Almost knocked out cold? Thanks Swiss houses!

Switzerland rains SO much!! It has consistently rained for the last 3 weeks, and I am always outside walking around so you always have to have an umbrella with you. Unfortunately mine broke today, so it'll be a little interesting for the next few days until I buy a new one.. I like rain, but when it rains here it gets really cold. However, the huge positive to it raining here, means it is snowing in the mountains!! It's really neat here since the altitudes are so different from village to village. My village sits higher than most in this area, so we are getting the snow while the other villages below us get the rain. I go to the Alps a lot, so when it rains I know that it is snowing up there, which is so exciting since I LOVE snow. The mountains are so beautiful, especially when they're covered with white snow, so the rain is a positive here. Although I have to walk in the downpours, I know come Saturday and Sunday when I stand on the top of the Alps, the rainy days are all worth it.

OKAY, I need to tell you about the Swiss house structures! The houses here are all absolutely stunning, I'm in love with the houses. I live in a 3 story apartment, each family has their own floor and my house is on the top floor.  It took my head a few rough weeks  to get used to the structure, since it's like a triangle roof so all the walls slant down with some weird corners in some rooms. I thought I was finally used to the structure of it, until last week when I almost knocked myself out cold! I just finished taking a shower and was drying my hair, and flung my hair forward. Once I flung my hair back, flying into a standing position, I smacked my head off the slanted wall. For five seconds I was convinced I had a concussion, but then a bit later I knew I was fine and couldn't stop laughing at myself. Almost 4 months living in this house, and it still manages to beat me up.
I can't really explain it, so I took pictures to help you understand what I mean...

The first two pictures are pictures of my bathroom here, that's the corner wall thing I was talking about.. it was pretty painful!

The Kitchen, hasn't beaten me up quite as bad as the bathroom.

My bedroom, luckily I'm not the person that spiratically jumps on my bed with joy, so this wall hasn't been too bad.

PS!! I'm going to the most famous mountain in Switzerland this weekend, The Matterhorn !! I'm going with all Rotary exchange students in Switzerland, I'm SO excited!! The Matterhorn is the mountain shown on the package of Toblerone Chocolate Bars.. mmmmm :)

 I hope everyone has a beautiful weekend! And thanks for supporting me by reading my blog, it means a lot to me. It feels nice to be able to share my adventures with other people. 

Adam Lambert Concert

I haven't been to many concerts, but this may stay on the top concert list for a long time...

Last night I went to Zurich with my host sister and two of her friends from work, Melanie and Thomas. I was very excited but didn't really know what to expect since I only knew Adam Lambert's biggest hits, which are those typical party songs. I thought it was going to be all dancing and jumping, but it had some really emotional moments too.

I don't know if many of you know Adam Lambert, he came second on American Idol and became an idol for many, since he came out to the world and announced he was gay. The concert had many gay men, and to be honest it was the greatest vibe. You could feel how much of an inspiration he was, people stood there tall with their head held high, proud of who they are. Look how far this world has come! There were many emotional moments when Adam sat there talking to the audience, and you could feel the positive, emotional energy throughout the room. He told the audience that they're going to be okay, they're not alone and to not be afraid it's going to work out in the "Aftermath" which was the name of one of his songs he played. You could see tears in many peoples eyes and I just sat there knowing, every person in this room has their own story.  Here's the link to the song "Aftermath," that was a very moving song:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vo01ebRKbzc

After the concert, I got interviewed by the local radio! I basically said on the radio, what I said in the previous paragraph.

Adam has an amazing voice which was beautiful to stand there and flow with the music while being crushed by hundreds of people all standing together, some with tears in their eyes. There were also very fun party music moments too which was hilarious! Everyone had their hands up in the air, bouncing together and the room was filled with smiles. He is an excellent performer!

That concert has officially made me thirst to go to more concerts, so cheers to a new beginning for me.

PS! The first snow fall in my village was last night / today! It gets me so excited for Christmas, I always love the first snow fall. Here is a picture of my beautiful snowy village, from the back porch of my house:

 

Beautiful Mountains & MET CANADIANS !!

