XVI. Copycat

   Last weekend was the latest trip that I made with my host family. We went to the Jungfrau mountain and rode about two and a half hours of trains to get to the top. It is not the tallest mountain in Switzerland, but it was tall enough that there was lots of snow up there. We got to walk through a glacier and view ice sculptures (and Scrat as you will soon see), we walked outside on the slippery, packed snow, and we warmed up inside a big building among hundreds of other (mostly Asian) tourists.
   This past week, however, I had school, but it wasn't like normal school (if you can call it normal). It was called "Sonderwoche" which basically means that it was a project week dedicated to one subject. I was not obligated to do it, but my host brother was, and I didn't want to be stuck alone at home for a week with nothing to do, so I chose to do Kantibänd. This subject, I have found, is extremely difficult to say because it is not entirely German but also not entirely English. You have to say "Kanti" like you would say "kahntee", and you pronounce "bänd" like "band". It is so confusing for me.
   Anyway, I joined as one of the singers since they didn't exactly have music for me to play my violin, and I
was cool with that. The best part was that all of the songs were in English. We learned four songs from Hairspray, so the lyrics weren't nearly as difficult for me to learn as for the others.
   We had our concert today, complete with big hair-dos (lots of hairspray), dresses, and touches of the 60s. Even though we had the entire week to practice singing and choreography and all that, it still wasn't perfect, but it was pretty casual. I'm actually glad because I am used to stressful productions at Warwick that involve lots of perfectionism.
   You are probably wondering why I called this post "Copycat" when I am just updating you on the latest news. Well, it is quite simple.
   Foreign-exchange students are copycats.
   Trying to learn a new language really makes me think more on how people communicate with each other and about all the peculiar quirks of each language. If I depended on German by itself, I'd probably be starving to death in a ditch in Siberia or something. Okay, maybe not so dramatic, but to say the least, my German is far from being fluent. I've come to realize that most of my communication is with facial expressions, hand motions, or "ja" or "nein." Half of the time when I speak, I say half the sentence, reach a roadblock, and expect the other person to read my mind and understand what I want to say. Most of the time it works.
   What really astounds me though is how I react to other people by instinct. I now have lots of experience of sitting quietly during conversations at the dinner table after supper or in a circle of people, and I normally can't even follow what the subject is about. What I do instead is watch everyone's faces. When someone says a joke that I didn't even realize was a joke, I will smile while everyone else laughs. I will absolutely not smile when everyone else looks extremely serious or angry or as if they might be able to cry.
   If two people from my group pick up their bags and leave the room, I will probably follow. I am always trying to imitate the people around me so that I don't make a social mistake. I am never the first one to start eating a dish that I have never seen before because how I am supposed to know if you eat it with a fork or pick it up with your hands?
   I copy the way people speak, I copy the way they greet each other, I copy the way they eat, I copy the way they act in any possible situation.
   That is basically one of the biggest things I do as an exchange student. I know it sounds like this would probably teach me how to become a "follower" and a copycat (not exactly the most glamorous positions on earth), but I'm hoping instead that it will teach me how to be more empathetic to others and how to act as a leader.
   Okay, that really doesn't make sense, but hopefully I will just eventually gain the confidence to become less of a follower.
   Enough of star-gazing and philosophy. You guys want to see more pics of me. :)

Walking through the glacier (literally). That's my host brother and my host mom to the right.

Ice.

Ice.

And more ice.

 With the men in my family.

SCRAT!! 

He has the acorn too. :)

Me with my mom and brother.

The tunnels weren't all this narrow or otherwise I would have been really claustrophobic.

This is outside on Jungfraujoch. This is the beginning of the Aletsch Glacier, I believe. I already saw this glacier, but that was from the other side on top of Eggishorn.

We walked along that trail, and because the air is so thin due to the elevation, it was very hard work.

The view from the top. It really was amazing.

   Did I ever mention how many tunnels there are in Switzerland? We drove a lot during vacation, and as we neared the mountains, we probably went through a tunnel every half hour. Some were longer than others. In America I remember a tunnel being something really exciting, but here I find them actually kind of annoying, especially when I am trying to read and then my light is suddenly cut off.

   A little observation on Swiss people's reactions to foreign-exchange students: they give them all the chocolate that they don't want. That translates into that I just received about a pound of chocolate today, and I'm not even exaggerating the weight.

   I wrote a little bit about the pizza before, but I don't think I really told you about the toppings. To celebrate today being the last day of the Sonderwoche, we all were given a personal pizza for lunch (I could only manage half). Yesterday we got to choose what toppings we wanted, and there were about 34 options. The problem for me was that I barely knew what any of them were. I chose Kebap because I ate that before, and I liked it, but I could only guess what three other types were. They were: Funghi, Vegatariana, and Hawaii (most likely mushrooms, vegetables, and pineapples). Apparently, growing up in a country that borders Italy requires a certain acquaintance with Italian language in regard to food. I can't even count to 20 in Spanish, so that is like an utter fail.