being an asian-american on exchange part II: assumptions, culture, and claiming myself

(the following pictures are from a chocolate factory
and have absolutely nothing to do with this post...)

since my last post, i've come to a realization.
i am dealing with nothing that i don't want, that i am unprepared for, or that i cannot handle.

i'm not.

yes, being asian american does cause problems for me that people don't think about. and yes, i've dealt with rudeness and ignorance and problems. and that sucks.

but guess what? every kid who comes on exchange needs to be prepared for that.

when I signed up for exchange, I didn't do so thinking it would be easy. In fact, I knew that it wouldn't be.
I knew that people would make assumptions about me and my life, simply because I did not belong in their country. I knew I would be answering thought-provoking, funny, and sometimes ignorant questions about how I lived, what I ate, who I was. I knew that I would be representing my culture alone in the middle of foreign life.

I just didn't realize that because of who I am, I would be representing two cultures and not one.

because I am American, people expect me to be American... but they also expect me to be Chinese. They want to ask what I know about America, but they also expect me to know about China and Asia in general and the culture and traditions and current events there.
I have always, always considered myself American and fully American. and I still do think of myself that way. but I've learned some surprising things about myself in the past couple months.

I've learned that I'm painfully un-American when it comes to popular culture, because I fail to recognize all but the most important names and faces. it's rather odd to see that my Swiss friend, who has never been to the USA in her entire life, is familiar with more American television and American movies and American pop stars than I am.
I've also learned that I'm much more Asian than I thought I was. I eat foods that my other American friends don't eat, I've grown up with both New Year celebrations, I even value slightly different things than they do.

I live my life in that strange place between cultures, 
too American to be typically Asian and too Asian to be typically American.

but I am from the USA, and culture mixing is normal.
I am normal. and it is ridiculous for me to be frustrated or upset or apologetic about it, because it is simply who I am and how I have grown up.

So what have I learned?

I have learned to assume the best from people. I have learned to let some things go. I have learned that uneducated people live all over the world, and I have learned not to take them all personally. I have learned that there is a difference between assumptions and genuine curiosity. I have learned to answer graciously. I have learned that laughter builds relationships faster than being offended does.

and all of this has made my exchange richer, it's made me adapt to my host country and my home
country, it's helped me gain a totally different perspective.

in fact, i wouldn't change it for the world.

einwanderungsinitiative: what an apple tree means to me as ausländerin

in the past couple of months, i've seen a ton of political posters.

this isn't unusual, because Switzerland is a country of "half-direct democracy". As such, it provides the opportunity for a person or political party to propose a change to the Bundesverfassung (Swiss Federal Constitution). After the proposal, they have 18 months to collect 100,000 Swiss signatures-- no small feat when you consider that Switzerland only consists of 8,112,000 citizens, meaning a significant percentage of them have to agree and sign the petition.
If they collect enough, the proposal goes federal and becomes a "popular initiative", which can officially be voted on by all Swiss citizens. These votes are counted by canton (much like USAmerican votes are counted by state) and the majority wins.

This also means that it's in each party's best interest to keep the people informed about the initiatives and to convince them to vote a certain way. Political posters are everywhere-- in gardens, on fences, by the bus stop, in the train station-- normally featuring the name or symbol of the initiative and a big "JA" or "NEIN" telling you what to vote. After a while, you get used to it and sort of stop paying attention.

Which means that I didn't realize how relevant this particular poster was until I'd seen it for the twentieth time.

What the Swiss people are now voting about is whether or not to set a limit on Masseneinwanderung. Translation: limiting Immigration with a capital I. limiting those people working, learning, starting businesses, getting jobs in Switzerland.
people who are not Swiss.

 As a nation, Switzerland is a sort of island in the middle of Europe. It's not part of the EU, it stubbornly sticks to its own governmental system and its own shops and its own currency and its own schools and its own variation of language and millions of things more. The Swiss are incredibly patriotic, with dozens of traditions that vary by canton, city, and village.

But. There are foreigners.

Foreigners basically means "anyone who is not Swiss and/or hasn't got a family tree with at least two generations living in Switzerland and/or cannot speak perfect Swiss German". Foreigner means someone who somehow does not belong.

This isn't necessarily a bad thing. I've gotten some wonderful people who like the USA and are interested in it, or better yet, people who like me as a person and are interested in me, not my country. The people here are welcoming, especially if you make an effort to speak German or Swiss German, and friendly. Most of them are happy that a little American girl is trying to learn their language and adapt to their culture. But every so often, I am forced to remember that I am not Swiss.

