London, England !! :D

My host family (Denise, Silvano, Luca and Elia) and I left the house around 6 15 am on Tuesday morning to embark on our three day adventure in London England, what an incredible host family I have and what an incredible city that was!!

Once we arrived by airplane in London we took the Tube (=British English for the Subway) to our hotel and dropped all our things off ready to begin this incredible adventure. We started off by going to a Wax Museum, it was so strange!! It really felt like I was in a room with celebrities, they all looked so incredible real. It was freaky because people would take pictures with them and so as the posed for the picture I wouldn't really know in some cases who was real and who wasn't, since I didn't know all the wax people in there. So I'd walk by someone I thought was wax since the museum was so crowded, and they'd start moving!! I'm convinced some people must have gone into shock there. It's unbelievable how real they looked.

Then we started walking to the Westminster Abbey!! On route there, we saw the famous Big Ben, the clock tower! We then arrived to the famous church and waited in line to go into it. Tuesday was the last day it would be open to public, so we were very fortunate with timing.. It was closed Wednesday, Thursday and Friday to get ready for the Royal Wedding !! We went in, the church is absolutely gorgeous. To think, this is where it all happens and this is where the Royal wedding will be. The aisle you saw Kate and William walk down, I also walked down that three days prior to them. I hope everyone got a chance to see at least the high lights of that wedding, that was gorgeous. It was such a special church to be in, this is where it all happens. I loved it in there.. there were also news reporters everywhere and my host mom and I got interviewed about what we though Kate should be called since the Queen makes that decision! 

In the evening we went to a theater and watched a play that I'm sure all of you know as it was also in Toronto, we saw We Will Rock You!! Since I'm in love with the British accent, I loved sitting there and listening to the accent all evening since all the actors and actresses were British! It was also a really great play.

The next day we took a bus tour that lasted the whole day, 8 am until 7 pm! We drove out to the famous Stonehenge, Salisbury and Bath. Salisbury had a really famous church there with lots and lots of history to learn about, we even saw the Magna Carta!! It is an old document issued in the year 1215 and Salisbury Cathedral has one of the 4 copies left, and the one in the best condition. We also stopped for lunch and of course had the typical fish and chips .. so great!

In the city of Bath, we went to a Roman museum where they used to have their public baths. The whole complex was still in such great shape, oh how times have changed. They used to have one building where everyone took their baths their, in a giant pool... Now we have a bathroom, walk in turn on the shower and you can take one for as long as you want the water just keeps on coming. So weird to see the huge difference from then and now, and to grasp that people actually lived like that.

The Stonehenge was one of the major highlights of the trip to London. It just blows my mind, they have such little information about it.. Stonehenge was ancient to the Romans! It's incredible! How the heck did they get all those stones there, lifted up with huge other stones on top? It's just fascinating!! 

Once the tour finished, we arrived back in London and went to The Tower Bridge, London Bridge and ate dinner out on the docks at a really cool restaurant. 

The next and final day in London, was shopping day. I love the city, it's such an interesting cool place. The people are so friendly, even in such a big city like London. The majority of them are in good moods, friendly and extremely polite. It was a great atmosphere in that city, I would love to go back there one day. After the big day of shopping, we flew back home, the day before the Royal Wedding. I'm relieved we went home on Thursday because it would have been SO chaotic to be there for the wedding, and you'd have to camp out there to actually see something and be in the front row. The people were so excited everywhere for it, there were The Union Jack flags everywhere with Kate and Prince Williams face in the middle, almost every shop and restaurant had a note of congratulations on their window, that flag or something to do with the wedding!!

I had such an incredible three days, my host family here is absolutely amazing, I love being with them so the whole trip was just perfect. The sad time came to fly back to my home in Switzerland from London, but London, I will see you again!!

World hockey finals, gold medal game!!

They don't air hockey to much over here in the land of the Swiss so I didn't really realize that in Zurich which is about an hour away from me, was the World Women Hockey Championship tournament!! My brother told me that "Canada and the USA are in the finals tomorrow night and it's in Zurich!" So of course I suited up, asked a friend to come along, and there I found myself at the gold medal game !!

