Day 12

Hello People of the World,

Happy May Montag! Or for you english speakers Happy May Monday! Feels so good to say that again! I haven't done a May Monday on an actual Monday for almost a month now. Technically in Switzerland it's no longer Monday but in California it is, so I'm still on schedule. Speaking of schedules, my sleeping schedule has finally started to sort of get back to normal. I never had like major jet lag because I always tried really hard to stay up to beat it. I always got up really early like at 4 or 5 or 6. Yesterday I slept until 7:30 am. New record!!! Anyways enough about my sleeping life let's talk about what's been happening. Again, a lot of things have happened, and it's all hard to keep track what happened when so I'll just do an overview.

Language School:

So last Monday, I started language school. Language school is a class I go to with other exchange students to learn German before we go to actual school. The class is made of about 15 kids from all over the globe. There's kids there from the USA, Brazil, China, Thailand, Mexico, Poland, Paraguay, Dominican Republic, Czech Republic, and Denmark. It's really cool to meet all these people from all around the world. Lucky for me the language class is in Winterthur, which happens to be the city I live in, so it's pretty easy to get there. Last week, the class was from Monday to Friday. This week is only Monday to Wednesday. I go to actual school on Thursday and Friday. This is how it will be for the next four weeks. After those four weeks are up I go to actual school full time. I really like language school because it's like a gateway before I go to actual school. I know if I was placed in actual school as soon as I got here I wouldn't have understood much. Now I'm starting to understand German and able to slightly follow my host family's German conversations. Not to mention I meet awesome people. We all hung out last week after school. It was really fun and we explored the city of Winterthur.

Exploring the City:

Since I've been going to language school, I've had time after school to explore the city. Winterthur is a pretty big city; it's a lot bigger than my town back home. When you go to a big city, it is very easy to get lost. I no longer call getting lost "getting lost" now it is simply wandering while finding new destinations. My favourite time getting lost was on my second or third day to language school I believe. I was the last one to leave the house because my host parents went to work and my host siblings were at school, so I had to lock the door. My host father told me beforehand how to lock it, but me being me I still struggled locking it. In my defence, the keys and locks are different from the US. I took so long to lock it that I missed my bus to school. The buses come around every 15 minutes, and I was afraid I'd be late if I took the next one, so I decided to walk to school. The problem was I only remembered how to walk to the shops, so once I got to the shops I didn't know where to go. I kept walking, but I just kept seeing shops. I called my host dad, and he directed me over the phone to the school. Now looking back at it, I wasn't far from the school. I literally just had to turn and walk straight.

Baking Adventures:

If you know me, then you'd know I love baking, so of course, once I got more comfortable in the home I started to want to bake. Most of the classic cookies are also made here, so I wanted the first batch of cookies to be something my family had never tasted. I decided to make No Bake cookies. If you don't know No Bake cookies are cookies you don't bake, but rather make a chocolate sauce then mix it with peanut butter and oatmeal. Then you just scoop them into cookies and let them cool. My family didn't have peanut butter, cocoa powder or oatmeal, so I decided that after school I would go to the store. I knew there was peanut butter in the supermarket by my school so I figured that if it was there it'd be everywhere. Boy, was I wrong. I went to four different supermarkets that were closer to my bus stop, so I can easily go home afterwards, but none of them had peanut butter. I finally walked back to the supermarket by my school that I knew had peanut butter. Once I was there I found the peanut butter no problem, but the oatmeal and cocoa powder was another story. I started asking the workers there in German if they could speak English. Most would say yes then go blank the minute I said baking section. I tried to ask in German but my sentence only got as far as "Where is". Workers would then direct me to other workers who they believed spoke English. Their English was about as good as my German. Eventually I got so desperate I started to act out baking but that only resulted in me looking like an idiot. I gave up after, and I found the baking section on my way out. I found cocoa powder,  but no oatmeal. I just went to the register and bought what I found. When I got home, it turned out we actually did have oatmeal, so it all worked out. Moral of the story: Always know the name of what you need to buy before you go out to a foreign store.

Those cookies came out great! I think my family liked them because they went away pretty quickly. Recently, I made M&M cookies with my host brother. He is a great Sous-Chef.  Those were gone even quicker. This week my host brother is going to teach me how to make a type of Swiss cookie I can't currently remember the name of, but I know it will be fun!

The Zoo:

On Saturday, I went to the zoo in Zürich with my host parents. It was really fun! The exhibits were really nice and there were lots and lots of animals.

Baby Elephant with Mommy Elephant

My favorite animal:The Snow Leopard

Baby Rhino

Leaf or insect?

View from the top of the Madagascar exhibit

Spot the chameleon

 Dressage Competition:

On Sunday, I went with my host brother to a Dressage Competition. A Dressage Competition is a competition where horses and their riders go into a ring and perform a series of movements where they will get judged by judges for appearance and how well the series of movements are done. It was pretty cool! The horses were all so beautiful. Afterwards, we walked to the stable my host brother works at. We took out one horse called "Netti" and walked her out on a trail in the woods. It was really nice.

My host brother and Netti

The trail we walked on

View of the City

Upcoming Events:

So as I said before, this week i start actual school. I went last week to take a tour of the school. It's very big. I already have my schedule. My first class is English class, so that shouldn't be too hard. My longest day is on Tuesday which I go to school until 5:30. Thankfully I don't have to deal with that until language school is over.

Anyways so I have to get going to language school. I'll see you next Monday for another May Monday! Hope you all have a fabulous day and enjoy the rest of your week!

Until then...

Tschüss!

-May