You see, Swiss like to organize things. Everything, from buses to chocolates to schoolwork, is carefully ordered and put in place. But the problem is that here, there are often only two categories of people: Swiss and Non-Swiss. Swiss people get the chance to vote, to sign petitions, to launch initiatives and referendums. Non-Swiss people do not. Whenever someone who is Swiss gets into trouble and makes the newspapers, he is just a person. Whenever someone who is Non-Swiss gets into trouble and makes the newspapers, he is one of those Non-Swiss People. The People's Party noted that “Switzerland has serious problems with immigration… Almost half of the crimes committed in Switzerland are carried out by foreigners.” (Um. and what about the other half?) Some Swiss people appear to live in the fear that one day they will wake up to find that Switzerland is no longer Swiss.

And really, that's what makes me unhappy. living in Switzerland as an exchange student, I don't care about bilateral strategy or economic decline. I don't care about the job market or about Swiss vs. EU passports. And maybe that makes me ignorant, or inexperienced, or simply just naive.
Because what I care about is my, and others', rights to be acknowledged. As more than categories, as more than stereotypes, and as more than Swiss/Non-Swiss.

What I care about is my right to be seen, as a person.
not just as an Ausländerin.

on the ninth day of christmas

on the ninth day of christmas

 my exchange gave to me
long christmas dinners
swiss weihnachtsmärkte
seven for a family
six lovely months
five languages

four advent days

three families

two traditions

and a new look at bloomability

swiss dinners can go for an exceptionally long time. however, swiss christmas dinners are unbelievable... yesterday i left the house with my family at 4pm and got home at exactly 12. (of course, that's including the commute... altogether it wasn't THAT long, as european dinners go. It probably lasted only about 6 and a half hours for us, because my little host sister and I needed to go to bed.)

the entire process of a swiss dinner is too long to explain here, so i'll refrain from describing it in full. basically all you need to know is that europeans enjoy talking and food and drink and talking and chocolate and talking and gifts and talking and they could probably happily have dinner for the rest of the week if it were possible.

yet at the same time, i'm beginning to get used to the long mealtimes and the community atmosphere. because for swiss people, dinners are an opportunity to be together. to celebrate. to enjoy each others' company. and so for once, time does not matter.

and that is good.

on the fourth day of christmas

 on the fourth day of christmas

 my exchange gave to me

four advent days

three families

two traditions

and a new look at bloomability

so the reason i haven't been posting as much is because, well, life.

but seriously, christmastime is crazy. and yet for some reason, it doesn't feel "christmasy" to me... I'm not sure if it's the lack of christmas music, or the fact that lights aren't a big display here, or what. but there is something missing from christmas. hopefully i'll find it by the 25th.

anyway... advent...

people celebrate advent in the USA too, but i remember it being more of a religious thing and not very widely celebrated. it involves lighting a candle every sunday until Christmas, and looking forward to Christmas day, rather like a very long drawnout version of the countdown on TV right before they show the Super Bowl. like "hey, look, we all want to go ahead and celebrate Christmas but it's too early so I guess we'll settle for lighting this purple candle."

but here it is celebrated. my host family has the tradition of giving each child a small present every sunday. other families have daily advent calendars. other families read a prayer and light the candle in a small ceremony of celebratory-ness.

(what is that? not exactly celebration -- celebrationess? celebratorianism?)

and it is sweet, and quiet. that's the thing that defines advent for me, i suppose-- it is not exciting, like Christmas Eve, or loud, like New Year's, or bright, like Easter and Christmas. it is still. peaceful. 

it is not a festivity in and of itself as much as it is the celebration of what is to come.

on the second day of christmas

on the second day of christmas

my exchange gave to me

two traditions

and a new look at bloomability

one thing that I've never realized about Christmas is just how BIG of a deal it is for us in America. There are songs and the shopping and the lights and the carolers... they're all little things, things that seem really everyday at home. Normal, Christmasy things.
but then when they are no longer there, you end up wondering vaguely what's missing.
and so I have to say it: I miss Christmas. I miss American Christmas.

but the thing is...
at the same time I am yearning for the Christmas I know, the Christmas I have always known, I am learning to appreciate and love European Christmases, too. There are snowfilled villages and cookies and Christmas markets and songs in French and German and Italian. And that has also become a normal Christmas for me.

And it makes me wonder if I will always, after this, be missing both traditions. If I will always be remembering both types of Christmases. If I will always have a part of me that celebrates in both countries.
And if so,
what will that be like?

samichlaus is coming to town

"he sees you when you're sleeping, he knows when you're awake... he knows if you've been bad or good, so be good for goodness sake!"
(^side note: is that not the creepiest holiday song you've ever heard in your life? I mean, think about it...)

