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

days > 190 -- enjoying

piece of advice for future exchange students #23:

sometimes, life turns out to be pretty amazing.

love it to the utmost.

(also, sleeping is mostly optional.)

things that i've done in the last 10ish days:

• TESSIN TESSIN TESSIN
• oh, okay. Tessin/Ticino is the Italian part of Switzerland. it is the most beautiful part ever. and my friend Sarah's host family has a vacation house there and they invited me to stay with them for three days!!! and basically it was wonderful and beautiful and I am in love with Italian.
• deep talks till 2am = happiness. (yes. that is indeed what we did every night. it was good.)
• met all the newbies at Engelberg weekend! that was fun. I love aussies. and kiwis. and our newbie latinos. 
• Engelberg weekend. smiles for days. 
• ...and probably one of the best weekends I've had this far, simply because by this time we're all friends. No, by this time we're basically family. a sometimes-difficult, sometimes-confusing, full-of-differences family... but a family nonetheless.

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

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.

a day in augusta raurica

(note: this is the second of a series of posts I'm writing about Switzerland and the places I've been. Solely for the purpose of having fun (and to exercise my travel writing skills) I'm going to write about it in second person. Which means you, the reader, are semi-virtually coming with me. bring good shoes.)

You've just come from dance class, and your host mom wants to know whether you'd like to visit some Roman ruins tonight. To be completely honest, you aren't particularly enthusiastic about the idea. Instead, you're tired, hungry, and ready to sleep... but Switzerland waits for no man, and you don't want to miss a thing here. So you dig out your Converse and your trusty camera. Augusta Raurica, here we come!

Augusta Raurica is the oldest known Roman colony on the Rhine (according to all-knowing Wikipedia, that is) and was founded around 44 BC. The entire colony encompassed all of Canton Basel and a bit more, but it was significantly damaged by an earthquake and some other Roman troops. The parts you're going to are the theater and the main forum.

 Later on your host parents will take you to an Italian pizza restaurant. You'll eat some really delicious pizza, because of course no one makes pizza like the Italians, and you'll have your first drink of Rivella. It's like soda, but with the faint tang of Smarties and the fizziness of sparkling apple cider. (Your enjoyment of this drink will dip slightly once you read the label and discover that it's made of milk serum--what IS that??--but it's pretty delicious.) Meanwhile, you've got all the Roman ruins to explore.

You walk around, take pictures, pose in front of the baths, do all the normal touristy things that touristy people do in touristy places. And then the sun starts to go down and everyone leaves. So it's just you, with the stones and the ivy and the thoughts in your brain.

The fact that you're standing in something so big and old... walking on stones that were laid way before your time... touching the same walls that people touched thousands of years before... it's crazy. Something so long ago and far away.

And yet standing in the half-light of dusk, the night beginning to settle around your feet and the hum of the city lost... you feel so close.

And so you close your eyes.

and you listen to the stories around you.

august's lovely links

here is a site that has new travel photos from all over the world. plus they upload. all. the. time. If you want to travel all over the world, I vote you look at this page.
this article from The Atlantic tells how the author traveled to switzerland to study french. a little old to be an august ll, but i'll let that pass since a) it's a beautiful essay and b) it's Switzerland. and no one writes about switzerland.
somewhat random link: top ten coolest trains in the world.
somewhat random inspiring post: embrace the unknown.
Adventurous Kate writes about her short stay in Switzerland.
a photographer takes pictures of Switzerland out of train windows... I'm not sure whether this is really cool or really mediocre. But I do think that it's an interesting idea, and I like the idea of capturing something imperfect and getting a new perspective.
gorgeous travel photos of the month: http://www.canvas-of-light.com/ and http://furtherbound.com/. This makes me yearn to travel the world with only a backpack and a camera. That's what post-exchange is for, right?

saying goodbye

i promised myself i wouldn't cry.

and i didn't. i didn't cry at the end of school. i didn't cry at my goodbye party. i didn't cry when all my bags were packed, or when we left the house, or during the car ride.

except then i said goodbye to my family, and that promise basically flew out the window.

it was hard to say goodbye to my grandparents and my aunt and my parents and my sisters and my little brother. still, they know that i will only be gone for a year.

but how do you explain exchange to a two-year-old?

my littlest sister doesn't know that i'm leaving for a year. she can't comprehend that i will be in another country. she doesn't understand that when i leave, i will be living on the other side of the world.

and so i look at her and tell her the things i know to be true.
"hannah is going
 far away,
and you will not see her
for a long, long time.
but you know what?
hannah loves you,
and she's coming back."

