Tagged with " School"
Oct 11, 2009 - everyday life, Trips    4 Comments

Fall Break (and so on)

Here my school break scheduleAt the moment I am enjoying three weeks of fall break. Two weeks are already over but in those two weeks I spent my days in south Switzerland at our apartment in the mountains. We had a great and really relaxing time up there. At the end of this post I have some pictures with impressions for you guys.

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!

Daniel, my Dad, and Jerry getting started for a bike tour.My Dad painting balcony rail (I helped him xD )Don't think this is a typical Swiss roadA valleyBeautiful flower, don't ask how it is called...Hiking signMy mum doesn't like this hatMoonrise view from our apartmentThat's how I usually woke upPlaying billiard (I won all three games and I did not cheat!)Rainbow (again view from our apartment)Another Swiss roadThis is a hotel =DJust a nice pathCarlina acaulisAnother nice view

Aug 25, 2009 - everyday life    3 Comments

French Brainstorm

bottleI shouldn’t have done it. I knew it was going to be really annoying but for some reason I had to show them. I had learnt it during a american history class and I bothered all my friends with it. I remember walking through the hall way and wet all my friends who where passing by. Yeah I showed them the whole hole in the cap of a bottle. For those who have no idea what I mean; It is easy! You take some think sharp (like a pair of scissors) and put a very little whole hole in the cap. Now when the bottle is filled with water you can splash water at every person. It’s really fun you should try it.

Anyways I showed my friends this in French class. And after 10 minutes we had about four bottles which had the ability to splash water around. You can imagine. The teacher didn’t quiet like it. As a result we have a test this thursday and I think our teacher hates water now.

For me this means I have to study French again and as some of you know, the year in Chicago wasn’t really a French supportive year. Short: I forgot almost all of it. It is even worse than I thought. When I try to study vocabulary the words are always coming in English. It is like my French brain part has been overwritten with American English. Now that I am studying French again I hope it won’t happened the same thing just the other way around. But I honestly I don’t think it will. I already open up a new part of my brain and it’s open spaced for much new language knowledge. I called it the new “French brainstorm”.

For supporting my French skills I think I will start to watch some nice French movies. (Are there any? please tell me ;) ) And I will keep my English with doing this blog and try to speak english when ever I can.

So finally if you don’t understand something what I am writing please tell me. It’s not because I have a whole hole like the bottle, it is because it could be that the old French brain part tries to mix up with the good old american english!

languagebrain

Aug 12, 2009 - everyday life    2 Comments

Back in School

jerry and me are ready to goTwo days accomplished. My first school day wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be. My new main class teacher  was an old teacher that I already knew. (In Switzerland you are in groups of like 20 people and each group called class has their own main teacher and you stay in that group for almost every subject. But I don’t want to go too deep into the Swiss School System right now…) He could remember me, but he couldn’t remember that I was gone for one year. He was also outside of school for a half year. But at the end he figured it out and the whole class laughed because he asked me before how the past half year was and I just said it was really good and he didn’t noticed I wasn’t in Switzerland.

My new class members seem to be nice. Even tho some of them are three years younger than I am. I felt like an old soldier. But at least I already know some of them from past school experiences. We are only 17 people in our class and only three of them are girls. From my exchange year I am used to much more (girls). But at the moment I am fine with this…
One of my first class was chemistry. Or should I say Japanese? In the past year I really forgot all my chemistry stuff. I also have a crazy new teacher in that class who cares more about getting the material done than others. I really had no idea what he was talking about. I was sitting in my chair and wondering if this is a foreign languages course or chemistry. Indeed it was chemistry, but for me it wasn’t. I asked him after class to copy me some of his papers so I could starts looking through it. And then today I gave me over a 100 paper with all the material he covered and excepts now that I will read through all of them and memorize it!? CRAZY! And a lot of work for me! I thought welcome back in Switzerland!
going to schoolAt least all the other teachers are okay till fine. But it was hard to have nine hours of school again. (This is without the lunch break or the other breaks…). And getting back from having 6 classes to 12 classes is going to be hard. At least I am seeing some really old friends again and I hope they are going to help me with my knowledge I forgot in the past year. For me the motto of this school year is “Just do it” and work hard! That hopefully will do!
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