1/4th of a year

With my school I went to a monarchy the past three days . In the 12th grade my school organizes a special week for every class. For the ones who don’t study economic: a week, where they about economic learn in a practical way , and the ones who study economic go to a monarchy for a change. It is a little bit ironical but it does make sense.
Anyway. This tuesday my classmates and I headed off to the monarchy in “Engelberg” (middle part of Switzerland). We got separated from the girls after a stop at Luzern. Then we went on with our teacher right to the monarchy. After arriving and welcoming we went to our first prayer. In a catholic church, which was part of the monarchy, we stood on two sides faced to each other and read some psalms for about 20 minutes. It would be our first prayer out of nine with the monks. The rest of the afternoon we received our rooms and got some instruction from one of the monks.
We ate dinner with the monks in silence. No word was spoken. Only one of the monks was reading out of a book. At the end it was a little bit humiliating for me. He stopped reading and you could hear every single noise. Of course I was the only guy who was still eating. I could hear myself cutting my potatoes, drinking water and swallowing everything down. Really uncomfortable! Especially because I knew everybody was waiting for me and kinda looking at me while I still was eating. Thank God we had another prayer and I could apologize =D
The next day we had to get up at 5.00 AM!!! Not being a morning person, it was a really hard thing for me. At 5.15 the fourth prayer with the monks was on the schedule. Luckily the teacher informed us the day before that we wouldn’t have breakfast for another three yours, so I could get something to nibble before the prayer. This time the prayer was 45 minutes long. 45 minutes of standing without having breakfast before! Another great challenge for me. But I also succeeded over this great challenge!
After the prayer we had one hour quiet time for us where we could think about the prayers or sleep a little more. (I have to admit, I picked the second). After that we had a traditional catholic ceremony then finally breakfast!!!
During the day we went on a “spiritual hike”. Our teacher and a monk challenged us with questions about life boundaries, limits and what is important for us. The rest of the day we spent with praying, free time and in the evening going swimming. (The monarchy included a residential school with a pool.) We also had an interview with another monk. He told us about his time he spent in Kamerun, building up workshops and training the people there. He told us how important it is to have purpose to live and help the others us much as you can.
The next morning: 45 minutes prayer again. Then we got a tour through the whole monarchy: a really nice old library with reeeaally old books, a huge organ, prayer rooms, catholic church, huge baroque hallways, and stories about the Benedictines monks. All in all a nice tour through the whole area.
After lunch with the monks again it was time to go home. We spent three days there. It was a quiet time with a lot of time to think. Also we got a little inside in the life of a Benedictines monk. For me the prayers were really inspiring. They cut our day down, and give you a nice little break the recharge and stop thinking about work for a second. Maybe something I should do more.

Hello everybody!

Yes, I am still alive and I haven’t given up my blog. The last 4 weeks were just really busy for me. So busy that I couldn’t even update my blog.

So, you are probably asking yourself what did Raphy do in January? Well second of week of Januray I went to a snowboard camp! I got suspended from school for a week, which was really awesome! In that camp I got trained to a snowboard instructor. We stayed in a really nice hotel! Twin rooms with televisions, bath and shower included! I expected some military barracks with really uncomfortable beds. The whole week the sun shone, the snow was perfect and I just had a blast in that snowboard trainee camp.

Third week back in school! I had to catch up with all the materials I missed. Or better I should have. Still I had to study for some exams and write two essays: one about the city “Basel” and second a portrait of a teacher. The teacher one was actually fun to write.

Week four of January I got the chance to show off all my new learned skills in snowboarding. I went to another snowboard camp, this time not as participant but as a leader. My brother came along as a participant. Sadly he does skiing and not snowboarding. (snowboarding is way better…) Otherwise I probably would have been his instructor. The camp was a snow sport camp of my school. Every grade until the 12th grade has such a camp once a year.

I had a great time. It was fun to teach some younger kids of my school some snowboarding tricks. Only bad part about the camp: There was some kind of virus going around. About 85% of all kids got sick and had to throw up for a day. After having the virus 24h the kids were normally fine. Fortunately I didn’t catch the virus but my brother did. I am not telling you how many times he had to throw up that one night. It was just gross. But again, other than that, we had a great week!

Right now I have to catch up with a lot of materials and it seems like every teacher is just throwing around with test, exams, essays, books, and presentations assignments. So, right now I don’t see through the tunnel of school work, but I guess I will survive it. Since I have winter break in just one week!!!

Till then my motto is: Study or fail!

It is monday and I am sitting in the train with all my classmates (only 16). We are all “really” excited to go where we are going. This week we will have a “week of study”. Our goal is to create a news paper about the town we are going to, called Kreuzlingen. We paired up into groups of two and each group has to write a reportage about a subject. For example: “Kreuzling and Economics” or “Water supply of Kreuzling” and so on. Everybody had to write a reportage BUT me and my partner! We got lucky! Our goal was to create like a trailer of the news paper which will be presented on a parent meeting before we hand out the news paper. (This wasn’t my idea!)
After a for Swiss standards long train ride which was about two hours (Please don’t laugh! It is really long, considering you can drive through the whole country in about four hours. So the trip was actually half through the States to have the proportions) after those two hours we arrive Kreuzlingen. The house we are going to sleep seems to be really comfortable and the people who cook seem to be real chefs. The rest of the day we are walking through Kreuzling, start our researches and the teacher pays a round of ice cream! I take a huge glass of strawberry ice. Delicious!
My partner (Ricardo) and me are filming the whole week. Funny moments, hard working students, people answering questions, the lake and stuff we shouldn’t film. But at least we reach more or less our goal of the week. The others are working and researching everyday. Well everyday is really enthusiastic, because we had so much time to do our work, that most of the time we played around and went shopping and swimming in the lake. We even go and watch hangover in the movie theater near by. But I think most of the groups are in the timeline and will finish their project till the end.
The funniest evening is like always the last night. We can go out till midnight but we don’t exactly know what to do with this time, because there is not a whole lot to do in Kreuzling on a thursday night. Since I don’t know most of my classmates for long time. I suggest to do a “getting-to-know-each-other-round”. Of course it was more a stupid joke than serious, but the other think it is a good idea and we end up sitting around a table. I almost can’t hold me laugh. I decide only the one with the fruit can talk and the others only can ask questions about him. A friend of mine starts and we get to know the whole round till the fruit comes back to me. After hobbies we made a secound turn about future plans and parents job. The “getting-to-know-round” comes out to be really interesting. After all we are having a lot of fun this night.

At 12 o’clock me and the boys leave the girl’s room and go back to our chamber. We don’t go to bed. We are planning more stupid stuff. After a while our room looks more like a cave for crazy monkeys then a silent bedroom. Seriously we are so loud the whole night. We are throwing stuff around and screaming like something I don’t even know. The room must be really good isolated than luckily no teacher wakes up. Really good isolated, because it is so loud that nobody finds one minute of sleep this night.
But hey, what would be a camp without crazy last night?

PS: While I was writting this entry I was really tired, so please tell me if something sounds really stupid