Guess This Mystery Person:

He wears a red suit, a pointy hat, and big black boots. He has long white hair and a beard. He is frequently accompanied by a small mysterious somewhat magical creature. He shows up around December, and he gives good children presents.
Think you've got it?
Guess again, because if you're thinking "Santa" you're wrong. This is not the American Santa. Trust me, despite the similarities, they are very different people.

Meet my new acquaintance:
Samichlaus.

Unlike American versions, Swiss Santa does not bring the presents on Christmas Eve. Instead, he comes every December 6th for Samichlaustag.
Like American Santa, he's supposed to ask the Swiss children if they have been good or bad. the good ones get a present (normally chocolate, nuts, and oranges.)
The bad children are punished...
...and that's when it starts to get interesting.

See, American Santa gives them coal. Or sticks. Or something, to show that they've been bad and that they don't deserve a real present. (Also, the American Santa gives fancier presents to the children, not just snacks, but whatever. Maybe Swiss Santa has a lower budget.)
But Swiss Santa? Swiss Santa is a little more proactive here. He has an elf... not just any elf. This one is called Schmutzli, or "little dirty one", and he puts bad children in his sack and on Santa's donkey. (oh yes, Samichlaus does not have 9 reindeer. Instead he has a donkey. More proof that Swiss people have a lower budget for Santa.) Then, after loading the children all up, he carries them off in the sack and leaves them in the dark wood.

That's right.

Swiss Santa doesn't give coal and sticks to bad children. He simply abducts them and abandons them in the wilderness.

And people WONDER why little kids are afraid to sit on Santa's lap.

However, there are perks to the Swiss version of Santa Claus. The first is (obviously) the food. Swiss children receive gifts at Christmas too, but those come from a different magical person who does not look like a fat guy in a red suit. So really, Samichlaustag is just an extra bonus day for children to eat oranges and chocolate during the holidays. Sounds good to me.

The second is that Samichlaus comes in a much quieter manner than Santa. I've always wondered why parents think their children will believe reindeer can fly, Santa Claus can travel across the whole United States in one night, and somehow he'll deliver presents to all the children. Very large, sometimes expensive presents. I mean, that's got to be stressful.

Which leads me to the last benefit. I pointed out earlier that Swiss Santa Claus doesn't have so many expenses as American Santa Claus... he gives oranges and chocolate instead of big presents, he only employs one elf, and he eschews the reindeer in favor of a little donkey. In other words, Swiss Santa is way cheaper to employ.

So the next time we're worrying about a debt crisis, there's a simple answer: Let's just stop paying Santa so much.

Who needs reindeer, anyway, when you can have a little dark elf to abduct your children?

(the end.)

my blog rule-- and why i am now breaking it

gondola ride up the matterhorn

when i first started this blog, i decided to avoid talking about two things:
politics and religion.

the reasons were simple. while politics and religion do interest me (i'm one of those weird people who like to know how other governments and belief systems work) these seem to be the most "offending" things that are presented nowadays. i figured that i'd keep the potentially offensive things to myself, in the interest of keeping my blog relatable.
you see, my blog was originally started to a) update people on my life so they don't have to ask my poor family at home all the time and b) describe the Rotary exchange process personally, to an extent that it'd be helpful to future exchangers and c) generally be a place for me to describe my life and the thoughts and changes i'm experiencing.

politics and religion didn't come into that because they didn't affect my exchange.

but the thing is...
politics and belief systems are a HUGE part of a country. they reflect so much about the culture and people and the values and interests and ideals of that culture. coming here, i've been asking myself a lot of questions about why, exactly, US-Americans do the things they do. i've learned that sometimes we're right, and a lot of times we aren't.

and consequently, they have indeed affected my exchange.
and forgoing all mention of them on my blog caused me to leave out significant parts of who i am and the things that i'm realizing here.

this does NOT MEAN that i am going to suddenly go all "crazy-political-American" on you, not at all. (in fact, going on exchange has caused me to question a ton of my beliefs, in a very good way.)
i still do think that insult throwing and misinformed arguing over politics and belief systems is completely and utterly pointless. not to mention that it makes a lot of enemies very fast.

however, as a representative and ambassador of my country, i am going to share some things on my blog that have caused me to rethink how Americans live. and that includes whatever small political or religious culture shifts i think are worth noting.

i am not encouraging comment wars. i am not changing my blog.

i am simply representing myself and what my exchange is teaching me, and realizing that it has caused me to think about a lot of different things.

and i hope it causes you to think too.

language update: stalling

so I have a confession to make.

In the past couple weeks, I haven't really been trying.

But wait, this story has more to it...

