Hi all! I know it's been a while, but I've been wonderfully busy lately. I wrote the most of a blog entry on winter a couple weeks ago, but never posted it. Well, here it is!
Hello again from the beautiful winter wonderland of Switzerland (expecially Wallis!)
Normally in other parts of the world, winter is a time where people stay instide most of the day and wait for the weather to get better. But not here! Winter is probably the most important season for Wallis. There are so many tourists who come to go skiing in all of the famous ski resorts here. Thanks to all the amazing mountains, there are many around here. And all are amazing.
There are so many winter sports that the people here do for these months. Skiing (downhill and x-country), snow-shoeing, skating, sledding, swimming... yes, swimming is a popular winter activity here. There are a couple hot springs around that people enjoy while it's minus something degrees around them. I did this once and it was really fun. Another thing I have to explain is sledding. In America, all the sledding that I've done was going to the top of a hill and riding a sauser down it. That's not the case here, I found out. What we do, is take the goldola of a mountain to the beginning of the ski resort; then slide the whole road down with a real sled. (Not just a sauser) For all of those people who have driven up a mountain, you know what kind of road I'm talking about. It goes left across the mountain, then makes a 180 degree turn and goes right up the mountain and so on until you're at the top. All of these activities have made for a very entertaining winter :)
In the beginning of December, there is Nikolous Day. That's when Nikolous comes to all of the houses with his soot-stained helpers ('Schmutzli) and talkes a bit with the children. Some of my host borthers (who are in the boy scouts) walked around town and visited different houses as Nikolous and the Schmutzli.
I think one of the best Christmas traditions here is the advent calender. What it is, is that every person in the family has one day in December to give gifts, and one to get one. These weren't very big gifts at all; like maybe a coupon for a foot massage or a pair of socks or a poem. I thought it was a wonderful idea and I want to bring it back with me when I come back :) Oh and of course, pretty much every gift came with some wonderful swiss chochlate :)
(Since this area is pretty much all Roman-Catholic, there really isn't much recognition of the other religious holidays here like I'm used to) So next comes Christmas. Here, Christmas Eve is actually the biggest day. This is also a time to be with family and have a very fancy dinner. They usually have something typical Swiss like Rachlett ( https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAevTE_wSLkqNA3y2p9gJKj1SPHXFbDxIGtIDowhkorw_5ZmHyitgPoSYrZo6oALNWXC0ai8OJcEAFIxk5ZR1Vo699DVHP2vngEVUwZtQ7ZFAADEPSjTHMqePb15wxd15K6OS1MrHTjbxd/s1600/Raclette+1.jpg ) or Fondu. Then baby Jesus comes to visit. What we did was all hide in our rooms with the lights off and tried to be as quiet as possible. We waited for baby Jesus to come through the door lock and plan our presents. On his way out, he rang a little bell. Then we run out and get our presents. It's fun to experience new traditions :) And then at night, there is the midnight mass in the town's church. I had the feeling that Christmas is a lot less of a big deal here, but that was kind of refreshing. It didn't seem so hektic.
The next big holiday is New Years Eve (or 'Silvester' as they call it here.) I went with my family snow-shoeing up a near by mountain to a resteraunt in the ski-resort there. We met up with uncles and aunts and cousins and had a big traditional dinner. Then we congratulated each other at midnight and snow-shoed the mountain back down with the little kids on sauser-sleds.
The last Christmas-related holiday was 3-Kings day on the 6th of January. On this day, a loaf of bread
is made with a little plastic king inside. Each person takes a piece and eats it. (There is a complicated way of deciding who gets what piece that I did with one group of people. One person goes under the table and another circles the bread with their finger until the person under the table says stop and a name. The the person stops, and the piece that they're pointing to goes to the person they named. And this goes on till everyone has a piece.) Anyway, as the people eat their rolls, they look for the little plastic king. The person who has it, gets to wear the crown and be the king for the day.And then, there's Fastnacht. I was talking with my exchange student friends, and I think we decided that it was a combination of Mardi Gras and Karnival. What it is, is the Swiss people needed a reason to keep on going through out the harsh winter. So they created 'Fastnacht' time in February in order to have something to look forward to. It's basically just a couple days of party with crazy costumes, confetti, parades, lanterns, guggen musik, and lots of things like that.
(Guggen musik is a brass 'band' where any one and everyone can come and play; regardless if they have ever picked up an instrument or not. When, in a normal band, the goal would be to play as good as possible, the goal in a guggen musik is to play as LOUD as possible. It's pretty hilarious :))
Well, with Fastnacht, each city, town, and dorf has their 'fastnacht day(s)'. This makes it easy to go to many different ones in the whole month. From what I saw, this is actually important because one of the biggest things in Fastnacht is to see old friends that you haven't seen in a very long time. So everyone goes back to where the've lived before and it's like a big wonderful fun reunion.
Well, that's all for now. I'll write about spring and what all has been keeping me busy soon :)
much love
~Emmah
