days > 240 -- growing

piece of advice for future exchange students #28:

invest in things that matter.

i've realized that when i leave, i probably won't remember parties. or clothing. i will not remember the various touristy souvenirs that i've bought or the sandwiches that we ate on the train.
i will remember people. i will remember families and friends and long conversations in hotel rooms during the rotary trips. i will remember crazy group selfies and running to catch our trains and getting lost in a city with friends.

and so i've decided to put my time into those things.

what i did in the 10ish days before I was SUPPOSED to post this:

• Italy adventuring!!! it lasted for 6 days. and they were way too short.
• we spent a boatload of time on the train. good thing we're in Switzerland and are used to hours of train time in Europe. also it's a good thing that train travel is my favorite way to travel. 
• by the way-- I have no idea what the USA does or how we survive without trains. what are we supposed to do? drive? 
• Venice: rode vaporettos along the Grand Canal, rode an elevator up the clock tower and saw Venice from above, ate the best gelato ever, got ridiculously lost every time we tried to go anywhere, bought masks, had pizza, took pictures, bonded over shopping and mangling of the german language.
• Rome: got lost again, wandered through streets and ate panini sandwiches, tried not to get mobbed by other tourists, successfully found but did not successfully visit the catacombs, saw the vatican, was overwhelmed by the beauty of the Petersdom and the Sistine Chapel, celebrated Sarah's birthday, ate burgers, got closer to both old and new friends, learned the basic minimum amount of Italian required to get by, avoided a protest, simply enjoyed what used to be the cultural center of the world.
• came to a new appreciation of Swiss trains, safety, food in general but specifically bread, and cleanliness. Italy is a lovely place to see. Switzerland is a lovely place to live. :)
• tada, highlights. there is so much that i could write about, but i'll keep most of my stories to myself for now. this is an update, which means it should be relatively short :P

ciao for now,

hannah

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

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.

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 fifth day of christmas

on the fifth day of christmas

 my exchange gave to me
five languages

four advent days

three families

two traditions

and a new look at bloomability

what you may not have known about Switzerland:

it has four official languages.

None of these languages are English. Instead, they are German, French, Italian, and Rato-Romansh. However, since English has become the "universal language", many things have translations in English as well. This, together with the fact that Switzerland is in the middle of Europe, means that when people sing Christmas songs, they tend to sing them in multiple different languages... my choir sang three songs in Italian, two in English, one in French, one in Finnish, two in Latin, and the rest in German. (Romansh songs are not popular, probably because only like 5% of the Swiss population actually speaks it...)

Every time I hear Christmas songs, then, I'm reminded that I am in another country. another continent.

but sometimes, that's nice to be reminded of.