an open letter to the newbies

dear newbies:

congratulations on being the luckiest kids in the world. you are about to have what will probably be the most memorable year of your life so far.

do not underestimate the importance of spontaneity and simply enjoying your life here. but, in the event that you WOULD like advice, here are some things to remember...

us as newbies!

1. don't stress.

but seriously, don't. one, it isn't worth your time, and two, sometimes it's better to just enjoy the moment. the year will be over before you know it. prioritize, yes, and figure out what you're looking for in your exchange year, yes. but take a couple minutes every so often to breathe and laugh and realize the complete beauty and total ridiculousness of you being in another country.

i regret not figuring out that sometimes, i should just take life as it happened to me. (chill out, by the way, Past Hannah. you're stressing out too much to be healthy.) and that sometimes, your exchange will hold lovely surprises. the key isn't to prepare wildly, the key is to welcome them in and stop complaining.

which is another point...

2. if you have an issue, figure it out. make yourself heard.

you will be on your own for a lot of this year, and you will be required to deal with your own problems sometimes. if you can't, you need to communicate that you can't... clearly. your host parents are wonderful, but there are times when you just need to raise your voice and let them know that there IS a blocked bathtub turning the downstairs washroom into a swimming pool, and can they please help you with it NOW?

farewell weekend for OUR oldies

other times you will be required to take control of your own issues and solve them. if you are not already, you will probably become good at a) reading maps in foreign languages or b) navigating the transit system better than the locals do or c) getting lost in large cities and enjoying it. possibly all three!

but there are other times when the problem just can't be fixed. which means that,

3. sometimes, you need to shut up and deal with it.

this doesn't mean staying silent in the face of evil. this just means that sometimes, you will get so caught up in what's wrong with your exchange that you don't realize the obvious: you're on exchange, and that's wonderful! be grateful, duh.

also, the food is delicious. i don't care what you think of it now. it's delicious. and you WILL miss it when you get back to your home country, so make the most of your opportunities now. this applies to other things, not just food: language, culture, travel... stop complaining and work on enjoying life.

newbies and oldies-- exchange is a family

 4. invest in things that last.

make friendships. get to know people who come from different states and countries and continents. because you know what? you didn't come on exchange to be comfortable. anyone can stay home and be comfortable. you came to grow, and that takes guts.

so don't undermine that by staying inside your comfort zone.

 i have met some of the most brilliant and talented and fun people on exchange, and it blows my mind to think that i call them friends. so go. enjoy the world. there is life outside your front door, i promise.

5. ignore this.

well, don't ignore it completely. but do realize that this is a very limited amount of advice coming from a still-more-limited source, and that every exchange is different. my counsel might be completely wrong for your exchange, and that's fine.

know yourself, and question yourself, and feel free to disregard things that aren't right for you. but mostly, remember that you're ON EXCHANGE, you're adventuring, you're free...

and honestly, isn't that the most wonderful feeling in the world?

my life as a disney movie: or, why exchange is basically exactly the same thing as tangled

1. When you live in your home country, life is good. you're busy, you're productive, you're successful by most normal standards.

and yet somehow you've always, just vaguely, wanted to know what the world is like. what things are different on the other side of the globe. what lies beyond the world you've always known.

2. a lot of people tell you life outside is dangerous. scary. life-threatening, even. they tell you they care about you and they don't want to see you fail. they tell you you are safe here, there is no reason to leave.

it scares you.

3.  at the same time, you feel ridiculously cool and exciting whenever you tell someone your plans for the next year. (yay! finally! plans!) 

i mean, look at how independent you are.

...most of the time.

4. as soon as that airplane door closes, you realize that you are actually really truly doing this. it is a feeling of exhilaration and terrifiedness at the same time.

but mostly terrifiedness.

5. when you first enter your host country, everything is exactly like you dreamed! it's wonderful and amazing and beautiful and AHHHHHHH. you're in heaven.

6. then, somewhere along the way, you start realizing the consequences of your decisions. your attitude changes five times approximately every two seconds. it's very dramatic.

