we wish you a merry swissmas

Merry Swissmas, everybody!

The holiday season here was lovely, and despite being Christmas, it was actually fairly different from what I'm used to at home. I had been warned that this time of year is usually one of the hardest for exchange students to deal with, but to my surprise, I didn't feel homesick. I think I got my homesickness largely out of the way at the beginning, when I was bombarded with German and Swiss German and new people and new places and there was a lot of ohgodohgodohgod what have I done running through my head. And that's just how it works - but once I started to get the hang of things, it got a lot better, and things are only getting easier the more I understand the language.

Starting in November and going until Christmas, there were these "Weihnachtsmärkte," Christmas markets set up in many many different places. I think I visited four - one in Basel, one in the Zürich train station, one in the Luzern train station, and one in Einsiedeln. They are all lined with little wooden stands that look like houses, and they sell everything from gingerbread to hand-knit hats and mittens to ornaments to completely non-Christmas-related things. They're a lot of fun.

At the Basel market

On December 5th, the evening before St. Nicholas Day, we went to Küssnacht am Rigi, where a parade called Klausjagen was taking place. Waaay back in the day, it started out as a somewhat chaotic, violent means of chasing out evil spirits. It evolved into a tradition to honor St. Nicholas, and today it is a parade attended by about 20,000 people from all over. There  is a set procession of events - 

     1. Men cracking really, really long whips (my host mom told me to stand back...when they started swinging the whips around, slowly, they actually caught a few people's feet who were still walking to their places along the street)

   

2. Infuln - beautiful, intricate, very, very old handmade hat type things shaped like bishop hats and made to look like stained glass windows. They have candles on the inside, and some are as big as about seven feet tall. The people carry them on their heads like so:

3. Samichlaus - Santa, flanked by his less friendly Schmutzlis, his helpers who supposedly handle the naughty children. 

4. Brass band, playing a traditional song. It was really short and minor and when repeated over and over, it sounded really ominous...I just have one picture of the band, and it's really blurry, so...sorry about that.

5. THE BELL PROCESSION. I don't know how many people were a part of it, but there were a lot. They had enormous bells similar to cowbells wrapped around their waists, and with each step they took the bell would ring and it was kind of this almost overwhelming, rhythmic pounding thing that I can't really explain. It was really cool.

6. After the bells come the horn blowers, and then the parade is finished. They go through a second time, but we didn't stay.

We visited my host dad's family a few days before Christmas, and then my host mom's family came to visit us. We decorated a tree, which we got just a few days before Christmas - we put real candles on it, and when you buy the tree too early, it dries up and becomes a fire hazard. Another thing I've seen on a few of the Christmas trees here are chocolates! You can buy chocolates with two strings attached to the wrapper so you can tie it around the branch, and just take it off and eat it whenever strikes your fancy. :)
The 24th is the main celebratory day, rather than the 25th. We had ham for dinner, and afterwards, their tradition is to sing Christmas songs. I played piano, Seraina played flute, and Valeria played violin, and we all sang songs. Afterwards, Seraina was designated the "Christchindli," and gave out our presents from under the tree. My host mom had said I could pick which church service I wanted to go to - the 5:00 one, before dinner, or the 11:00 one where Valeria would be singing in the choir. I went to the later one with Seraina, and the acoustics in their church were, as I expected, awesome. :) I love singing in such echoey spaces. But anyway.

Our tree

Tomorrow it will be 2014 already.

2013 has been an incredible year filled with some of the best days and also with some of the hardest days I've had so far. And just these past five months that I've been on exchange have been filled to the brim with new experiences, new faces, new languages, and a new culture.
I got the list of people from home who are getting to do a Rotary exchange next year - congratulations! I'm so excited for you, and you're going to have an incredible year in which you will not, at any point, be able to wrap your mind around what you are doing.

Oh my. So 2013.

The year started off with these shenanigans:

After awhile, I sent in my deposit for college (three guesses where):

We had snow for prom:

I sang with the NHS choirs for the last time.

And before I knew it, this was happening:

And with that I said goodbye to the people I've grown up with, not knowing if or when I would see most of them again, which was not the easiest thing in the world.

THEN. 

Two days after my eighteenth birthday, I got on one of these:

with all the essential doodads:

...and I set off on this exchange that I've been wanting to do for years. And in the past five months, I have met so many new people, learned SO much German, (and Swiss German, which I now understand pretty well!) and tried so many unforgettable new things. 

