Wallis | 1/4th of a year

Tagged with " wallis"

Mar 4, 2010 -

Snowboarding: ALL WINTER LONG!

I am back! Yeah I was snowboarding again. This time two weeks with a part of my family. We were at our apartment in the Swiss Alp. When you are interested, it is in South Switzerland in the Kanton Wallis. My brother and I got two weeks off for winter break!

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!

Feb 5, 2010 -

Sport, Trips

2 Comments

Study or Fail!

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!

Oct 11, 2009 -

everyday life, Trips

4 Comments

Fall Break (and so on)

At 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!