7. you meet the rotarians. they are scary.

then you get over it and realize they've all got dreams too. language is different and culture is different, but people are simply people, all over the world. 

(hooray for disney bonding time.)

8. you meet a lot of wonderful people.

you see a lot of wonderful things.

and you fall in love with this country.

9. you realize that you have been somehow preparing for this all your life -- that your study abroad has crept into all parts of your existence and permeated it with the love of the unknown, the need for adventure.

you belong where you are unsafe and uncomfortable and awkward. you have made friends and lived through disaster and grown up a little more here. you've found that you are more capable than you know.

and most importantly,

adventures still lie ahead.

a little note for context:

my host family and i were watching Tangled (in German, it's called simply "Rapunzel") one weekend, and I realized just how much it mirrored my life on exchange. enjoy!

days > 180 -- seeking

piece of advice for future exchange students #22:

sometimes if you really want something,

all you have to do is ask.

yes, i know i haven't posted in a while.
but unfortunately exchange means that you sort of have a life beyond blog posting... ;)

one thing i've learned here is how to be way more upfront about what i want and how i want to do it. swiss people (well, at least the ones currently in my life) tend to have LOTS of rules and LOTS of ideas and LOTS of opinions on the way you should do things. which, seeing as i'm used to more laid-back Americans, means that all too often i don't know exactly what i want and so i get slightly run over.

guess what?
i don't really like getting run over.

so i've learned to decide what i want quickly and to communicate it right away, which is something i never really had to do in the USA. if i have an opinion here and i want to be heard, i have to MAKE myself heard. and while that sounds sort of rude, it's just what i have to do to keep myself as a person.

things i've done in the past 10ish days (well, 20 days ago... it's been a while, sorry)

• went to a chamber music concert with some artists from Prague. we sat in the FRONT ROW and it was amazing... also, the cello player's instrument was older than the United States of America. I know that's not super impressive in Europe, but for some reason I couldn't get over the fact that this cello, older than the Declaration of Independence, was being played in a concert hall right in front of me. Oh, Europe. :)
• Charivari (a pre-carnival show) with my friend Faith! they spoke REALLY strong Basel dialect, which was super difficult to understand, but the show was good anyway. they played flutes and horns and drums and sang songs and acted out skits and it was fun.
• I saw my first host mum again! we went to a "Nacht der Musicals" because my first host family bought me tickets for Christmas... they know me well ;)
• snow day with my class in Gymnasium Muttenz. The whole school reserved a train and went to the ski resort and spent the day skiing/snowboarding/hiking/walking/snowshoeing/sledding. (I went sledding.) why do American high schools not do this.
• met our newbies in Basel-- Vinny, Demi, and Barbara. it feels like such a short time since we were newbies, and now all of a sudden we're oldies with language skills and travel experience and I FEEL SO OLD NOW WHAT IS HAPPENING TO MY EXCHANGE. :)

thoughts on american, european, and home school

so recently i've been getting a rather frustrating amount of college-related emails. while it's nice to know that they're interested in me (nothing like being wanted) it's a bit overwhelming to realize that i will have to be going home and making school-related decisions AGAIN in about 6 months.

::sigh::

with that in mind, i thought i'd give you a quick glimpse into the three types of school systems i've now gotten the change to see... homeschool, american public school, and swiss school. 

WARNING. THIS IS A LONG AND NERDY POST. (punctuated by random pictures of a french castle. you know, just for variation.)

a lot of you reading my blog know this already, but i've been homeschooled for most of my life. contrary to popular belief, this does not mean that i have no social life or that i am only at home with my parents and siblings all day. in general, i take multiple different classes (spanish, art, literature, writing, debate, science, etc.) outside of the house... there are two or three hours of teaching or lectures weekly and then a lot of homework that's assigned over the rest of the week. so yes, i'm homeschooled, but yes, i have friends. :)

the benefits of homeschooling for me were multiple. 