---

You see, I've always been fairly good at languages. They've never been a struggle for me to learn, at least not to the point that I know they are for some people. In general, I can listen and mimic the sounds around me without too much effort, and the grammatical structure of the language makes intuitive sense to me. Something about languages seems to "click" in my head, faster than it does for science or math or computers or history or any other sort of subject.

This does not mean that I am perfect-- trust me, I have TONS to learn and my German is still pretty bad-- but it does mean that in general, both because I work hard and because I genuinely like languages, the learning curve is not quite as steep for me as it could be.

---

So in the first 6 weeks or so, I was at the "conversational exchange student" level. This means different things to different people, but what I mean by it is that I could say normal everyday things regularly and carry on everyday conversations. By the end of my two-month, I could figure out what the teachers were telling me and what to do. (I was still a lot slower than the rest of my class, but I could do the work and take the tests and everything. I've been taking tests with my class since day 2, so...) I could also ask for help, get directions from someone, and in general function as a normal person.
This doesn't mean that my German is native-level fluent. My grammar is pretty horrible, because I can never remember the articles to anything or the preterit form of verbs. But in general I had a non-distinguishable accent and I could communicate almost everything I wanted to say.

---

That's when the learning speed started to slow down. For the first 6 weeks, I felt like I was getting better every day, that I was learning more and becoming better at expressing myself in tangible ways. But for some reason, once I hit the two month mark, my German just sort of appeared to stay the same.

I'm not exactly sure why this was. My guess, though, is that after reaching the point where I could express myself, I stopped trying so hard. People can understand me, I can communicate, and in general my teachers are impressed that I've learned so much German in such a short time. My language level is almost the same as some of the Januaries in my area. Why would I need to learn anything more?

I did try to learn Swiss German in the meantime, and that helped a lot. For the past month or so, I've been asking my host family to speak Swiss German with me. I can understand almost everything now, and speak a little. But... and this is a big But... my German, both Swiss German and High German, is far from perfect.

---

So what I did then?

Well. I'm not particularly proud of it. But for the next two weeks I started to have an irrational fear of losing my English. I holed up in my room and read English online books, checked Facebook statuses. I hung out more with the other exchange students, and we speak English together because not all of us are comfortable with speaking German. English is easier. I stopped studying German outside of school and homework.

Granted, I'm still studying German automatically every time I turn on the television or read the newspaper or do my homework here. It's something I have to do, because I don't ask my family or classmates to speak English. 

But I wasn't studying grammar, or vocabulary, or sentence structure. It wasn't fun and interesting to do anymore, simply because I could already function in my host language. 

And so I fell into a sort of language slump. 

---

Please don't think that I'm giving up on my exchange... I love Switzerland just as much as ever, and I'm making new efforts to learn the language... but I think it's important for me to talk about mistakes on this blog too, because goodness knows they're a huge part of exchange.

and that is all for now, folks.

byyeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! :)

hannah

(p.s. I think you should know that I am now going through my language books and studying German with all I've got. And I'm learning grammar. So be proud of me. thatsallbye.)

looking back: country fair

so this past weekend we had the country fair.

it was awesome. I remember it being good when I was an outbound, but it is so much better being an inbound... telling people about your country, spending time with the other exchange students, and realizing just how much culture shift you've experienced in the past three months.

Still and all, there is a level of excitement that comes with being an outbound. You're about to make a huge decision--where you spend the next full year of your LIFE--and you want to learn as much as humanly possible. It's exciting and new and a little bit stressful for those of us who have no idea what to do.

You see, at the beginning I knew where I wanted to go. I knew where I SHOULD go. For the past 10 years, I had dreamed of traveling the world. Specifically, Europe. Specifically, France. It was an area that was not up for discussion... I was going to France. Period.
But then I went to country fair, and I decided to reconsider.

And reconsidering turned out to be one of the best decisions of my life.

You'll hear more about how I ended up in a country I never would have considered sometime later. But for right now, let's address my original topic: country fair.

In a nutshell, country fair is a way for new exchange students to figure out which country they want to choose.

This means that most of your time as a inbound is spent convincing the new students that your home country is the best possible place to go. And most of your time as a new Outbound Candidate is spent confused and trying to figure out which country really is the best possible place to go.

I remember being really confused at the country fair. In fact, a lot of us were confused. But we had months to make this decision, and it wasn't something that needed to be rushed.

And so if anything, what I learned from the first country fair was that not everything was as clear as I thought it would be, that there were amazing things in every country, and that maybe it was okay to go somewhere I never would have considered. I hope that's what the new exchange students learn too.

Because sometimes things are unclear.
And sometimes, that is okay.

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!

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.