Nach Amerika

I'll be somewhere in the US from December 24 to January 8. I'm planning on leaving for Ohio on the first and then heading to Olney on the 3rd for a couple days, then back to the Columbus area. I'm not sure when I'll be getting back to Wisconsin, but it would probably be best to see me before we go to Ohio. 

I'm so excited. I'm shivering and dancing and hollering and frolicking and ahhh! Just one thing keeps playing over and over in my head:

Home.

From Sea to Shining Sea..

I am on fall break now, which is weird since I'm used to it being in November. My classes don't start again until the 17th of October, so in the meantime the Korners want to show me more of Switzerland. I've been around the Luzern area since we got here and I am really excited to explore around. More about our adventures next post.


My dad's sister, Mary, and her husband, Jimmy, were here last week. I've never spent anytime with just them, but I am so glad they came. To be honest, the Lehner family has always kind of scared me. They can be loud, obnoxious and derogatory. I have been a more one-on-one person than a crowd person my whole life, so 25 Lehners was always too much for me. I spent an afternoon and two evenings with Mary and Jimmy and we just talked. It's amazing how you can know someone your entire life and in just a few hours you can get to know them a hundred times better.


I grew up in a hippie-ish family and community. And considering Madison, a hippie city too. "Democracy Now," "The Ed Shultz's Show," "Stephanie Miller," etc, etc, made up much of the background noise to my childhood. I didn't know much about politics during the Kerry-Bush election, but I remember being bummed when Kerry lost. And happy when Obama won the next one, I was a little more informed, but still based everything on what I heard and, of course, what my parents believed. Well I've got older and smarter, I can come to my own conclusions about that kind of thing, although the imprints of my progressive upbringing will always reside in me. When I was younger I resisted the usual absence of potato chips, ice cream and cookies in our house. In first grade I came home with an untouched lunch, because I was too embarrassed to eat my tuna salad, fruit leathers and CLIF bars in front of the other students, who lunched on fruit roll-ups, those SMUCKERS PB&J sandwiches without crust in the individual plastic packages and Slim Jim's. I wanted normal parents, who fed me normal food like everyone else. Over the past months I have educated myself about food, and it being my body's energy source I've realized it's important to give my body what it needs in a healthy and measured way. In this time, I have come to not only agree with what my parents preach, but to cherish their knowledge of food, land and the world around me, and through that a new respect for them has grow inside me. I once was embarrassed to have a mom with graying hair, a car with 15+ bumper stickers, saying "Support Family Farms" and "Alternative Energy is Sexy" and a dad who wore only underwear for 90% of the time. But no longer. I am proud that my mom doesn't dye her hair, she is not ashamed of her age, something our society has made into a burden instead of a opportunity. And hell, my dad could wear nothing, which he does often, and still look amazing. He is a perfect example of how the number of years you've been alive is just a number, and not a disability. In fact, I think he looks better with every passing year. I feel like a completely different person than I was even six months ago. Of course on the outside it's still pretty similar, I'm still annoyingly clumsy, something I got from my dad and unfortunately will probably have forever. I still have the same bally nose and purple, ice cold limbs. But something slightly shifted on the inside and it changed my entire outlook on pretty much, well, everything. Especially myself, I have respect for myself which it didn't exist before. I always considered to be very Swiss, I could just feel it, so I've had respect for my Swiss heritage forever. But in the last two months here, in Switzerland, I have learned something else as well...


People say that because the United States is such a melting pot, that we have no real culture. Many Americans may be obese, racist and ignorant, but there are just as many who are not, probably more, and I think many of those Americans forget how lucky they are to be American. Until a month ago, I was one of the people who said that I hate the US, that I am not going to live there when I get older, because I am going to do anything to get the hell out, and well I succeeded with that, at least for the meantime. But I realized no matter what I do, I am American. I thought it was funny when I asked some people in my class in the first week of school if they could travel anywhere, where would they go, and they said United States. Now I see their fascination with it. It took me moving halfway across the world to realize it, but I no longer have a problem with being American, because despite of how f'ed up the government is, I am proud of who I am. And I am American.