firstly, i've gotten to "squish" my education around in a way that other kids normally don't-- freshman year of high school i wrote, printed, and sold an advice book, sophomore year i participated in debate club and applied to rotary exchange, and this year i'm spending in switzerland. all in all, not a bad combination.

more importantly, i've become fairly independent. while i may not be an adult yet, i'm pretty self-motivated when it comes to schoolwork and projects and learning things, plus i've learned to be annoyingly persistent. this means that school in general isn't a huge struggle for me... i know what to expect from myself and how hard i need to work in order to get results.

that said, i do wish i'd been more prepared for the world around me. my parents have always encouraged me to ask questions, but unfortunately i can't say that for the homeschooling sphere in general. we might not like to admit it, but homeschoolers (and the conservative church, which is pretty related where i'm from) can be judgmental, closed-minded, and shockingly unwilling to challenge their own beliefs. this was really frustrating for me at the beginning of my year.

most of the kids from the usa that are here were enrolled in american high school. contrary to homeschooler belief, this is not the root of all evils. i promise. 

in my opinion, there are benefits (schedule and structure, more people, school clubs and teams and extracurriculars) that i definitely missed out on. as a homeschooler, i think i've been sheltered to a lot of the world, and so my first few months here were partly spent being surprised haha.

at the same time, there are other factors that i gladly skipped. peer pressure, a bazillion people per classroom, drama, etc., etc., etc. i'm not going to pass judgement on something i don't have personal experience with, but i know people who've gone and stated they were unhappy with the American high school system in general.

swiss high school, at first glance, seems like the solution to everything. when i first got here, i was amazed at the differences... at 16, you have the option of either working as an apprentice or continuing with school. every kid has to make a certain grade point average to stay in the class, and so consequently everyone who's there actually wants to be there. kids study and worry about grades and pay attention in class, simply because that is the way the system works. if you don't want to go, you drop out and start working. it's simple as that, and the benefits are obvious.

what i didn't realize then was that sometimes, school causes problems. there are some kids in my class who are naturally smart and almost never show up in class, and then magically have good grades. there are others who have to work extremely hard and yet still have bad grades. and that isn't fair, that isn't right, and it makes me upset. yet it's the only thing that my classmates have known.

what do you think?

days > 160 -- continuing

piece of advice for future exchange students #20:

sometimes your life will change.

a lot.

deal with it.

as you read in the last update, I recently changed host families. for various different reasons, it hasn't been a very easy switch... add that to the fact that school started two days after i moved and the fact that semester is ending AND the fact that i need to pay for trips and book my flight back and coordinate with my other host families, and you get one extremely stressed-out Hannah.

so the past couple days have been a lot of "Hannah pull yourself together and get on with your life" and part of that includes getting on with my overdue blogging. 

::sigh::

here goes...

things i've done in the past 10ish days:

• finished my first two weeks with my new host family!
• successfully lived vegetarian
• (okay, i guess i should explain that last part.) for those of you who know me, you probably know that i like eating meat. and that i am not really a vegetarian type of person. BUT my new host mom is vegetarian and so I haven't eaten chicken or steak or ribs or any sort of meat besides lunch meat in the past one and a half weeks. yes, i know that's not super long. but it surprised me (in a good way).
• celebrated one of my friend's (Faith's) birthdays. All of us went to her house and had a sleepover. It was fun.
• said goodbye to the oldies. i miss them already. :(
• didn't do any traveling for a first time in a while... this was really really weird for me, actually. Normally I spend at least one day a week traveling through Switzerland, but my new host mom isn't super happy about that so I guess I'll be keeping my travel to a minimum here. :/
• met up with some exchange students and explored Basel. so that was fun.
• went to a Rotary meeting and met some more people. Every time I go, everyone continues to praise my German and say I'm so talented... while this might not exactly be true, it's nice for my self esteem haha.
• got our newbies!! ahhhh! we are now all oldie exchangers. 
• watched Frozen with my little sister (from my first family).
• actually, that was probably the best part of my entire 10 days.
• also, i hung out with my old family. who i miss. a lot. <3

byeeeeee!

hannah

new beginnings

"for last year's words 

belong to last year's language

and next year's words

await another voice"

-- ts eliot

“write it on your heart 

that every day 

is the best day in the year.”