"i'm coming back."

days < 0 -- arriving

piece of advice for future exchange students #7:

you are going. you are going because this is an adventure and it is worth it.

stop panicking.

I'm here!
that's it. I'm too tired to write more. :)

days < 20 -- preparing

piece of advice for future outbounds #5:

start saying goodbye to everyone you know way before you leave. it goes fast, and you don't know if or when you'll see them again.

everything is starting to become more real. I have my flight date, my departure time (see this updated countdown timer if you'd like to know when that is) and a list of things to do in the next two weeks.

my reaction? "aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

---

anyway.

things that have happened in the last 10 days:

• spending possibly my last days on the Pacific beach (and possibly any beach?) for the next year. Switzerland is landlocked, so I will probably miss the ocean.
• also. in case I haven't mentioned it, I now have my itinerary. I will receive my visa and passport back soon, and then I'll basically have everything I need to leave!
• going on one last family vacation before we leave. 
• attempting to finish the Rosetta Stone level 2 in German... so close. Unfortunately, my microphone appears to have gone weird on me. Hopefully it will revive itself enough that I can finish!
• other than that? not much. random philosophical discussions, Rotary meetings, etc., plus business with the last-minute complications of traveling.

that's it for now!

rivers, rapids, and what I learned about exchange while rafting

i ride the rapids for a reason.

well, that was rather cryptic. let me explain.

about a month ago, i went rafting with a youth group. the guide on our raft asked us to think about the river and what we could learn from it. at first i thought that was weird and a little too pocahontas-y--you know, "colors of the riverbend" or however that song goes--but because i enjoy thinking, i thought about it anyway.

and i realized that i am approaching a rapid very quickly--i am going to switzerland--and that scares me as if it WERE a rapid. and it frightens me, because people tell me stories about europe and horror stories about exchange and ask me why on earth i would want to go until i'm not even sure myself anymore. until i'm asking why. until i'm doubting ever riding the rapid in the first place.

but there, on the river, i realized why i want to go. it's for the same reason i want to ride the rapids. they are scary, yes, and they are mostly optional, yes, and in some ways they also carry danger. but at the same time, there are things you learn from the rapids that you never find on the smooth water. there's a joy and courage and strength and exhilaration that comes from riding the rapids--that feeling of victory and the thrill of being a part of what you really want to do. and if this is my rapid, my adventure, then i need to pursue it.

---

to put it another way: have you ever felt like maybe everything was too easy? not too easy in the way that nothing is hard enough... more too easy in the way that it's hard at the beginning, but after a couple days/weeks/months it becomes easier. commonplace. and not hard anymore.

and haven't you ever longed for something that would present a constant challenge? that would become your life, that would be something you live day in and day out? something that wouldn't become easier, but that would challenge you physically and mentally and socially all the time?

because i want something like that. i want to know that i am being challenged and that i have a story worth telling. and for me, that is the one thing that holds me to exchange--the fact that it is a growing experience like nothing i've ever seen before.

days < 30 -- repacking

piece of advice for future outbound students #4:

be prepared to leave at any time. you never know what might happen.

i'm still not absolutely sure when i'm leaving. it could be anywhere from the first to the ninth of August, because my travel agency hasn't given me a schedule yet.

that said, they also haven't given me my visa yet...
and they have yet to send my passport back...
...so i may not be leaving on time after all...

i'm hoping everything goes well, and i trust the travel agency. so we'll see!

things that have happened in the past 10 days:

• finally, i got to visit the rotary club of tillamook! in a rather roundabout way, they helped to make my exchange possible. I was an alternate (see this post to know what that means), and by sponsoring an inbound they provided an extra outbound slot. so it was wonderful to meet the rotarians there, and they were all super nice :)
• family retreat which involved murky ponds, ridiculously fast slides, bananagrams, and sandblasting. it was fun to make memories, and somehow everything was different because i know that i'm leaving. i'm not sure if that makes sense or not.
• still attempting to read books in german (see this post).
• also still attempting to stuff all my shoes in one suitcase. i never realized how many pairs of shoes i own until i tried to pack them. 
• shoes are hard to pack. did you know that?

the end.

june's lovely links

note: again, I've been gone for a couple weeks so some of these posts are severely overdue. sorry about that... anyway, I am doing my best to catch up and post (relatively) on time. :)

random things I've been reading that are somewhat travel related:

Fluent In 3 Months encourages you to make mistakes while learning languages... i have to admit that this is one of the hardest things for me to do, although i'm sure i'll make plenty of mistakes in Switzerland.
on another note, they also happen to have funny random posts about travel and habits picked up in other countries. some of the habits are hilarious.

this post from The Great Affair lists 27 things travel has taught Candace in 27 years. it's a short list, but worth the read.

this distance calculator tells you just how far away i'll be from your house. oh, although i'm sure you could use it for other things too. ;)

in case you wish you could travel now but the obstacles seem insurmountable--Young Adventuress lists some common travel excuses and reasons why they shouldn't actually keep you from traveling (although there is some language used on this blog that I personally wouldn't use. just a heads up.)

this writer talks about his reasons for traveling young. To be honest, though, i think most of his reasons could apply to anyone, no matter their age.

food for thought: one rotary student's experience and thoughts on Eurotour.

days < 40 -- summering

piece of advice for future outbounds #3:

don't forget that your life here has its rewards too. enjoy the moment.

the reason that this post is so severely overdue is that i have been making the most of my summer. summer camps and parties and sunshine are beautiful things.

unfortunately, that also means that i have been forgetting to post as often as i should. sorry about that.

things to celebrate in the past 10 (ish) days:

• i can now solve a rubik's cube. ridiculously proud of myself.
• summer bucket list:  going to summer camp? check. rafting through rapids? check. rafting through rapids, except without a raft? check. i'm doing well on this, you guys. now if i can only find someone to go cliffjumping with me...*
• i can read a book in german! sort of. if reading means that you have the general idea of what happened.  and that it's a book you've already read. and that you have google translate nearby just in case. but still.
• i can now say that i've watched star wars. this is a cultural milestone.
• worked at VBS... helping with little kids is so, so rewarding. there were definitely some difficulties, but on the whole i'm glad i had the opportunity to help.

*just kidding. cliffjumping isn't actually on my list. neither is stormchasing or paragliding, in case you were wondering. **

**although now that I think about it, those do sound really fun. ***

***but they can wait. i'd rather be alive during my exchange year. ;)

days < 50 -- packing

piece of advice for future outbounds #2:

start packing ahead of time.

like, waaaayyyyyyyyyy ahead of time.

since all my classes are over and i only have math review to do, i consider summer to have officially started. that said, i probably have more to do this summer than i ever did during the school months.

packing...
...makes me realize just how much i own
...makes me realize just how much i use
...is hard.

things to celebrate in the past 10 days:

• My host family sent me a postcard! i honestly think i have the best host family ever... really...
• some of my friends and i went to the top of the US Bancorp Tower (it's 42 stories). very proud of myself.
• working through German level 2. hopeful that it'll go quickly, because i'm trying to get as far as possible before i leave. (then again, there is the fact that german grammar is basically the most confusing thing in the world to me. so i need to figure out the difference between nominative, accusative, dative, and genitive forms before i move on.)
• i have packed the bottom level of my suitcase. however, my shoes take up a lot more room than i originally thought they would. if you see a girl wearing three pairs of shoes (including rain boots) at the Portland airport in early august, that will be me.
• logged into my travel agency website to find that my Swiss Rotary has sent in all my documents! hooray! sohappyaboutthisyouhavenoidea.

the end.