Just had one of the best days yet in Switzerland...

Today I went to the mountains in Lucerne, it was incredible. We took a train to the top of the mountain which was about 1 800 meters above sea level. I went with seven other exchange students and couldn't believe my eyes. We went above all the fog and clouds, and it was a beautiful sunny day. The best part of all was the HUGE snow ball fight we had.. a snowball fight on the alps was like nothing I've ever experienced. I tried not to get too distracted by the beautiful views, because whenever I did, I got pegged in the head. It was difficult to try to stop looking for half an hour! The group of exchange students I went with today, are incredible people. They came from Canada, Mexico and Argentina. One of my favorite things is to sit, relax and just enjoy the world in front of you. We did a lot of that, sitting there talking whether we were drinking hot chocolate, sitting in the snow, sitting on the top of the mountain- it was perfect.

When I was on the ship back to Lucerne, we were heading toward the exit and as I walked through the restaurant part I looked down and saw a Canadian luggage tag on a backpack. I immediately got excited and asked "Are you from Canada?!?" They said yes and it turns out they're from BARRIE !! Barrie is a city that takes 40 minutes to drive to by car, from my house .. I was in shock. They are two women a few years older than I am and they are staying in France for two months with Georgian College, and decided to come to Lucerne for the weekend. After a really enjoyable conversation, I gave them my Rotary card and told them I could show them around Basel if they want to check it out! This is SUCH a small world!! It was incredible, it just so happens we were on the exact same boat, same time, and I just happened to take the route I did and saw her back pack, I love the connections you make while you're on exchange, it's mind boggling.

Free Hugs Lucerne

Before I begin, please watch this video so you get a good idea of what I'm about to talk about..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vr3x_RRJdd4

Free Hugs is a campaign across the world, the brightens peoples day and puts smiles on their faces. I know some of you may think this is dangerous, to walk around carrying a sign that says "FREE HUGS" and get hugs from strangers, but we were with at least 20 exchange students, so there were a lot of people there in case something happened.

The feeling you got as you you watched a stranger walk in front of you with no smile, read your sign, suddenly have a big smile and open their arms for a big hug, there was no feeling better than that. Some people came up to me and said:
 "This is an amazing idea.. The world needs this."
"This place could use a lot more hugs."
"You kids are amazing!!"

One person told Ana "please give me a strong hug, I need a really strong hug."

Peoples faces were filled with smiles around us, laughter was everywhere, it was the greatest feeling. Lots of people would come up to us and ask for a picture with us, or video record us and the peoples reactions.

There was no better feeling I've ever felt, than what I felt today, putting smiles on many peoples faces. Lots of people even stopped to ask us about where we're from, and the big question was why are we doing this? All of us usually had the same answer "put smiles on peoples faces.."
After that answer, they'd usually give us the biggest hug or talk to us more about other stuff.

It was an unbelievable day, met some great people and it really showed me how good it feels to give hugs to strangers. All the hugs were as if we have known them our whole life, it was an incredible feeling.

Lucerne / TURNERABEND / representing Canada :)

Lucerne
On November 5th, my friend from Mexico, Ana, had her cousin that's staying in Belgium for a one year exchange, came to Switzerland!! Ana and I showed her around Basel and I realized how much has changed!! It was only three months ago that I arrived here and had the same facial expression as her, as I walked around Basel. In 3 months I have learned so much and become used to the way it is here, so it was nice to see the excitement in her eyes as she saw how beautiful Basel is! It was a good eye opener to show me how truly lucky I am to be here. On November 6th, I went to Lucerne with Ana, her host mom Monika, and Ana's cousin Sophia. We started the day off by going to a glass blowing factory / museum. We learned the history of glass which is actually fascinating, I thought it was something so simple but it goes back thousands of years and has been used for SO many different purposes throughout the years. I never really thought about it before, so it was so cool to see the history of it and different things you can do with glass. They had different places set up to show you the different mysteries of glass - making noise with the wine glasses, making water vibrate through sound going through glass, seeing better with different forms of glass, it was really neat !! We also walked through a glass maze, it was scary at times because I kept walking into the glass everywhere, it was hilarious!