 -- ralph waldo emerson

i've spent almost five months in switzerland today. 

the oldies are leaving in less than a week.

the newbies are arriving just after that.

it's crazy, unbelievably crazy, and it makes my head spin to think that so much can happen in just five months.

you can learn a language,

and adopt a family,

and adapt to a culture,

and learn to LIVE in a country that is not your own.

in just five months.

and every day i realize again just how much i have learned, just how much i have left to learn, and just how many days i have left to do it.

there are plenty of resolutions to improve upon... study german, read more, stop eating so much chocolate, send more letters home... and yes, those things are important. 

but to me, the new year isn't so much about improving as beginning anew.

so here is my resolution for the new year:

seize the moment.

seize the day.

seize every little amount of time that's been given to me, every opportunity that lies in my path, every blessing that comes into my life.

every new beginning.

because in the end, we don't have that much time.

so i want to make the most of it.

girl meets world: my first week of school in another country

So, today marks Friday and my first official week of school ever. Plenty of people have asked me what school looks like in Switzerland, so here's a quick rundown of the differences I've noticed:

• There are two different types of high school: FMS and Gymi, or Gymnasium. Gymnasium is for students to pursue "higher" branches of learning, and FMS is for things like teaching and art and dentistry etc. You can easily get a job coming from either high school. (I got put in FMS... explanation to come later.)
• You have only one class of students, and you see them every day. Mine is about 17 people, which is the average for FMS--Gymnasium classes have an average of 25 people (but they can't be any more than that, it's illegal.) This is actually really nice, because I have the same kids in my class every day and it's easier to make friends.
• Every day is not the same... your days are broken up into 50 minute sessions and each day is different. So on Tuesday I have Physik, Musik, Geschichte (history), Englisch, and Deutsch, but on Wednesday I have Klassenstunde (a weird thing that varies from week to week), Musik, Biologie, and Mathematik.
• This also means that you can take way more subjects than in American high school, simply because you have so many timeslots to fill. As of my last counting, I have 14 different classes. I'm not sure if that's a lot? It seems like an awful lot to me...

Anyway. Now that you know all about Swiss high school, here's an average morning before school for me:

6:00am--wake up. I refuse to wake up earlier than 6 (well actually I normally end up waking up at 5:50 because I have a weird tendency to anticipate my alarm... but I refuse to get out of bed earlier than 6, so). I get dressed, pack my school bag, review my bus schedule so I don't miss the bus again, and do all the normal things that one does in the morning.
6:30am--eat breakfast. It's still dark outside, and cold. Brrrr, Switzerland.
6:50am--leave the house. I have to catch the bus at 6:56 to the Rheinfelden main station, and then take the train from Rheinfelden to Muttenz, and then walk for about 10 minutes from the Muttenz station to my school. Hopefully I don't get lost, because my school is in the middle of an industrial area and there aren't that many people around at 7:30am to ask for directions.
7:50am-- If I'm lucky, I find one of my classmates and we walk to class together. If I'm not, I rush madly up and down stairs in an attempt to find the room. After I've finally located it (I swear the FMS building has no logical order to their room numbers whatsoever) I go into the classroom and we all wait for the teacher, who shows up promptly at 7:55. These are Swiss people, after all.

Voila. And school hasn't even started yet!

But after I find my classroom and my classmates, things get easier. Since we all have the same classes, I can just follow everyone else around and theoretically get where I need to be at the time I need to be. So far it's worked pretty well. :)

The majority of my classmates are really friendly and super nice about showing me where classes are and translating for me when I have no idea what's going on. Also, people keep commenting on how good my German is already, which is not exactly right... but it makes me happy, haha.