HEY EVERYONE! I HAVE A PLAN!
I need a little help from everyone. I want you all to trace one of your hands on a piece of paper, cut it out and then decorate it however you want, in a way that expresses you. Then please send or give them to my parents in Wisconsin. People in Ohio, who I'll see over break (McKnight family and People at Olney,) can just keep them and give them to me then. There are absolutely no rules to it, but please write your name on the back. Spread the word to people who I know, who don't read my blog. Abby Chew or someone else at Olney: Please tell people around there.


I'm doing really, really well. More details later.  


xoxo.

This past week was.. hard. I don't know what it was, but I was hit with a wave of homesickness that doubled me over and left me feeling hopeless. I was sick on Monday, so I don't think that helped much either. Then Tuesday I still had part of a head cold, which wasn't a good start. I was at the point that I would talk to my parents twice a day on the phone at least once on skype. It's so wild that something I looked at something simple, a language, is so utterly complicated. I never thought languages themselves were simple, but I had no reason to be scared or intimidated by them, because I lived in a world I took for granted. A world of words. That I understood. Our lives are brimming with communication, and words make that commutation possible. So when you are thrust into a world where the words are foreign, it is hard to keep anything straight, even the things you know to be true. That is also the case with learning a new language, you grow up with parents, peers, teachers, etc. telling you the grammatical and structural rules to make the expanse of words that you know into sentences that can make sence. And when you have to adjust something you thought must be in every world, because it is such a basic rule, it forces you to unlearn what you know to a point that you don't know what's right in either...


However the past two days have been much, much better. I'm to the point where I can really talk to people and understand them when they speak back, as long as they speak high German and slowly enough. I also can (at least partly) understand the grammar as well, which is fantastic because it expands my speaking and reading abilities. So at this point, I just need to expand my vocabulary. And still get used to those would-be-four-words-in-English-but-is-just-one-in-German words.
Since I can talk more now, everyday I get closer to the people in my class. It's funny too, because every time I talk they all stop and listen.


This morning was very interesting... My alarm clock didn't go off, so I woke up 45 minutes late. Everything went pretty smoothly from there on (showered in 4 minutes- a record for me, ate, made lunch, got on the bus, got off the bus, walked to school,) until I got to school, and I realized I didn't have my ipod. And I had had it when I left the house. So there were two things to do: Go to class on time and loose it forever or throw my backpack on the side of the hallway, run back to the bus stop, which hopefully the same bus #73 would return to, get on the bus, search for the ipod-not finding it, thinking to ask the bus driver (who had it,) getting it back but at that point already way out of Luzern, getting of at a random bus stop, waiting 15 minutes for the next bus into the city, getting on it, getting of it and then running back to school... Guess which one...

My schedule  

McDonald's in Switzerland. I just thought it was funny.

"  "

My class.

We went out for Thai food :)

My favorite thing in the world besides my daddy and blueberries: thai chicken on sticks with peanut sause

So now I've got some time to write.


I am in my third week of school. And it's better.. I guess. It was never particularly bad.. but just not overly.. fun..


CATCH UP: There is no French in the picture anymore, I am officially an exchange student. Even so, I am a special case, because I might do the G1 year (the year I'm currently doing) again next year as a MATURA-bound, normal, Fluent German and Swiss German Speaking (with enough French as well) student. This is not for certain though, because only very special circumstances allow students to redo their G1 year, this includes being very sick and missing months of school. The school system here are very strict (much like the rest of Switzerland,) and are technically run by the government. I know the public schools in America are as well, but they have rules that every single school MUST follow. But the principals of Musegg are trying to worm around it, and make my case significant enough to meet the requirements. To summarize that: I am at this point just an exchange student.


