed up until 11:30, pretended to fall asleep, and than snuck back to the other section of the house to have a dance party. I was surprised no one heard us while we did everything from limbo, to the whip, to the can can. At 12:00 we celebrated my host sisters birthday. The hours passed by slower and slower until 4:00 am when I finally fell asleep.

Day Five:
Most of us slept on the drive home, I sat and watched France pass by. I cannot sleep well in cars. At lunch time we stopped to see an old aqueduct which was very cool. We finally arrived back home at 7.

Easter Camp

For the last two weeks I have at my spring vacation. Sadly I did not get to rest up and sleep until 10 everyday, on the other hand I was able to travel a lot and meet many amazing people. In the first week I went to a Easter camp with my host sister Anna. At first I was sceptical to go, because I have never been religious, and know next to nothing about the bible. I was worried that if they found out that I wasn't 'properly educated' they would judge me. However, the adult leaders were all very kind, they didn't care who you were, as long as you would work hard and help out. I also thought I would be bored out of my mind reading from the bible every day, but I actually found it quite interesting. We read the story of Josef, a young man sold into slavery by his brothers, and though I do not agree completely with the morals of the story, I enjoyed learning about the Protestant faith. After all of my learning, I know I will stick to my beliefs, yet I always enjoy learning and understanding the other religions. I went to the camp as a semi-councilor. I helped with the games and activities, played with the kids, and always tried to stay sunny side up. If you know me, you know that I love to play games and that I work well with young children. This made it very easy to fit in, American or not. Throughout the week we played games, went on hikes, and shared smiles. I list some of my favorite games/activities:

Americanish Sitzball (American sit ball): although this game is not actually American, it is very fun. Everyone is on a field and one person has a rubber ball. They try to throw it at other people. If you are hit and do not catch the ball, you must sit and wait for whomever tagged you to also be hit. Once they are hit you can play again. If you catch the ball, than you can just keep playing. It turns out that I am good at catching, however have very poor aim. I was mostly siting and not playing. 

Forest tag: we played this at night. Once it was dark we took all of the kids into the forest. Earlier that day we had hung up pieces of paper throughout the forest. The kids were put in teams and tried to run around and mark as many papers as possible with a marker (each team had a different color so that we could tell them apart). While they were doing that, the teens would sneak around and try to tag them, this would give them a minus point. It was quite fun.

Hike: we took a small hike, it was pretty

Letters: we had a cork board at camp. On it we could write letter to the kids and tack them up. Than they would write back, etc. At one point I had about 20 letters waiting for me. It felt really nice to hear all of the nice things the kids had to say. I saved some of the letters to bring home.

Swimming: at one point we went swimming in the mountain water. It was freezing and I felt like a popsicle as soon as I stepped out.

The camp had a lot more than this from fake olympics, to amazing food, to songs, and everything in-between. But it would take to long to write that all down. So I'll just say that It was amazing and that I am so thankful that I was able to go!!!

B1 Test

A while back I took the B1 test for German. I woke up at the crack of dawn, hopped on the train, continued studying, and waited for the 2 hour long train journey to be finished. When I arrived I greeted all of the other exchange students with hugs, smiles, and a lot of confused looks from passerbys. We waited togther until 9 o'clock when the test started. It had reading, writing, grammar, hearing, and speaking parts. We were tested on the different tenses, the articles (der, die, das, den, dem, des... they all mean the in English), reading comprehension, and much more. After 3 hours we had finished everything except for the speaking part. I was assigned to the last speaking test, which meant I had 4 hours of waiting. It didn't bother me because I was able to hang out with all of the other exchange students. My favorite thing about them is that you can be yourself without judgment and will always feel welcome. Once my speaking test was finished I headed home, saying goodbye to all of the other exchange students. I will receive my scores in a couple of weeks and hopefully I passed. It would give me a diploma that I could use for everything from college essays, to job applications. Wish me luck!

A short and sweet history of Swatch

For those of you who don't know swatch is a swiss watch company that creates cheep and affordable good working swiss watches, however they are definitely not your typical watch from physical appearance to a rich history.

In the time Swatch was created (1980s) the Swiss watch industry was suffering big time. (article about the industry sinking here... called 'Quartz Crisis') The sink in the industry was from a combination of a soar in the mass production of 'new' digital watches in Asia and the start of an economical depression in Switzerland. At this point people were more likely to buy a cheep watch than a complicated expensive swiss watch. The return of the industry came with the help and ideas of many, yet the way seemed impossible. A group of people from the ETA watch company (ETA makes parts for watches in my very own home town, to learn about them click here) decided to make a new, modern, and inexpensive watch. In order to make it inexpensive they would need to cut down on some of the specialties that made watches so special... the parts. Most watches had at least 100 parts, each part purchased and put together by hand. This many parts makes a watch very complex and expensive... so the idea of swatch was to put a watch togther in less parts (around 50). To accomplish this seemed crazy at the time. It would be like making lasagna with only peanut butter and crackers. After a lot of hard work and planing Swatch was able to create their first watch. The popularity of Swatch soared and saved the Swiss watch industry allowing both new and old watches to continue being made. Since then they have a lot more styles and types, but the price is still dramatically lower than an average Swiss watch (ranging from 60-110 CHF). If you want to look at some of the Swatch watches on their website click this link. I hope you enjoyed this educational story!