I'm currently in Physik, Mathematik, Biologie, Franzoesisch, Deutsch, Sport, Art (which I can't remember the name of in German), Wirtschaft und Rechts (economics), Computer Science (which I also can't remember the name of), Musik, Geschichte, and Englisch. Also my other Deutschkurs, something called PP that I don't understand, and something called Klassenstunde that confuses me.
Because I'm feeling nice, I won't drag you through my entire schedule for the week. You're welcome.

Highlights:

• Music! We started with music theory (thank you, Animate Studio and voice lessons and voice teacher who gave me two years of intensive theory) and sang in the second hour. Also, the songs were all really old hits in English. Think Moonlight Shadow and House of the Rising Sun. Since I like singing and I could actually read the lyrics, it was a good class for me.
• The economics teacher told us we didn't have any homework because I was in class and I might not understand it. This made me a lot more popular with the other students ;)
• For my very first day we had three hours of Art. Hooray for art, it doesn't require you to speak very much and you have plenty of time to draw and think and attempt to translate what the teacher is saying. Probably the best Monday class to have, ever.
• French is an optional class, because all the teaching is either in French or German and I've had neither of those languages in school. Because I've wanted to learn French, I stayed in the first class just to see what would happen. That said, I was surprised to discover that I actually understood part of what was going on! Language has always been something fairly intuitive for me-- some people get math, some people get science, I get languages. But I wasn't expecting to be able to read and understand very much, as I've never in my life taken French. I think maybe Spanish helped, or possibly my brain was in learn-a-new-language mode... either way, it was a nice surprise :)

In the majority of my classes, I don't have homework (hooray!) This is mostly because my teachers are really nice and understand that I have no idea what to do with written German homework. I do understand what's going on in the class, and I can follow along to some extent. From what I've heard about school on exchange, school is really boring, but so far I haven't found that to be true.

and so concludes a very long probably boring post.
We'll see what happens next week... stay tuned!

in which hannah learns a bit of french, meets a tiger (and a canadian), and eats too much chocolate

So this post is pretty overdue, seeing as I did all of this about two weeks ago.. but hey, it's still an update, right? I'll try to put a ton of posts after this and maybe it'll look like I posted it semi-on-time.

 Anyway.
On Saturday, my host family told me that they wanted to take me to see the tiger in the next village over. I was a little surprised considering this is Switzerland and not India, and I wasn't expecting to see a tiger my first month of exchange. But, it sounded interesting and I've never seen a village tiger before, so I said yes.
We drove for about 10 or 15 minutes and then walked for a while. (I'm beginning to realize that most outings begin with a walk, whether you're in Luzern or in Magden or in Rheinfelden or in Basel.)
After turning down a dirt road we arrived at a small farm. It did not exactly appear to be the type of place that exotic animals reside in... but sure enough after [more] walking and a good look around, we located the tigers. Shortly after that, I and my host family and our fellow village people filed into a very large dingy barn and the show began.

 We sat really close to the cage... almost too close for comfort, considering that it was a very old-looking cage... but the animals that filed in did not look wild and ferocious. They reminded me of very old overweight cats, which was unexpectedly funny.
Apparently the tigers are the hardest to train because they are sneaky and not very obedient. In the trainer's words, sie sind listig, which means something like clever/sly in English...
The lions are also hard to train because they are very lazy. (And fat. The lions are really fat. They don't really look like Simba at all, they look more like the weiner dog who used to live next door to me. And they walk like he did too.) They are more interested in the food than in the trick-performing part.

Leopards are the most teachable wild felines. They are small, and quick, and smart, and for the most part clever at learning tricks. They were also the only animals with sufficient grace to live up to my ideal of the jungle creatures :)
Okay, nature lesson over. After the animals were done performing, the man came out and answered a lot of questions that I didn't really understand because they were in Swiss German.
In fact, a lot of time here is spent listening to questions I can't really understand because they're in Swiss German. I think this is a recurring theme in my life.

And that was it for the lions and tigers and leopards... oh my!

Sorry. Couldn't resist.

