1/4th of a year

My daily schedule is easily told: morning snowboarding, then having lunch at an “alp restaurant”, going back on the slopes till 5.00 PM, going home for dinner, and then watching the olympic games in Vancouver all night long!

That’s really almost all I did the past two weeks. It was a relaxing and also fun! Only the book presentation I had to prepare was a little bit a pain in the a**. I could choose when I wanted to do my presentation. The ones who were going to do it first will get some extra credit. So, I picked the first date to do it,  which was the first day after the break. How stupid I was. But now I am glad I’ve already done it and I am happy for the extra credit since my teacher didn’t like my presentation (he really doesn’t like my american style of presentation).

Anyway, the olympic games where fun. Switzerland got 6 gold medals which is quiet a lot for a little country like us. I hope you all know the guy Simon Ammann! He is the one who won two of them in ski jumping! I am not related to him tho…

Alright, the rest of the post I let my pictures speak!

But today I actually want to write about how this all works with school breaks in Switzerland. Well, as most of you probably already know the breaks are much more spread out over the whole year rather than having a huge summer break and a week of spring break. In Switzerland school starts usually at the beginning of august. Then we have seven weeks of school till we get our next break. The fall break, which is three weeks long, is usually around end of september. My birthday (9.25) is usually in the last week of school, which is really uncool because the last week of school is always filled with plenty of test and quizzes. Not a fun time! For some reason every teacher thinks we have to earn every vacation we get.

After those three week of time without school we have school till Christmas. It is always a very long time and at the end I am always feeling that I am done with school for the rest of my life. But after ten days that we get of during new years and Christmas time we already have school again. But the Winter break already comes after six more weeks. It is “only” two weeks long. But it is long enough the go snowboarding in the mountains!

After getting sun burned in the mountains we have the shortest time of school. We only have to work through four weeks of school till we get the next break. It is called spring break. After those two weeks of spring break there is no more mercy and we have school till the beginning of JULY! And if you think that isn’t to bad because of the many holidays, you are wrong. We have around 3 holidays in the entire year!

When we finally reached july we get five weeks summer break. You see, I have a really tough time here in Switzerland since last year I almost had three month of summer break! Just another reason why I love the United States. But I have to say, besides the short summer break, I like the spread out system better. In five weeks free time I usually forget most of what I have learnt in the past school year. So if I would have three month, I think I would be lost and we would need two month of repetition of the last year. And also I think having shorter breaks but more during the year helps to boost your school performance. You can always “recharge” after while.

Which system do you think is better? One huge break in the middle of the year or small breaks spread out during the whole year? Let me know!