Ski Vacation

In the first week of sport vacation I went to the Alps (Valhalla in east Switzerland near Chur). I went with family friends of my second host family because my second host family had to stay at home for Fastnacht (I will talk about Fastnacht in a later post). On the first Saturday of break I took a train direct from German course to Chur. By the time I arrived at the vacation apartment it was late afternoon and my vacation host family (Brigitte, Thomas, Laura, and Luc) were just arriving back from a long day of skiing. That Evening we played a big game of monopoly, som card games, ate dinner, and went to bed. The next day I slept in (first day of vacation is always great). For breakfast we had fresh bread from a local bakery. It was amazing, crunchy on the outside, warm and soft on the inside, heavenly carbohydrate goodness. I was also introduced to oval malting crunchy, it is pretty much Nutella with Rice Krispies inside of it, I am planning on bringing 200 jars home with me! It was too windy to go skiing, instead we visited a nearby town, Lenzerheide. Lenzerheide is a small, cute, touristic town made up of small restaurants and sport shops. It is located in the heart of the mountains and has the most wonderful view. Laura and I went ice skating and the others took a walk through the winter was so warm that the rink was made up of melted ice, it made for a very interesting ice skating experience! That aft noon we once again played games, ate, and slept (three of my favorite things). On Monday the weather was good and we were able to go skiing, I am pretty bad at skiing, however I improved throughout the day. For lunch we stopped in a small resturant, than continued skiing. At the end of the day I was tired and nearly passed out on the bed back at the apartment. The next day was once again to windy for skiing so we decided to spend the day in Chur. We spent the morning walking around the town and looking at various buildings, after a McDonalds break (surprisingly a lot better quality in Switzerland, they even have a veggie burger!) we went to the shopping outlets. We spent the whole afternoon looking through stores, I couldn't believe that they had a roxy store, sadly the prices were Swiss and not American. In the evening we did the normal routine and than slept. On Wednesday it snowed, and most of the ski lifts were closed. I decided it was the perfect weather to bake a chocolate cake and baked macaroni and cheese. After a morning of baking, family friends of my  vacation host family came to town. Laura, the daughter of the family friends of my vacation host family (also named Laura), and I went to the out door hot pool located in the mountains. We were able to enjoy the snow and views while still staying warm! In one corner of the pool it had underwater chairs with jets, sadly they were all full. After waiting for what seemed like hours I was able to claim a place. Laying on it felt like floating, I don't think I have ever been more relaxed! That evening we had fun by playing poker. After the first few rounds I had twice as much money as everyone else, by the end of the game I had lost. It was still fun! We went skiing the day after and the weather was amazing. Blue skies and a blanket of snow filled the valley like a daydream. That evening my second host mom came to meet up with us for the last one or two days. We all went out to pizza (and of course played games). I learned a game called f*** the neighbor (which I now call "not so nice to the neighbor" because I didn't want to be rude). It turned out that I was very bad, yet throughout the evening I improved. I will teach anyone who would like to learn when I get home. On our second to last day of vacation we took a gondola to the other side of the valley and went skiing in Arosa (probably spelled wrong). It was officially my favorite ski spot because the slopes were not crazy hard, yet still interesting and technical. Plus one of the ski lifts was shaped like Toblarone and what's not to like about that. At around lunchtime we headed back over to the other side of the valley to meet my host mom (she doesn't ski so she just went hiking). It turned out that while we were in Arosa, Valbella was brewing up a storm. It was cold and windy on the other side of the valley and we went strait home after eating lunch. That evening was casual filled with a lot of naps, more board games, and around the world ping pong. On our last morning Laura and I went on the Alpine slide. It was 3km long, the longest in Switzerland. The curves were very scary, but it was amazing. My hair whipped back in the breeze and I had to hold my hat in order to keep it from flying away. That afternoon we headed back home. I was sad to be torn away from the mountains, yet happy to be on my way to Spain and Engelberg in the next week of vacation.

Spain

My host family and I went to Spain for 3 days this week. We booked stand-by plane tickets the day before, and than traveled on Monday morning to the beautiful city Valencia. It was all very fast and rushed, but once we got there it was amazing!

