days > 500 -- living

advice for future exchange students #30:

moving on is hard.
in more ways than one.
some of them you will handle well,
and others you will handle not-so-well,
but i guess that's life.

over the past six months, i have learned something important about myself. 

i am the type of person who lives in the present.

this is not always a good thing.

i am great at caring for people with immediate needs, i am constantly thinking "oh i wonder how i can make this better, i wonder if i can help with that, i wonder if this could be organized", i am good at focusing on one thing and throwing myself completely into it.

but. 

i am awful at keeping in touch with people, i am constantly thinking "oh, i should talk to them, but maybe they've forgotten me, oh i'd better not", i am bad at doing the basic little things that long-distance (or any distance, really) friendships require.

and i am not proud of that.

i think, for any exchanger to actually continue life after exchange, you have to be able to balance your past, your present and your future. which sounds half-mystic and half-disney, but it's true.

i am not good at balancing my past. :/

and i'm working on it.

so, with that in mind, here's what has happened in the past, present, and future:

past:

• i was in a production of Robin Hood, which turned out to be a majorly growing experience in my life. it was exhausting and draining and nervewracking and wonderful. 
• also, my sister and i went to Nicaragua to study Spanish. that was exciting. you can read about it on our (half-finished) blog here.
• New Year week was a crazy mix of being sick, of snorkeling and Hawaiian pastries, of essays and college applications, of auditions and journaling and late-night conversations.

present:

• taking classes at community college to finish out my year
• doing theater, which is fantastic
• realizing that people here mean a TON to me, and wondering how i could ever leave
• but at the same time, wondering what life outside my own little corner is like
• which is confusing

future:

• college? travel? life? EVERYTHING IS A GIANT QUESTION MARK HELP.
• i am finding out that while exchange made me much more sure of who i am as a person...
• ...it made me much less sure of what i want to do.

anyway. that's your (long overdue) update for anyone who still reads this little blog.

love love love,

hannah

days > 230 -- closing

piece of advice for future exchange students #27:
for me, a countdown to my return helps. for others, it doesn't.
that doesn't matter so much, though.
because in the end it isn't about counting the last days,
but about making the last days count.

as of right now (the 23rd of April, because I'm really really bad at posting updates regularly), my return date is still mostly a secret. what I will say is that i'm coming home in less than 100 days, and it is crazy for me to think about.

i do want to go back.

i don't want to leave.

things that happened in the 10ish days before I was SUPPOSED to post this update:

• arranged a Glacier Express trip. a group of us exchangers basically rode a train through the mountains for 5 and a half hours together. it was fun.
• I went away for the weekend with my second host family! we went to Splüger, in Graubünden (the eastish side of Switzerland). It was lovely.
• my second host family is extremely traditional-Swiss in that they're organized and punctual and appreciate very Swiss things :) so it was a nice cultural-vacation too. We went sledding, visited two cheese factories (also a post to come about that, hopefully), hiked through the mountains, etc., etc. .
• oh yes. I ate a lot of fresh cheese. if you've never had fresh cheese, I recommend it simply as an experience worth having. :)
• watched Die Physiker, a show thing at my school. One of my classmates was in it. both he and the show were wonderful.
• a couple months ago my art project was nominated for an international comics-festival in Luzern, so I went to that. it was exciting to see my comic with the top 20 out of more than 700 entries, haha.
• art is a universal language.
• it was nice to be reminded of that.

love,

han

days > 220 -- following

piece of advice for future exchange students #26:

pay attention to the advice of those who have gone before you.

usually, they have important things to say.

In my second week of vacation, I stayed with a former exchange student (she went on exchange to Argentina two and a half years ago). It was 1) probably the best week of my life in Switzerland [except for Vienna which doesn't count because technically I wasn't IN Switzerland at the time] and 2) unexpectedly and wonderfully like a real family.

