I Love Fridays

German update: I'm learning so much!! The German language course is going really well and all of the exchange students get along SO well!! I LOVE them, we have some pretty exciting things planned and we've done some pretty exciting things together. We're all in this together and all dealing with the same stuff, so it's an amazing group of friends to be around since everyone's so supportive and everyone just wants to have fun! My German is coming along pretty smoothly. I have been here for almost three weeks now (it's going by very fast) and I can understand a lot of what people say when they speak German. The difficulty here is that most people speak Swiss German like all your friends and family and so on. Swiss German is a lot different than German, from the impression I got it's a really fancy German with different words and a much different dialect. Swiss German can understand German, but not the other way around. Since we are all learning High German and not Swiss German, I don't understand anything!! Also, people appear to speak really fast but I think it always seems like that when you don't know the language. It's coming along very nicely though, when people speak high German I can understand most of it. Swiss German is only a spoken language, not a written one so in schools they aren't allowed to speak it, everything has to be in High German - luckily!! So together, all the Rotary students are learning German and it has some pretty funny moments, I love my class.Okay.. I love Fridays!!

Right now it's about 1 30 am and I just got home from the lovely city of Basel... I had such an amazing night. Four of us exchange students went to a movie at the Orange Cinema downtown Basel. It's not a regular cinema, it's outside and there are a bunch of chairs set up on the cobblestone area with a HUGE screen set up. It was the most beautiful spot- there were typical Swiss apartments all around, with a VERY old church right behind us with a grandfather clock on the top of it that kept ringing and we sat and watched "Down By Law." It's a really old movie, in black and white. I sat there and realized that I was in central Europe, sitting in Basel, Switzerland watching a movie outside with this beautiful purple sky from the city lights and the typical beautiful Swiss scenery all around us. We sat in the front row in comfortable lounge chairs and the front row wasn't that close to the screen so it was the perfect spot to enjoy the moment.

About half way through the movie it started to rain and most people would be upset with that, but i LOVED it.. and it seemed like everyone else did too! There were complimentary rain ponchos that everyone put on with the words "Don't Worry" labelled on the back of them. All cuddled into the poncho, everyone sat and enjoyed this beautiful Friday night. I wouldn't change it for anything, here are a few pictures to help explain what I'm talking about.
That's the big screen behind me, along with the Swiss buildings that surrounded the left and right side of us.

Tomorrow (I guess that it's this morning!! ) I have to wake up at 8am and I am going to a a wine festival all day, then off to a teenage hangout type place called Hakuna Mattata. Life is so exciting here, so much to do and see.

loving it here...

Uh oh...

I knew schooling in Europe was tough, I didn't expect this!!

I thought they'd put me in easier classes .. this is my schedule for school

:* note: the times are different, some classes are 2 hours long and some are just one hour long.

Monday - 7 55 am - 9 40 am = Gym

- 9 40am - 11 30 am = Economics

- 11 30 am - 12 25 pm = Study hall

- 12 25pm - 1 20 pm = LUNCH :)

- 1 20 pm - 3 10 pm = Math

Then I get to go home.

Tuesday - 7 55 am - 9 40 am = German

- 9 40 am - 10 40 am = Chemistry

- 10 40 am - 11 30 am = French

- 11 30 am - 12 25 pm = LUNCH :)

- 12 25 pm - 2 15 pm = Biology

- 2 15 pm - 4 05 pm = Music

Then I get to go home.

Wednesday - 7 55 am - 8 45 am = German

- 8 45 am - 9 40 am = History

- 9 40 am - 11 30 am = English ♥

Then I get to go home !

Thursday - 7 55 am - 9 40 am = CA (Not sure what that is yet, I'll change this once I know)

- 9 40 am - 11 30 am = Geography

- 11 30 am - 12 25 pm = LUNCH :)

- 12 25 pm - 2 15 pm = Gym

- 2 15 pm - 4 05 pm = Biology and Chemistry Disections

Then I get to go home.

Friday - 7 55 am - 9 40 am = German

- 9 40 am - 10 40 am = Math

- 10 40 am - 12 25 pm = Biology

- 12 25 pm - 1 20 pm = LUNCH :)

- 1 20 pm - 2 15 pm = English

- 2 15 pm - 3 10 pm = History

- 3 10 pm - 4 55 pm = French(long day!! )

Then I go home.

I think it'll be really hard to get in the swing of things at my school.

It's very different than in Canada, I only have 4 subjects per semester and it's a LOT smaller. Gymnasium Muttenz is on a campus, almost like university. There are 3 different schools on this campus from what I understand: a college type school, my school and a school that people go to if they know what they want to do after the age of 16. It's more specific, like if you want to go into engineering, you go to that school. I guess that's like a university for younger people?? It's really confusing. Nonetheless, it's HUGE!

I'll give a few examples, the cafeteria is not only MASSIVE, it's its own building. Upstairs cafeteria is for snacks with a bunch of homemade yummy stuff, and the downstairs cafeteria is for meals. It shows different plates and you choose which plate you want, or you can do make it your own salad (I hope I stick with that, or this will be an interesting year! ) The gyms are nice, not sure how many there are but it also has it's own building with different stories (and it's just for my school.) There are TEN gym teachers!!!I can't even begin to explain it!!

I have only been there for one day since I had a free day from my German course. I am still attending my German course until September 9th or something like that. To be honest, I'm really nervous for when I actually start going to classes. Every day is TOTALLY different and I have to not only travel from class to class aimlessly, I have to travel from building to building!!!It's going to definitely be an interesting few

weeks when I start school, atleast Lily taught me how to say 'help' in German, before I left- that's going to be VERY useful! I'll keep you updated with my first days of school once they start!My German is coming along nicely, luckily. I am starting to understand it and I have come to the point where I told my family to only speak German when talking to me, and I try to answer back in German. If I don't understand, they help me out (which is quite often) but more and more it's getting easier. German is NOT an easy language to learn.. some words may be similar but the sentence structure is so hard. Every noun is either die, der or das and you have to memorize each thing !! For example, die Ture is the door... EVERYTHING is one of the three and you just have to memorize it. Also, the endings are different just like we learnt in French class. The endings of the verb change... ahhh!!

I'll get the hang of it eventually !

Everything is still AMAZING here, I'm just living the dream :)

"Imagination is more important than knowledge"
-Albert Einstein .

I'll use this one a lot during class ;)