Switzerland: August 2011

Hello from Switzerland!

For those of you who don't know, my name is Emmah King and I am in Switzerland as an exchange student through Rotary youth exchange. I will be in Switzerland until 21st of July and am very excited :)

Well today has been my first day here, and it's wonderful. I flew from Indy to Philly to Zurich. Fortunately, I was able to sleep on the plane so hopefully my jet lag won't be too bad. It hasn't been bad so far. Except for a sort of long nap that I took between lunch and dinner. I assume that if I can sleep through the night then it won't be bad.

So my host father (René) and sister (Noémie) weren't at the airport right away because my flight was verrry early. (Scheduled arrival was 8:25 but we came in at 7:45 am) But luckily another host family (who thought at first that I was their exchange student) helped me contact them. From there, it was a 3 hour (beautiful) train ride to Glis (where I'll be staying). There, we met up with my counselor, Daniel Gutzwiller, to get my complimentary pass for the bus, boat, train, ect. Apparently this is a very expensive thing so this is quite a gift from Rotary.

So this town(s), Brig-Glis, is centered around a river running through a narrow valley. Brig is one side of the river, Glis is the other. So everywhere I look, I see mountains :) Unfortunately, I didn't take any pictures yet, but I will. But it's strange how different seeing a picture of a place is than actually being there. There's a reason my photography teacher said that a photography is making something normal into something exotic by showing it from a different perspective. A picture frame can only show so much. Which can be a disadvantage when you're trying to show someone something you're experiencing, but an advantage when you're making something artistic.

So far, I've been told that I speak and understand really good German. all those years of high school German payed off. (Also, I think confidence is key ;) ) But tomorrow is the beginning of a language camp (in Bern) where I'll be going with other Rotary exchange students to learn German. Most of these kids don't know any German. So my host mother (Monika) is planning on asking them if I could skip out on the camp. She says that you can't learn all the German I know in a 4 week language camp. So we'll see tomorrow. Monika and Noémie are going with me to Bern so I don't get lost.

Here's a couple fun things to know about:

Language:

Each Karton (state) in Switzerland has a different dialect and some can't understand each other. Apparently the dialect in Valais (the Karton I'm staying in) is the strangest. I met a teacher from Zurich on the plane and he was telling me that he couldn't understand the people in Valais. Good thing they all speak high German :)

With this dialect (and I imaging the others too) they tend to shorten things.

For example:

Es ist nicht normal = Escht normal. (This isn't spelled right :s) Translation: It's not normal

Culture:

In America, Abendessen (dinner) being the main meal that is cooked really well for and the whole family sits down and eats. But here, its Mittagessen (lunch). This might be a thing only specific to my family though. Monika was explaining that with everyone's schedule, it's easier to eat Abendessen separate.

Everything is very expensive here. Even the Swiss think so. Thus, the words of the day that I'm going to teach you all are:

Teuer

Expensive. pronounced "toy-er" (Sorry, I don't know how to write pronunciation properly. Although I also don't know how to read that, so I figure this is the best way)

Billig

Cheap. As far as I know the word doesn't have the connotation of something being poorly made as in America. Pronounced the same as spelled. "Bill-ig" (However, german speaking people don't have a hard "g" sound like we do, but that's hard to describe via writing.)

Well that's all for now. I'll keep you all updated.

Tschüs!

Switzerland

Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Pictures!

Monday, August 15, 2011

First Day