Week Four

Week Four
Sunday, 16 March 2008

Wow. I really can’t believe it’s been another week! Yesterday I was actually thinking, “Oh shoot, I have to write another massive entry in my blog again.” It really is going far to fast. By now, my stay in Switzerland is 1/3 over. And when I think about what I have left, it’s going to go so fast. I have one more week of school this week (the end of the trimester for the French for Foreigners class… woo hoo!) but not on Friday (because it is Good Friday), then we have 2 weeks of “les vacances de Pâques”, and after that, only 4 more weeks at school.

This week was full of fun things. Monday, I’m guessing was a regular day, because I don’t have a journal entry, and the sad part is, I can’t even remember what we did.

Tuesday was also a pretty regular day.

Wednesday, I went with some other kids from the other French for Foreigners classes to the Musée Olympique in Lausanne, about an hour away by car. There were 14 of us that were driven by one of the gym teachers at Lycée Jean Piaget in the “school bus” – a large van with the lycée’s name and logo on it. The museum was really interesting. There was an exposition of passed Olympic Games with collector’s items, all the torches, ancient artifacts of Greek games, old clothes and other things signed by Olympic athletes. I took lots of pictures, only to find out at the end that we were actually not allowed to take any. Oops. There was also a whole floor about the upcoming Olympics in Bejing this summer. There were lots of crazy Chinese pictures and demonstrations. There was on official count down until the opening of the 2008 Olympics and was accurate to the second. This is the high jump record, to the right. For women, it is the little red arrow, and for men, the bar.

On Thursday, all of the Canadian exchange students in Switzerland went to Bern, the capital, for our “orientation”. Bern is a really neat old city. We saw the parliament buildings (from the outside) and were taken to the “Museum für Kommunikation”. It was really cool. There was information about how we communicate and lie through pictures, television, telephones, faxes, computers, body language… the whole works. After, we all ate lunch together at a nice café. We had, what I think was a traditional German/Swiss-German/Swiss plate of big noodles and beef and vegetables. After lunch, we went to Einstein’s apartment. It was small, but interesting. It had a short biography that we watched (en anglais) and we walked around his apartment and saw pictures and some clothes, pipes, wine etc. of his. After, we had an hour and a half of free time. We walked up the streets and in some of the shops. There was a huge cathedral that we went it. It was so beautiful. It was sort of ironic, though, because there was a gift shop and cameras. I felt like it really took away form the cathedral. It was more of a tourist place than a church.
We all made it back to the train station (some just minutes before the train left) and got onto the train, this time, with out a Swiss guide (who came with us in the morning from Neuchâtel to Bern). What we (9 exchange students who lived near or in Neuchâtel) didn’t know what that the train separated in a town 1/2 way to Neuchâtel. I heard, over the P.A. on the train, that passengers for Neuchâtel had to get off and be on the other part of the train. I told Kate (who is a French emersion student) and she said she didn’t hear it and that we should stay put. We started going backwards, back to Bern, and the others thought we were just changing tracks or something. By the time we figured out to get off the train, we were past Bern in a small town, Avenches. We ended up getting a new train ticket (for free, I think the guy felt sorry for us, dumb Canadians). We had to wait just 10 minutes for another train, but another 40 minutes in another small town. We bought a supper of street rotisserie chicken and chips and chocolate (we were possibly going for the C-H for Switzerland trend). We eventually made it back to Neuchâtel, only 2 hours late, but it was not a big deal. It was a great ride, and the film of everyone freaking out is hilarious.

Friday was a pretty regular day. For the youth event, we went to a concert in Neuchâtel, organized by another youth group. It was so cool. It was 2 guys in their late 30s I would say, who played acoustic guitar and base guitar. The singing was all in French, except for one verse of Amazing Grace in English. The playing and style was so French or Swiss or something. The songs (most were funny stories that happened to the artists) were strung together by stories and other cool things, for example, they made half of the audience (totally full) say, “tsst tsst tsst tsst,” while the other half whistled like song birds. It was a really neat effect, and together we sounded like a rain forest.

Yesterday, the youth group got together again early in the morning (8:00) and we did a “ramassage des papiers” until 12:30. It was hard work, collecting huge bundles of newpapers, chucking them into a truck, and then bringing them to large bins where we had to through them up over the side and into the bin (and a lot of times it took 4 or 5 tries to be successful). It was really fun and a good work out. At “midi”, we got together at the church and ate lunch together. After, we all hung out for a couple hours, enjoying the sun and playing soccer, volleyball and football outside. It was so nice yesterday. We could have worn shorts and t-shirts. I was hot in jeans.
For supper, we had Genuine Swiss Fondue. It was soooo delicious. I ate so much. It was nothing like the fondues I’ve had in Canada. It was the perfect balance of everything good about cheese. For dessert, for a special treat, we had Jello. Go figure.

Today, we are having a quiet day. I have just finished making cinnamon buns that we will have for the 4 hour.

So this has been week four – another awesome week in Switzerland!