XIV. Climbing mountains

   I am very pleased to announce that I have finally seen some of Switzerland in this past week or so. As this was my first week off of school I got to sleep in almost everyday, and I went with my host family to various places. And, yes, as I promised, I finally have more pictures. They can pretty much speak for themselves.

XIII. Ferien equals vacation

   Today was my last day of normal school for three weeks. Not even joking. It is Herbstferien!
   Okay, I am used to having approximately 9-10 days off for Christmas, and even though that stinks, that unfortunately is normal at my American school. But this isn't Christmas; this is only fall vacation, and it's going to be awesome. I won't tell you anymore, but I will leave you to speculate...
   This past week was good, but the main difference between this week and the last couple of weeks was that I rode my bike to school. It's not far, but separating my house from my school is a big hill that I have to labor over everyday.
   Yesterday was pretty tough because I biked to school early in the morning when there was fog and it was freezing cold, and my first two classes were Sport (Gym). After that I had a break from physical activity until I biked home for lunch, ate lunch, and then returned to school for the afternoon. Then I had to bike home for the fourth and final time that day, and I was exhausted. Either this will turn me into an athlete or it will compensate for all the chocolate and goodies that I've been eating.
   I guess I didn't mention that I did very well on my first math test; I got a 5, which is the equivalent of a B. The next stuff that we are studying though, I have already learned, so it's pretty easy for me. We also had a Geschichte Prüfung (History test) yesterday, and I couldn't do it even if I tried. It was entirely a written test about things that I have never learned in my life. Why haven't I ever been able to study World History in America?
   Anyway, I have learned how to play a typical Swiss game called BrändiDog, which is almost exactly like

XII. The first tests

   On Monday I had my very first test in school. It was for "Geografie" which is more like Earth Science than Geography. The last time I had Earth Science, I was in 8th grade, so obviously I didn't really know much on this test especially since I wasn't even at school for most of the lectures. I tried it anyway, just for fun and to get a feel for what tests would be like here in Switzerland. Well, a test is a test, and mostly I just guessed on the questions and tried my best to answer in German. It's hard when I know how to name something in English, but I don't know its German equivalent. 

This is Switzerland.

   We got our tests back the next day. Mine had a couple marks (or several) on it to show what I got wrong and what was sort of right. I didn't actually get a grade, but my teacher wrote "gut!" at the top, so I was happy. 

XI. English is everywhere

   Perhaps before I came to Switzerland, I was very naive or just completely dumb. I knew that English is considered a universal language for business like Chinese, but I didn't realize, that everyone knows it.

   For example, in that German course that I mentioned previously where I reviewed German for a grand whole three days, there were kids from Japan, China, Indonesia, a gazillion South American countries, and more, and everyone spoke English. Everyone but me was learning a third (or fourth or fifth) language through a second language. When I asked, they said that they all learned English in school. My fellow classmates in the Kanti (high-school) also know some English, but they are not necessarily fluent in it. 

   When my plane landed in Zürich, every single sign in that airport was in German and English. Not kidding. My family sings "Happy Birthday" in English, and lots of songs that we sing in church are either the same tunes with German lyrics or actually in English.

   Speaking of church, I went to the service last Sunday, and the entire sermon was in Swiss-German... It was at least half an hour long, and - I am not joking - excepting the Bible verse that was put up on the screen in High-German, I caught five or fewer words. 

   Yeah.

   The good news is that when people speak directly to me, I can understand almost everything that they say, and I have on occasion engaged in full, one-on-one conversations. My fellow female classmates have also discovered that I am good in Math, and so it is not an odd occurrence to find me, explaining a math problem that is written in a different language to students who can't understand it in their native language.

   There are so many differences between here and home that to list them all would make this post exceeding long, and you, my wonderful readers, would yawn, promptly turn off the computer and pick up a book instead. Therefore, I will treat you with a few differences in every post.

   I should probably begin with the ones that are kind of small but that really surprised me and that I have already become adapted to because otherwise I will forget about them. 

   Did I ever mention the blinds in Switzerland? They are much thicker and are built-in on the outside. Then,