If you didn't get a chance to see it on TV, let me tell you, that was an exciting game!! It was back and forth the whole three periods, and ended in a 2-2 tie which meant that we were about to enter an exciting round of overtime. Before the overtime period started, the ladies went off the ice for 15 minutes just like ever break between periods. The man that was interviewing the players and officials for the Jumbotron and the TV was looking around the audience for a Canadian fan to interview. Sometimes during his interviews with game officials, they spoke German so I randomly got the urge to look at him as he looked at me and yell "I SPEAK GERMAN!!" However, he just wanted a Canadian fan that spoke English. But I caught his eye, because he called me to the front and there I was on TV and on the big jumbotron at that game, being interviewed.

Unfortunately, the USA scored in overtime and won 3-2. Although it was a sad ending, I had such an amazing time there! Ana and I went and sat with a big group of Canadian fans when we arrived and met a bunch of fun people and enjoyed the game with as we cheered our hearts out for Canada.

Feeding Monkeys in France!

Today I went with my host mom, Denise and my host brother, Luca to Alsace, France! We went to "Monkey Mountain" which is a fenced in park/forest containing 240 monkeys!! You can hold your hand out and they'll take the pop corn out of your hand and eat it! They are absolutely adorable.

Afterwards we went to a castle in France, also in Alsace. It was made in the 1400's and went through many battles.

The weather was perfect, the monkeys were happy and hungry and it was an incredible day.

FC Basel game!

On Sunday, I went to my first professional soccer game.. A few months ago I bought the whole entire jersey for the Basel soccer team. (Basel is basically the city I live in for this year)

I have heard so much about the games and finally went to my first one.. I was dressed exactly like a soccer player. One of the police officers pretended to guard me as if I was an actual player!! I had such a great time, Basel was playing a team from Zurich which are huge rivalries so of course there was riot police everywhere, really tight security, and many hooligans. It was so exciting!

The final score was 2-2.

Rome and Venice, Italy!!

Note: please at least once in your life time come over to Switzerland and Italy.. These countries are beautiful.

From March 28th - April 2nd, I went on a trip through Italy with Rotary as our end of the year trip. Weird right? I've already finished the end of the year trip, this exchange is just flying by.. Anyway it was just the most incredible trip!! Six days that were just PACKED with things to do, with  52 exchange students here in Switzerland and 2 incredible Rotex (former exchange students that are now leaders for excursions like this) along with 2 Rotarians that dedicated 6 days to take us on our trip. All of them were incredible!

March 28th - Met with the other Basel exchange students at 5:15 a.m at the Basel train station to embark on our journey  to Rome! We finally arrived around 3:00 pm. First impression of Rome:  big, big city! There were people everywhere making their way around my goodness there were a lot of tourists!! We walked to our hotel after arriving at the Rome train station, and I was in a room with 4 other really fun girls so I was really happy about that: Ana, Celine, Sophie and Megan. After settling down and throwing our stuff in the room, we all had free time to look around and familiarize ourselves with where we were located in Rome. So a bunch of us walked around with two very important destinations: an ice cream shop and Colosseum. We luckily found both with no problems, and I will tell you a very well known fact, ITALIAN ICE CREAM IS AMAZING. You have to try it. We sat around on the outside of the Colosseum just talking and soaking up all that we were seeing. Then it was time to head back to the hotel, have our dinner and hang out with our friends until curfew.

March 29th - Woke up and went to, drum roll please... the Vatican!! We had a tour in the morning with our guide. We went through some incredible places there! We started off going through the Sistine Chapel, covered in beautiful paintings all over the walls, painted by Michael Angelo. Then we went into the Pope Cemetery, in a basement with a bunch of above ground caskets with pictures of them and a short biography on a plaque explaining their life or what they did. It was incredible being in a room with such known and loved people, such heroes to some people, it was very special. Then we went to the St Peter's Basilica, which was just incredible. It's the largest church in the world, and the decorations inside are just unbelievable. Absolutely gorgeous!! Of course afterwards we went to St Peter's Square, and saw the place that we have all seen on TV when it's just covered with people everywhere. It was so special for me, because I remember watching Pope John Paul the Seconds funeral on TV and seeing that exact place, and I couldn't believe that I was actually standing there. Then we went into St Peter's dome.. We walked up 550 steps to get to the top and once we stepped out onto the platform at the top  I couldn't believe my eyes. First of all, it was the most perfect day.. The sun was shining, it was all blue skies everywhere, and the temperatures were just perfect. We step out and I couldn't believe my eyes, it was an amazing lookout to see the beautiful city of Rome! The beautiful buildings everywhere, not grey or silver, everything was orange. It was just like the movies, and it was just perfect. Then a bunch of us went for lunch, and you guessed it.. that Italian Pizza!! Woooo, it is SO great. The afternoon was free time so we walked around, getting more of a taste for this beautiful city.