Day one: 

We left for the Zürich Airport at at 8:45 with one backpack each (I was quite surprised I could fit everything into one small backpack). Our train left at 9:26 and on the way there we enjoyed a coffee. We took a lot of selfies with a strange lens my host brother has. You can attach it to the camera on your phone and it distorts your photos making really funny faces. After a quick train-change-dash in the main train station we made it to the Zürich Airport. Our train was registration, tickets, security, oh-no, back to registration, back to security, and so on. Right as our flight was boarding we arrived, got seated, and prepared for the take off. At 1:30 our plane arrived in Valencia. It was much warmer than Switzerland, a whopping 64 degrees! Soon we found our car rental and were on the road. After seeing how people in Spain drive, I have decided that if I ever live there I will need to use the metro. It took us nearly 45 minutes to find a parking space in the old part of the city and we nearly got crashed into about 40 times! When we finally hit the streets it was around 3 o'clock and almost everyone was asleep taking the afternoon naps. We strolled around the city looking at all of the old buildings, stopping at small bakeries, and taking tons of pictures. We were able to tour through one of the buildings that had previously been used as trading/bank house. It consisted of 4 main rooms and a large orange tree orchard in the middle. By 5 o'clock we had seen everything in the city and decided to travel towards the beach to find a hotel for the night (considering that we were so last minute we had not yet booked one). This turned out to be harder than it seemed due to the fact that most people own vacation homes so there are not many hotels, and people don't normally go to Spain in winter so a lot was closed. For about 1 hour we searched and drove until we took a short stop on a beautiful beach to take photos at sunset. It became to cold outside so we continued driving until we found a (somewhat sketchy) hotel near the beach. By this time it was already 8 or 9 at night and we all had a flabbergastingly large appetite. The hotel clerk told us of an Italian restaurant about one block away. When we arrived the Restaurant appeared to be closed. The two workers inside said something about closed and five minutes in broken English (language was a problem because none of us spoke good Spanish). We assumed that it was closing in 5 minutes considering that it was so late. After being ushered in we figured out that it was in fact opening in 5 minutes. After a large dinner of pasta and pizza we went back to the hotel and slept!

Day two:

On Tuesday morning we ate breakfast in the hotel. Many things went wrong at breakfast. To start off all of the drinks had about 3 cups of sugar added to them and would have given anyone a sugar rush. I decided to go for toast considering the limited options. My host mom went to the conveyer belt like toaster before me with american-style bread and it seemed to work fine. I decided to use the Spanish bread (which tastes much better than american bread) It turned out that my bread was a little too large because it caught on fire mid way through the toaster. After blowing out the flames on the bread, I opted to eat non-toasted bread. As I sat down, I looked at what my host brother had chosen to eat. I saw cereal and milk with what appeared to be purred fruit onto. It wasn't necessarily my choice but it did look good. Upon his first bite we figured out that the fruit was in fact crushed tomatoes. He scooped the crushed tomatoes out of his bowl and continued eating. After a few bites he decided that tomato and cereal do not go together and also turned to the non-toasted toast. Once breakfast was over me and my host siblings headed down to the beach for about 15 minutes before packing up and heading out for a day in the Spanish sun (and the Spanish wind). Our first stop was a old castle on a hill. It took us about 30 minutes to find a parking spot in the small town at the foot of the hill. After many u-turns, sudden brakes, and yells of STOP STOP, we found a parking space. The view from the top was amazing. The castle was huge and we were able to explore it head to toe. All of the feelings and floors were gone, along with most walls. It left a lot of open space and great places to climb. After about an hour of exploring a worker there saw may host brother and I on the edge of one of the castle walls, he yelled something in Spanish, that was the end of our climbing up the walls. It was still nice just walking around the rest. In the second half of the day we headed back to Valencia to check out the modern architecture part of the city. I will not write much about it but be sure to check out the photos because it looks really cool! Later on we went to the beach. On the walk there we bought some oranges from a street vendor. They may have been the most amazingly amazing tasting oranges I have ever had. With sticky hands we arrived at the beach. My host siblings and I played in the frigid water (only ankle deep) while my host parents waited at the restaurant near by. We played at playground before heading back to Valencia to go to our Hotel (new and reserved in the middle of the city). For dinner we went to a Spanish restaurant and ate Pallela, a typical Spanish rice dish. For dessert we got giant ice cream cones (my flavors were kinder bueno and kit kat). We piggy backed on the way back to the hotel. It was quite fun.

Day three:

On our last day we woke up and ate at a Bakery for breakfast (not the hotel). At around 9 we meandered to the local inside market. It is about 2 blocks long both ways and has hundreds of vendors inside. We bought fresh juice, dried fruits that tasted like candy (one of them was called purple pineapple, it tasted good but I have no clue what it was), nut and citrus meringue, sheep cheese, and more oranges. It was cold outside and as we headed to a castle on the edge of town we tried to stay in the sun. We arrived at the castle and climbed to the top. From there you could see the whole town. We went back to the hotel, grabbed our bags, and went shopping for about an hour before heading to the airport. I found my favorite american clothing store and may have bought a sweater. That was the end of our trip.