For me, since I'm used to being the oldest at home, having a big sister was awesome. I recommend the experience.

things I've done in the past 10ish days (not really. haha these updates are getting later and later...):

• rode a sailboat across Lago Maggiore. to ITALY. I CAN RIDE A SAILBOAT TO ITALY YOU GUYS.
• went to Fasnacht. hopefully a post will be written in depth about Fasnacht sometime later. If not... well, sorry guys, but I have a life. ;)
• went to Germany and had brunch. for like 7 euros or less. probably the best brunch I've ever had. WHY CAN'T I LIVE IN GERMANY.
• actually, i wouldn't particularly want to live in Germany. but it's a nice idea to have.
• got stuffed with confetti at Basel Fasnacht. this basically means that people in colored masks run up behind you with about 5 kilos of colored paper and shove the whole lot down your shirt. hooray. (you will then proceed to shed confetti everywhere. two months later, you will still find small bits of colored paper in your bed, your shoes, your suitcase, and your sock drawer. don't even ask why. it is one of the lasting mysteries of Fasnacht.)
• I was stuffed 12 times in a 10-hour period. I think I'm a talented person?
• watched endless Fasnacht skits and songs and general traditional things. there is truly nothing like Swiss Fasnacht in the USA. I am still not sure if that is a good or a bad thing.
• kidding. Fasnacht is wonderful.
• met the newbies :) more newbies. newbies everywhere.
• i'm super jealous. they have a whole year to spend here. and yet, I realize that even if I stayed... this period in my life is ending. it's ending for all of us. and I wish I could freeze this moment in time and stay in it forever.
• but life goes on. and i have to accept that.

I would write more, but I honestly have no idea what I did during that period of time. I live in the now. ;)

love,

Han

5 languages I'd love to learn in the next 5 years

You can survive in Switzerland without German.

It's true. If you speak English, you will almost always be sufficiently equipped for casual and tourist and even some school situations. Knowing the language is not necessary.

But it enriches life. I can't explain how happy I am that I'm learning German, simply because it gives me so many more opportunities. I don't just learn about the language, but about the people and the values and the culture of my host country.

And the more that I practice my German and Swiss German, the more I want to learn. Not only more about the German language or the English language (that too), but about new languages, new cultures. In only 6 months, I've reached conversational fluency* in two languages... and with work and practice, absolutely anyone can do the same thing! Isn't that amazing?

So with that in mind, here are the top 5 languages I'd like to learn in the next 5 years:

1. French. because it is lovely. also because I just want to be able to speak fluent French. in the next 5 years, I PROMISE myself that I will get to conversational fluency in French. 
2. Mandarin Chinese. because I want to be able to speak the language of my country of origin, and also because apparently it’s one of the hardest languages for English speakers and I might as well take the opportunity given to me by birth.
3. Portuguese. because it is quite possibly the most beautiful language ever.
4. Spanish. technically I’ve already worked to learn this one but I want to be fluent, or at least conversationally so. also it is one of the most useful languages to have in the US.
5. Romanian. because while I’d like to learn Latin, it really doesn’t help that much (no one speaks full Latin) and people do speak Romanian which is 80% Latin anyhow.

(and some languages that almost made the list)

• Italian. because who doesn’t dream of speaking fluent Italian, I mean really. it’s like almost more like singing instead of talking, plus you get to wave your arms around and shout at people and no one takes it personally or gets offended. 
• Afrikaans. because why not. it's one of the newest languages in the world and yet the fourth most spoken Germanic language (after English, German, and Dutch). Also, it's said to be one of the easiest languages for English speakers to learn. "Easiest", of course, relatively speaking...
• Icelandic. just because secretly I've always wanted to be an Inkling (or a Coalbiter).

*note: conversational fluency to me means three things: a) i can successfully get my point across without translating every word in my head first and b) i can understand basically everything the other person says in a normal conversation, and they can understand me and c) the language becomes a default for me (i.e. I exclaim spontaneous things in german and swiss german, often without thinking). I believe I'm past this point, but I'm not very close to native fluency :(

on the seventh day of christmas

on the seventh day of christmas

 my exchange gave to me
seven for a family
six lovely months
five languages

four advent days

three families

two traditions

and a new look at bloomability

so this is possibly one of the few things that has made my exchange what it is, and how amazing it is... it's a quick blog post and a long story.

you see, when i first met all these people, we were in a new country, learning a new language, meeting new families and friends. and to be honest, we aren't really that much alike. we clashed personality-wise and culture-wise and everything. i thought i would never, ever belong to this group, and i wasn't at all sure that i wanted to.

but you know what?

i was wrong. 

and i'm so glad that i was.

today, these seven people make up the rest of my exchanger family. we've gone through a lot, and it hasn't been all that easy, but we share a bond that not everyone is lucky enough to have. it's amazing to me, to realize that i've only known these people for a few months, and yet i have changed so much and they have changed so much, and i can't imagine never seeing them again.

and we are an exchange family.

we are a complicated,

oddly-grouped,

never-could-be-guessed,

beautiful family.