March 30th- Ancient Rome day!! Once again our tour guide gave us a tour for the whole morning around ancient Rome. We started off by going into the Colosseum. That's where the Gladiators and animals used to fight for entertainment, massive numbers of people and animals were killed in that place we stood in. It's so hard to imagine that and compare how much has changed since the Roman times.. Can you imagine animals and humans fighting each other to death in a theater today??  Try to get insurance for that!
Afterwards we walked through preserved parts where the ancient cities used to stand, with the buildings still there and monuments everywhere. Once again we had free time during the afternoon so we took advantage of every second and tried to see as much as possible since it was our last full day in Rome. We started off by going to a very well known Ice cream place and if you said "surprise me!" they had a lot of fun with it and just gave you so much of different flavors. While we were in there, there was a random huge hail storm!! It was such a beautiful day then all of a sudden we are hovering under the sun umbrellas as that ice cream shop waiting for the hail to finish, along with the loud bangs of thunder, it was really fun! Once that finished we went to  the famous "Fountana de Trevvi" a.k.a Trevvi Fountain, where all your wishes come true. 5 of us stood there with our backs facing the fountain, coin in our hand, eyes closed and chucked it into the fountain hoping that what we wished for would come true. Afterwards we went to the famous Spanish Stairways, and sat there in the beautiful sun enjoying our moments in Rome. After dinner a bunch of us went back to the Colosseum and sat down while this beautiful place was all lit up and talked, it was an incerdible moment.

March 31st - It was time to head onto our next journey, so we woke up and then back to the train station we went. We were on our way to the unbelievably beautiful city, Venice. Once I arrived I split off with Celine, a friend of mine that's also from Canada.  Our goal was to simply get lost in Venice. It's not a big city so you don't have to be nervous about getting lost, it was such a good idea of hers. We just wondered up and down random tiny alley ways, and over a million random bridges. Venice is full of water canals, so the main mode of transportation is by boat!! So together we roamed around going in and out of tiny shops, over bridges, through alleys, and every once in a while we would just sit down alongside the canal, feet over the edge and just enjoy the fact that there we sat in Venice. Everything is built on the water, the basements of houses were in the water, everything is was so cool!

April 1st- Started off with a tour around the beautiful city in Venice, from a woman that has lived in or around Venice her whole life. So she took us around all the quiet back roads and alleys in Venice and also the well known famous places like St Marco's Square. In the afternoon we had free time so of course we had to go on those famous Gondola boats, that are long and skinny where the man stands up at the back singing and paddling. Hands down one of the most amazing moments in my life.. In this skinny boat with 5 of my friends going up and down the narrow water streets, in Venice. Afterwards we took a fairy boat to an island that's still considered Venice but it took about 20 minutes to get there, when we were there we went to a beach!! A beautiful beach on the Mediterranean Sea. The weather was perfect it was all just perfect. I absolutely love Venice and will definitely go back there again one day! In the evening a bunch of Canadians got together and went to the local fountain that was huge and colorful, and sat there, talked and soaked in all that we just did, enjoying our last night in Italy.

April 2nd- Boarded the train and headed on our long journey back to Basel, Switzerland

. It was sad to leave but I was also excited to be back with my host family again.. I just switched and they are absolutely incredible. I will blog about them soon !!  I am having the time of my life with them, I already feel like I have lived with them my whole life, they make me feel completely at home. Plus, the weather here in Switzerland is INCREDIBLE. Right now I sit outside writing this blog, shorts and a tshirt and still boiling! Everything is so perfect right now. I LOVE EXCHANGE !!