I've spent five months with a wonderful host family who I cannot thank enough, and who I will be leaving in less than two weeks. I'll be staying in the same school, but moving to a different village. Although I will miss my first family, I know that I have another wonderful family to look forward to!

Because it's December 31st and I can't not, among my resolutions for the rest of my exchange are:

     *Learn as much German as I can

     *Continue to push myself and try new things

     *Be less hard on myself, because there is no way to do this perfectly, and no exact formula to do it right.

It's hard to believe I'm approaching the second half of my exchange year, but I am! I can't wait to see what 2014 brings.

So. Bis zum nächsten Jahr, meine lieben Freunde!

Alles liebe,

Hannah

oopsilon

Also, hoi zämme.

Hey there, my friends. It's been awhile.

I'm hoping it's okay with you guys that I'm going to be an extremely irregular blogger. I remember in past years following the blogs of the other exchange students and seeing that many of them, after a month or two, either barely posted or gave up completely. "I'm just so busy!" they'd say. And I would be mildly annoyed but it was all very well and good. Now that I'm in Switzerland, I am doing exactly the same thing, because that's just how it goes. And having a life so full that you don't know what to do with it is a good problem to have.

The letter Y in German is pronounced "ipsilon," and what I've found is that many people, after making a mistake, say "oopsilon." This post is titled as such in the hopes that such a fabulous word will somewhat make up for the fact that these are quickly becoming few and far-between.

I got a wonderful care package from my family, including but not limited to the CD from my last choir concert (which I have been listening to on repeat), Swiss Miss (which is almost gone), and a pack of glorious peanut butter-to-go (which is, of course, completely gone). I also got a package from my wonderful cousins in Northfield, whose artwork and letters are now hanging on my wall.

If you're reading this, thank you so much!! I was so excited to hear from you, and I absolutely love your artwork! I look at my wall and I smile and think of you. :)

The past few weeks have been rather out of the ordinary.

September 30th - October 4th was Projektwoche at my school, which means that each class works on a project centered around their Schwerpunktfach. So for me, it meant all music, all the time, for a whole week.

That's fabulous.

My class's project was preparing and performing music on the streets in Basel, appropriately titled Strassenmusik 2013. Allow me to clarify - street performance is technically not allowed in Switzerland, because it's considered begging, which is illegal. But my teacher pulled some German strings that I didn't entirely understand, so we were singing our hearts out on entirely legally acceptable grounds. Monday through Wednesday were spent in the practice rooms, rehearsing over and over. We prepared songs as a class - everything from Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da to Knockin' on Heaven's Door to Aux Champs Elysees (a French song that I thankfully didn't actually have to memorize...I just watermeloned it the whole time.) We were also in groups of 3-4, each group having one person who plays guitar, and prepared our own songs to sing.

What was it like, performing on the streets, you ask? Super awkward. That was, at least in my group, the general consensus. It made us all uncomfortable to sing songs we'd only rehearsed for three days (for money!) and have everybody pass by and stare. However, now we all have this really cool, unique experience that most people don't. But I think it's safe to say I will not be street-performing again anytime soon.

That was our last week of school before our Herbstferien, our two-week fall break. My classmates were pretty busy, Valeria was still in school, and Seraina was at camp being a counselor for the first week, and in Budapest the second week for her school's Projektwoche. So I decided to go unterwegs.

I don't remember if I mentioned this before, but my GA is really, truly, the most tremendous gift that Rotary could have given me. It's something that's extremely expensive for Swiss citizens, and something that I was simply given. With it I have the luxury of traveling anywhere in the country, on nearly any mode of transportation, free of charge. It's really, really wonderful.

Saturday, I went to the Zug library and came home with an entire bag full of books. Sunday, I spent almost the entire day making Fahrpläne, slips of paper saying when my trains come and go, where I change, and when the last train back to Goldau is, lists of things to see, and perhaps most importantly, lists of phrases in French and Italian. Do you speak English? Do you speak German? I'm looking for a city map. Thank you so much!

Here's the schedule:
(p.s. my camera thinks it's still in Minnesota, so the times on the pictures aren't accurate and I can't figure out how to turn off that feature because I'm tech-y like that.)