Then Monika took us to the Pilatus Mountains. It was INCREDIBLE !! We took the steepest train in the world to the top of the Pilatus Mountain, 2100 meters above sea level. On one side we were completely surrounded by snowy mountains that were breathtaking, and on the other side when we looked down we could see the beautiful city Lucerne..

Turnerabend
This past weekend was an amazing weekend.  For the past two months or so, the sport hall (There's a sport hall in my village that I attend and have met so many amazing people through!!) that I attend every Wednesday has been preparing for the famous 'Buus Turnerabend.' The theme this year was "Das Supertalent" and each club that goes to the Sport Hall creates a dance, just like you'd see on America's got talent. The club that I'm apart of is called Dominrigue Buus, which has women ages 17 - 30. We split our dance into 3 parts: ballet, stomp(Creating a cool rhythm using street stuff like garbage cans, basketballs, plastic bags etc) and aerobic. Each person did either stomp or ballet, then we all did aerobic together. So much work was put into the show put on Friday and Saturday night.. All the clubs worked very hard on their piece, and everyone worked very hard to make the place look amazing with decorations. It looked fabulous!! Afterwards there was a big party on both nights, most people stayed until the wee hours in the morning both nights, I met a lot of people and talked with people that I haven't had a chance to talk to before. I get a video in the Spring of our show, so I can upload pictures and videos then I hope!

The event is really important to raise money to go towards new things for the Sport Hall to keep it going which is why everyone works so hard to make sure it's perfect. So both Friday and Saturday night we served dinner, sold cakes, sold drinks at a bar, and put on a great show, it was the perfect weekend!!

Representing Canada :) 

After that Turnerabend weekend, I was clearly exhausted but being an exchange student you learn to just forget about how tired you are and continue to take every possible opportunity. I received an email inviting me to attend a Rotary event, that they selected 4 of the 30 Canadians to attend to represent their country to future exchange students. It was a country fair I guess you could say! There was a big room with tables set up, with exchange students that are all representing their own country. Future exchange students walked around and we tried our best to explain everything about our country.. It was hard to explain Canada since it's massive and each place is so different from the next !! So, we all stuck to explaining where we came from since we were from parts all across Canada, which made it easier for them to understand. We tried our best to answer their questions, some were pretty tough but I enjoyed them! One was "Why should I choose Canada and not the USA?" It was a great question, and brave of them to ask .. so I tried my hardest to answer it honestly and fairly - Canada rocks !! Just kidding, I went into a little more depth :) It was very difficult though because USA is also a sweet place !

I really enjoyed remembering how exciting that stage of the exchange was! I didn't get to pick my country, but  I still remember the anticipation of what country I was going to get.. It was scary but SO exciting!!



                                   


                               



                                 


                          

Swiss Indoors

All I heard about once I arrived here in Switzerland, is Roger Federer! Embarrassingly,  I didn't know who he was.. I quickly found out and tried to join into the conversations of how much everyone loves him! He is a tennis player from Switzerland, currently the 2nd best in the world but held the 1st best player in the world title for the longest time ever.

Last week the Officer of my exchange, Hanspeter, asked if I would like to go with him and his family to the Swiss Indoors!! It's the third largest tennis tournament in the world, with all the best players competing. They bought me a ticket and I watched Roger Federer take on Janko Tipserevic from Serbia. I proudly wore my Swiss t-shirt and clapped calmly as they do in tennis matches, cheering for the Swiss icon.

Roger Federer won the match and moved onto the 1/4 final round which he played today, and won that also! Lets go Roger!!!! :D

The hurdles of homesickness are:

3 days, 3 weeks & 3 months.. This third month has been a tricky one but once I'm through it than I'm in the clear and I'm almost there! I thought that I'd be on my own to deal with things, but you realize that it's never like that... You always have someone to talk to, and you should do that. As an exchange student, you get surrounded by supporters from your homeland and your host country and I thank each one of them. Everyone has that person that they go to about everything, and so I want to thank my best friend, Lily Gamble,  for being there every step of the way..