Saturday, June 14, 2014

spring's lovely links

hey, look what i found in the deep dark archives of my blog!
i completely forgot that i have these...

thoughtcatalog's How You Know You've Found Where You Belong is a great piece. it's also written by a studyabroad-er, although he's in England and i'm in Switzerland.
another good article is this one about the friends you make while studying abroad. gotta love those exchangers from around the world.

my experiences in paris were, thankfully, all good (except for a brief episode of getting lost one day, haha) but this made me laugh so i'm going to share it anyway. travel writing at its best, folks.

one of my newbies has a blog and you should check it out. he's an aussie, his name is vincent and he takes amazing photos. look i'm in this post!

one of my fellow oldies (evan), meanwhile, posted something about happiness a while back. you should also look at that, because he is a talented writer and a pretty awesome person. (also he can play guitar, which is worth a bazillion points in my book.)

i will end with cailler's chocolate study from last year. look at all the awesomeness in this post, you guys.
(it's in german, though. so hit the translate button or something.)


Monday, June 2, 2014

days > 250 -- traveling

piece of advice for future exchange students #29:
explore.
explore even if you don't really know what you're looking for.
it'll be worth it, i promise.

aaand once again updates come super late on this blog. BUT that's a good thing! it means that i am enjoying my life here and am too busy to blog. as my return date gets closer, my exchange gets more packed and blogging drops to the bottom of my list of priorities... :P

things i've done in the 10ish days before i was supposed to post this update:

  • went to ticino with my new host family!!! it was beautiful.
  • also, it snowed. in april. fail. :/
  • but on the bright side we went to a market in italy and that was fun. also we celebrated easter and biked from bellinzona to locarno and spent a lot of time just chilling on the mountain. 
  • speaking of which: i have discovered that i really, really love biking in Europe. it's different from biking in the USA, and somehow lovelier, and i would honestly bike a lot more places if i didn't also love the public transportation system in Switzerland haha. sometimes i wonder why cars even exist... and then i remember how big the United States actually are, and my question is answered...
  • went to schaffhausen! which, by the way, is highly recommended. i've never been to niagara, but schaffhausen is pretty impressive as the swiss version.
  • went cantonhopping. i visited five in one day... no small feat. o.O
  • visited Konstanz (still have no idea what day that was) with Ryan. that was interesting. Also we bought flags. Except one was square and one was rectangular, which we didn't realize until we both got home... :P
  • saw the burning of the böög in zürich. it was basically like a very small very rainy very sad fasnacht. the highlight was the exploding snowman. how sad. BASEL FOR THE WIN, people. ;)
  • i am realizing that there is no place i would rather exchange than in switzerland. sure, the rest of europe is cheaper, and south america would be exciting, and asia would be wonderfully exotic. but i love switzerland, i love its size and its traditions and its culture and its mix of languages, and i wouldn't want to be anywhere else.
love,
han