Montag, 7. Oktober: Bern

I love how this is what a normal street looks like.

The inside of Einstein's apartment

This little guy was in the bear park! (They have a bear park!)

Also, this mode of transportation.

Dienstag, 8. Oktober: Lausanne

This bus stop.

This architecture.

Boats everywhere.

All over.

A carousel on the shore of Lake Geneva :)

Great story - you're going to love it. So there are ships that cruise around Lake Geneva every day, to various destinations. And I wanted to take one...because obviously. I asked one of the guys standing outside the entrance to the ship if I could go with my GA, and he said I could! And he said, "where do you want to go? Evian?" I told him it didn't matter - whichever one was coming right back to Lausanne. And he nodded and said "Evian - take number four." So I did, and it was fabulous, and the ship went to Evian, and I just stayed on it and, as promised, it went back to Lausanne. When I came home I told Anita and she said, "oh, then you were in France!" 

Evian is in France. I was, I guess you could say, at France (I didn't get off the ship) and I had no idea. Classic.

Mittwoch, 9. Oktober: Solothurn, Freiburg, Gruyère with Anita

          

The inside - it was so pretty, but all I could think about was how awesome the acoustics must be and how I wanted Chamber Choir to be there with me so we could sing the Pasture or something. OH that would be fabulous.

Beautiful Freiburg

Fall is here. Since I took this photo, the trees are all much more colored, but I love it anyway. The fact that the weather is changing reminds me that time is, in fact, passing. I can't believe it.

Medieval town of Gruyère 

 Gruyère cheese is the best cheese. In my humble opinion.

Donnerstag, 10. Oktober: RAIN DAY

My plans to travel on Thursday were cancelled because there was rain and snow happening all over Switzerland, but not to worry. This day turned out to be particularly blissful. I slept in, packed up my book, my notebook, and my iPod and spent the whole day vegging on the train. With rain outside. Picture this, people. It was beautiful. 

Freitag, 11. Oktober: - 

Samstag, 12. Oktober: Lugano

Peek-a-boo...

Sonntag, 13. Oktober: First snow(man) of 2013!

It snowed on the Rigi, so Valeria and I took the Rigibahn up to the top. 

My snowman :)

Montag, 14. Oktober: Geneva

It's amazing to know that an organization like the UN exists. The people that work there - they're giants. There are 9,500 of them in Geneva alone, working for the most important causes in the world. They are incredible. And I got to see where the magic happens - I got to see the conference room for the Human Rights Council itself!

The ceiling is made to look like an upside-down ocean floor. It looks different depending on where you are standing, which is symbolic of all the different people working there having different perspectives on the same issues. 

I was so inspired by the UN that I didn't care that the lady thought I was a university student and charged me three extra francs or that I was running on three hours of sleep (one of those things where you can't sleep because you're thinking too much, mostly about how you need sleep for the next day), or that I walked to the bus stop in the midst of an absolute downpour. So there you have it. I just love good people. :) 

Dienstag, 15. Oktober: I helped Anita with the gardening - I planted a whole bed of tulips!

Mittwoch, 16. Oktober: Zürich with two of my friends from school, Marie and Leandra

Donnerstag, 17. Oktober: Stein am Rhein

Freitag, 18. Oktober: Goms

I spent almost all of Friday on the train as well. I had an hour in Brig before taking the Matterhorn Gotthardbahn to Andermatt. It was all about the view. 

Stockalperpalast

Samstag, 19. Oktober: Military open house

For the first time in 20 years, the Swiss military had an open house of sorts at the airbase - the public was welcome to come and learn about the technology used by the military. I went to my first airshow!

Sonntag, 20. Oktober: Rotary meeting!

I hadn't seen my exchange student friends in two to three weeks, and I'd missed them! We had our second large-scale Rotary meeting on Sunday, and I got to see them all again. 

Yesterday I dove headfirst again into school, and it's life as usual!

Don't worry. I've not forgotten to make you aware of the time that has elapsed thus far - Sunday marks three months for me. A quarter of my exchange has already come and gone - it's amazing how time flies! One year and a couple of weeks ago, I was dropping off my Rotary application. Whoa. I can't believe it!

Finally, it is a very exciting time in the Morris household, because a new family member has arrived. His name is Bear and I will finish off with a picture of him because he's the cutest thing I've ever seen. 

Alles Liebe,

Hannah