So, what have I been up to? I'll start with last week:
Last Monday I said goodbye to my parents, which was surprisingly not hard (before you think I'm heartless, continue to Tuesday-Bio.) The next day I woke up as normal, showered, ate, yadda yadda ya. Went to English and Chemistry classes in the morning, and then to Biology. Where the teacher, a youngish man, maybe around 35, yelled at me in the middle of class and then took away my phone (which I need because it has my translator.) And then for about 15 minutes I sat, in my Bio. chair, going through fits of crying, getting POed at my self and pulling myself together, only to start balling again 30 seconds later. I don't think I've missed anyone in my life like I miss Leonard Guindon at that moment, for those of you who don't know, Leonard was my Bio teacher at Olney. And I realized, really realized, where I was, how I was alone, and how god awful scared I was. I finally got it together and just decided not to like my biology teacher. And that was that.


There were some good things about last week though. In the first week of school there were a group of five other girls I ate lunch with, I didn't really talk at all though, so you couldn't really consider them my friends. Well last week on Monday I decided to buck up and do it. So I talked. With my limited vocabulary and my downright terrible grammar, I talked. And they were so nice, helping me when I made a mistake, encouraging me when I got frustrated and making conversation with me. My German has improved so so so much just since then. Speaking really is the key to learning. So now I can say, I officially have friends here as well.


My host family, my mother in particular, are god sent. They are just as helpful as the girls at school and a billion times more. They even make me special gluten and dairy free food every night for dinner.


I have to say even though the language is the main reason I wanted to come over here, it is the main thing I am resenting, in fact the only thing I am resenting. Right now I am listening to the first Harry Potter on audio book, watching German movies or English ones dubbed in German (which is very funny, because when I pay attention to their lips I can actually tell what they are saying,) reading "easy readers" in German, reading a book in English about German grammar and trying to speak as much as I possibly can.


I here, I'm working at it, and (hopefully) I'm succeeding.

Die erste Schulwoche

As of 16:40 Switzerland time yesterday, or 11:40 am at home, I have officically gone to school in a foregin country for one week. Ta da! Now I can come home... Not. But I am definatley missing the comforting sounds of my mother language. The gutteral sounds of German are brutily abusing my ears 24.7. Sitting in a classroom surrounded by a teacher and 20 other students, which even that is pretty weird after my three to ten student classes at Olney, who are all speaking another language so fluently and so fast. I was so petrified until I taught myself to ease into it. Everyone is very nice to me, most likely cause they feel bad for me, but oh well, that is better than nothing. I have decided to just focus on the language and not my other classes for the first months or so. I have a school-provided tutor on Thursdays after school and my dads cousin, Paolo, is also tutoring me in his house in Horv. My parents were traveling all week so I saw them for the first time yesterday and I didnt realize until then how much German I have picked up in just one week. Hopefully this language barrier wont be so painful to get around.




Another thing I have noticed here, which I find quite funny, is the American influence EVERYWHERE. I could not count the number of shirts with New York City, Los Angelos, New Orleans, etc. etc. I have seen here. In the middle of Switzerland, I see billboards with Ryan Renolds face, restraunts and cafes named California and in my English class when the teacher asked us where we would like to go on vacation if we could go anywhere in the world... The majority of my class said the USA. Its the weirdest thing...

Here are some pictures of the things we did that I mentioned in the last post:

I love the toilet buttons so much! 

Swiss chocolate

Mustard and Mayo in tubes, so weird...

Everyone has tiny ridges.. Or maybe Americans just have giant ones. Wow. Explains a lot.

View from the Rigi

Cow poop on the sidewalk of a popular tourist destination. You would never see that in the US.

<3

Market Stands

Swiss Cheese

MEAT

Homemade swiss raviolis and pastas

Olives and peppers

EVERYTHING IN TUBES.. WHAT?!

So on Wednesday we left Karin's and went to the mountains. We went to the Alps with some friends from Madison who also happen to be in Switzerland right now. In their 20s my dad and my uncle Peter worked at an alpine cheese.. you can't say factory, gives the wrong impression... Well a alpine cheese operation. Peter would milk the 27 cows, by hand I think, and dad would make the cheese in a copper pot over a fire. They made between three and five wheels a day. Friends of my dad's still work this way in the summers and we stayed with them for two days. One of the most incredible experiences I have ever had.