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.)

i am in love

note: the following post was written about a month ago in the train, but i didn't actually get around to posting it until just now. 

it's very short and also unedited, so just consider it a snapshot of my feelings at the moment.

I'm in the Gotthard Tunnel on a very long train ride, and I'm riding alone so I have plenty to write in my journal and plenty of time to do it. it's the nice thing about trains, the ability to always write and to lose yourself in writing. it's different from a plane or a bus or a car or really anything else. 

and i just realized something-- I am in love with the trains. 

I am in love with German and Italian and French. I am in love with chocolate and cheese and traveling and multilingual greetings and watches and history and snow. I am in love with strong mountains, fields that never end, villages nestled deep in valleys and streams bluer than the sky in summer. 

it's just wonderful, beautiful, and I realize that what I am really in love with is Switzerland. 

I am in love with this country.
and a part of my heart will always be here,
because Switzerland has changed me. 

and I don't want my old life back.

days > 200 -- comparing

piece of advice for future exchange students #24:

you'll come at some point to the realization

that your host country is not perfect.

in fact, it's pretty flawed.

but guess what?

that's okay.

so another of the things that i've been realizing in the past two months:

swiss culture can really bother me.

american culture can really bother me, too.

and you know what?
that's fine.

there are things that i can appreciate about both cultures, and there are things that i don't. and being open-minded does not mean i have to agree with everyone... it simply means that i can learn to learn from both.

things i've done in the past 10 days:

• took a french test and got a 2,9 (basically the equivalent of a D?) on it. i am ridiculously proud of myself haha.*
• went to the Cailler chocolate factory. Yay for chocolate. And friends. And Sarah's mom (okay, sorry, that was a really random inside joke). But definitely for chocolate.
• successfully wrote a presentation in GERMAN about the European crossflute. It was less of a flop than I thought it would be (probably due to the helpful editing of my project partner...) and I was extremely surprised to find that I can write a lot more in German than I thought I could.
• took a german literature test with my class and scored above a C ... better than the average! i'm actually super proud of this too. (and yes, my standards may have slipped a bit... but it's in GERMAN okay?)
• found that my swiss mum has more rules than i am used to. they're not bad, they're just different, and it's taken me a while to get used to the swiss cultural part of this.
• ignored about a dozen people who keep asking me where i'm from, no matter how many times i say the USA. YESIKNOWILOOKASIANBUTIAMALSOAMERICANNOWLEAVEMEALONEPLEASE.
• Luzerner Fasnacht! It's known for having parades and being louder and less organized than Basler Fasnacht, plus it's pretty fun.
• came to the realization that my chocolate tolerance is extremely high. i'm not going to tell you how much chocolate i bought and ate in a period of six hours, but i will say that it's probably not extremely healthy. ooops.
• spent some time getting to know the people on exchange who I DON'T hang out with very often. I'd love to talk to them more, it's just that we don't see each other very much. but I crashed at Evan's house in Luzern, and I had some fun/deep talks, and it was just pleasant to be free for a bit.
• saw Fribourg with Ryan. it was my first time ever in Fribourg and it was beautiful.
• went to a Heimatabend [traditional celebration in middleswitzerland, with singing and dancing and a play in Swiss German] and spent the night at my friend Maddie's house. that was also lovely :)

the end!

hannah

*that's because my french class is 5th-7th year french, plus is being taught in french, and i've had absolutely no french whatsoever before coming here. so it makes me proud :P

september's lovely links

these photos of Zurich in black and white, part of the Zurich Film Festival this year, are stunning... but more than that, I love them because I've been there. I recognize that statue and this church and that bridge and even that carousel (yes. I did go to Zurich and ride a little-kids-carousel. don't judge. :) )

also, seeing as I've just visited Liechtenstein, I found this comic really funny.

top ten places for chocolate: notice that Switzerland is first on the list. I actually have a friend who went to the Cailler factory last week... so. jealous...

31 Signs You're a Third Culture Kid, from Buzzfeed. I'd actually never heard of the term TCK, but apparently it's becoming a thing now?

apparently we have a winner for world's most traveled man. wow.

Jeff Goins has written one of the best articles on reasons to travel young that I've ever found. It doesn't just apply to traveling, though--it is, in the end, an all-encompassing "shape up, youngster" type of article. In a very good way.
(and here's a short response to it that recently showed up on Huffington Post.)

put this on the list of "cool-things-to-learn-later": The Pig Latins of 11 Other Languages.

wait! another really good article!! And it's about life lessons! must put in lovely links...

Finally, I find this article hilariously and ridiculously funny. It doesn't actually have that much to do with Switzerland, or with exchange, but it was in Paris and it's the experience of an expat and I love it so whatever, here it is.