After this, I met up with Faith (who you already know) and Ryan (who's a Canadian exchange student) in Basel. Ryan is from Fribourg and he speaks fluent French. It makes me jealous just to write about it... but he taught Faith and me some very basic things in Franzoesisch, which makes me happy. I can now say "I love you", "my name is Hannah", and "I come from the United States." Unfortunately I think I have an unbelievably horrible French accent... :/ but oh well.

We bought chocolate bars and ate probably too much chocolate* and laughed and discussed exchange and four-leaf-clovers and Swiss German and trams and a lot of things that I can't really remember anymore but it really doesn't matter because we were in Basel. on a summer day. in the park.

it was a good day.

*I don't think I've ever eaten so much chocolate in one month. you have no idea.

days > 30 -- learning

advice for future exchange students #9:

be fluent in the language already.

okay, well, maybe that won't work. 

but do work on the language as much as possible.

trust me, it's a good idea.

things that have happened in the past 10 days:

• I ended Deutsch Kurs. We had a very long test at the end of the four weeks, but thankfully it wasn't that hard and I passed as the second best of my class, which was a nice surprise.
• I started school. Yaaayyyyyyyyyyyy! (oh yeah. there'll be a post about that later. hopefully. i think. we'll see. maybe if I have time.)
• I went to my little sister's school. Her classmates were adorable and helpful and very willing to talk to me. I probably learned more that day than I did in a week of German course. Note to self: children are amazing for learning a language.
• I went to Pilatus, which is a really tall mountain in Luzern. It's absolutely gorgeous. I also roamed the streets of Luzern with my host family, which was pretty cool.
• Swimming in the Rhine. end of story.
• I heard my first yodeling! This was interesting.
• My hosting Rotary club met with a Rotary club from Germany on the weekend, so I came too. It involved food, boats, walking, and a lot of people commenting on how good my German is. This naturally made me very happy. Unfortunately, many of them concluded that I was fluent and proceeded to speak German to me all the time. I felt really guilty every time I couldn't understand what they were saying...
• I realized that my English is getting worse. Occasionally I'll find myself speaking English in German grammar, or spelling things wrong, or not remembering a perfectly average word. This confuses me.
• I realized that I have lost a good bit of my Spanish and Chinese. This also confuses me.

this was a rather random and rambling post. sorry. ich hoffe dass die nachste Mal wird besser sein.

tschuess, ciao, adieu, adios, zai jian, goodbye, and whatever else floats your boat,

hannah

days > 10 -- adjusting

advice for future exchange students #8:
 DO learn the language before you come. Lots of American (USA) people say on Facebook that they didn’t practice anything and they learned the language in the first month. Yeah. Either they’re delusional, they’re lying, or they went to Australia.*

Sorry I've been MIA for the past couple days. I meant to post every 10 days, I really did, but unfortunately I didn't take into account that I would be busy with so many things. The first 10 days have been undeniably a part of the honeymoon stage.** I've been to more places than I can count and my days are sort of blurring together, which is why I only just now realized that I should be updating. So here I am (right now I should be eating breakfast, but instead I am writing on my blog. this must be quick.)

The language immersion has actually been much easier than I thought it would be, hooray! I would definitely recommend learning the language before your exchange, because I do think it's harder for the exchangers who haven't... people in Switzerland do speak English, for those of you who are wondering. That said, I think it's rather annoying to keep asking people to speak English, and learning German is part of what I came here to do, so why not just work hard at it in the beginning when you have time?

anyway, things that have happened in the past 10 (ish) days:

• a few days after I got here, we went to Rheinfelden and walked across the bridge to Germany! It still boggles my mind to think that I am so close to so many other countries... Switzerland is much smaller than the USA.
• I started my Deutschkurs (German course) shortly after my arrival in der Schweiz. So far it's been fairly good, although the lessons are pretty easy. A lot of it is review of what we were supposed to learn in Rosetta Stone, but it's helpful to get in some practice I suppose. It's also nice to spend time with the other exchange students in my area.
• After my first day of German class, I asked my host mom to speak mainly in German to me. After the first 10 days, my YEO told my host parents to only speak German to me. So far it's been a little confusing, but really good as far as language immersion goes :)
• I went to an FCB (Fussball Club Basel) game the first week of my stay. It was SO HOT in the stadium, but the game was exciting. We were sitting less than 20 rows away from the players, which was also pretty amazing... my host family and I all wore FCB shirts and hats, and the people in the stands were going crazy.
• Went to Augusta Raurica and saw old old OLD Roman ruins. We also went to a restaurant in Augusta Raurica and had pizza. It was delicious.
• I met some of my host sister Alessandra's (she's my age, but spending her exchange year in Australia right now) friends. They're super nice, and they'll go to my school so I may see them more often.
• I now have a class list. Unfortunately it's in German, so I only sometimes remember which classes I have. Hopefully I'll remember enough to get to my classes on time.
• We went to the Basler Munster last Saturday and explored the rest of Basel as well. Pictures to come soon, I just haven't uploaded them to my computer yet :)

And that concludes my rather rambling, hard-to-follow post. Bis bald!

notes:

*I do think that Australia is an awesome exchange destination, and I would love to go if it were offered in my district. It's only that I don't think you learn another language there if you're from the USA. Just to clarify :)

**if you're wondering what that is, I mentioned it earlier in this post.

update -- and pictures!

I woke up this morning to the sound of bells.

Outside my bedroom window I can see to the other side of my village. It's a small village, about the size of my entire neighborhood back home... of course, that would make sense considering that Switzerland is about 1/6th the area of Oregon. In fact, everything in Switzerland appears to be smaller than back home. The cars are smaller, the streets are smaller, and even the chairs and tables appear to be shorter. Which makes me very happy, because sitting at my desk here I can comfortably extend my feet to the floor. At least size-wise, I fit in here perfectly.

Of course, there are other ways that I feel distinctly different. I happen to be Asian, which isn't a big deal in the middle of hipster downtown Portlanders where there are much stranger things to be stared at. And I don't identify myself as a different race by default... I am Hannah, I am a girl, I am American.
But here I have seen absolutely no one who looks like me. I'm not sure how much I stand out, but I know for a fact that I do not look Swiss.

The language barrier is interesting. Most of my peers take English in school, and my host mom speaks fluent English. This is nice when I am trying to get my point across but not so nice when I'm trying to practice my language skills :P However, everyone has been super nice about helping me practice my German, and there's plenty of language immersion everywhere :)

In addition, the German that I've learned so far is High German, Hochdeutsch, while the German that's spoken here is Swiss German, Schweizerdeutsch/Schwyzerdüütsch. Swiss German is a very strong "dialect" of German that doesn't really exist in written form. Some people say that when you go to Switzerland you learn two languages--Swiss German and High German--and it's so true.

Where was I? Oh yes, my village. Every hour the church bells ring, and during dinner today we heard alphorns. Yes, real alphorns. Told you Magden was small :) but still, it's ridiculously adorable. There are flowers everywhere, the houses have little peaked tile roofs, all the windows have colored shutters (and window boxes with flowers in them). Sheep are grazing in the field behind the backyard, and I've even seen horses walking down the main street! The entire town is like a picture from a storybook.

Proof? Look at the pictures. I took these... unedited... in half an hour... walking around my village. There are more, but I figured I might overwhelm you so I've kept it to a minimum. I seriously can't stop taking pictures here-- there are so many things to see and love and be interested in! I'm obviously still in the "honeymoon" stage of my exchange :P
But honestly, Switzerland is one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen in my entire life. There's so much history--Magden is 1200 years old, and Switzerland is full of lovely old castles and churches and fountains and bridges. It makes the Declaration of Independence seem practically new!

Also, today I started German language school, or Deutschschule. There are eight other exchange students in my class, all of us at varying levels of German. At the end of four weeks we take a test, and if all goes well I will start "real school" in Gymnasium Muttenz the week afterward.

Now the alphorns are finished and the bells are ringing again--22:00--so I'd better go to sleep. Gute Nacht, Schweiz.