Cinquante-cinq

Âllo tout le monde. I just had a very average, normal Swiss week. School continues, and will for nine more weeks, and in the meantime things are just rolling along at a very steady pace.

Last Monday we talked about demographics in geography. I really like that class and the teacher's courses, though the teacher himself is kind of annoying. In math we worked on linear functions.. my classmates saw them for the first time last year but I first saw them three years ago. Sometimes I learn something new about them or there is different terminology but all in all doing linear functions feels a bit like learning the primary colors. Again. Needless to say, unless they start introducing some new material, I will ace the chapter test. In French I had to present Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, the man who wrote The Little Prince and Night Flight, among other books. We have been doing a project for ages in French where each student had to pick a book and make a webpage on the author, then present it. (If you are really bored, go here to see mine.) Tomorrow we have a test on everyone's authors and I have a feeling I will do badly, so I am studying.. but not stressing about it. Anyway the presentation went fine, it was a pretty informal thing, but I was still nervous. My knowledge of the French language seems to disappear as soon as everyone's listening to me... funny how that is. Luckily I feel really comfortable with my class and they are understanding when it comes to any mistakes I might make in French (the know how it is from having to do German and English presentations) so things could have gone worse. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday it was gray and rainy for basically the three days without pause. I happen to love the rain (and the fields needed it) so I found it nice.

Tuesday my host sister was sick so she didn't come to school. It is lonely without her around, since normally we walk together to and from the bus and between classes (when and if we switch.) On Tuesdays we eat lunch at school because we have gym in the afternoon.. I ate chicken with pasta and carrots. I wish school food was as good in the US (I actually look forward to eating cafeteria food here, who would have thought?) In gym we played volleyball and afterward we had to do this sort of soccer obstacle course. I was terrible at it.

Wednesday Andréanne was still sick in the morning. In art we worked on this project that we had started before the break where we have to design a house that is in touch with nature (and it doesn't have to be- preferably it's not- actually possible to make.) It's based on the buildings and drawings of Friedensreich Hundertwasser, an Austrian (please Google and/or Wikipedia him!) My house is probably too "unimaginative" for my teacher's tastes (she didn't say anything to me, but commented on some other students' drawings suggesting they are too plausible), because I designed something that could probably be built. I guess I just prefer to design the possible, since the point is to make a building that gets people in touch with nature (and how can a building which can only exist in the imagination and on paper achieve that goal?) Anyway my building is a house on stilts that straddles a stream, with walkways over it and a big empty space in the middle where the trees grow up over the roof. I am having a very fun time designing it. For the afternoon Andréanne returned to school.. we didn't do anything interesting though.

Thursday I did a lot of studying, both in school and after school, for two tests the next day. We also got our mid-term grades back and I am happy with mine. For French, History, Economy, German, and English I don't have grades (the first three because they are way hard, German because the only things I understand in that language are "ja" and "nein", and English because it's way too easy.) The grades are given exclusively on tests so even though I participate in many classes I just don't have a grade. But for the other classes I do, here are the results in case you'd like to know: Math- 5, IT- 4.5, Geography- 4, Biology- 4.5, Chemistry- 5, Art- 6, Phy Ed- 5. With the biology, math, chemistry, and art I am proud of myself because I am doing better than like more than half the class.

Friday we had two tests in school. The first one was a history test. I studied quite a lot for it but the questions were really really hard. I ended up answering them all but not with high-quality responses (J'ai écrit un peu n'importe quoi, mais ce n'est pas grave..!) but that's okay. At least I finished the thing. And now I know the order of English monarchs from James I through Oliver Cromwell up to Mary and William's War, so I certainly can't complain... The second test of the day was a math test. I understood the material fine but unfortunately we had finished up on it before the break, so it had been almost a month since we'd worked on vectors and I'd already forgotten anything (sometimes I wonder what the point of cramming so much into my head just to forget it as soon as we've finished up the unit..) Anyway I had revisited the material and so I think I did fine, maybe even quite well, on that test. Friday afternoon I had a chemistry lab where we had did experiments to see the reactions between sulfur and iron (you get a little black stony thing and a room that smells like Yellowstone), what happens when you burn magnesium (it gets crazy bright and you can't look at it because it will damage your eyes), and what happens when you burn copper (it glows orange and makes a green flame.) Besides the sulfur/iron I had done this in previous chemistry labs but it was still fun. At the end I made sure to thank my lab partner profusely for doing all the work (well I did all the cool experiments while she killed her hand writing up the lab report for an hour and a half. But the other lab groups had the same set up- one person writing, one person doing the experiments- so it wasn't completely terrible that I hardly helped.) After school I went to the train station to buy a new bus pass for a month because my other one expires on Monday. Afterward I went home and relaxed around the house.

Yesterday I woke up around 08h30, showered, ate breakfast, surfed the web, did some homework, etc. My host mom and host sister had gone to Fribourg in the morning but there was nothing I needed to do there so I stayed home. Then they came home and we all ate lunch together. At two in the afternoon I skyped with my mom and dad for the first time in a month or maybe a bit longer.. we talked about school for next year (because I've had to sign up for classes through my mom, who met with my school counselor), Swine Flu, and lots of other things. Then I did a bunch more homework. Around nine I skyped with my sister Emily for the first time in a month or so.

Today I got up at eight to do homework (this weekend has been crazy..) For lunch we went to Tata and José's house to eat raclette because it was José's birthday. They won half a wheel of raclette cheese playing Sunday bingo in addition to the WHOLE wheel they had won a couple months ago. So I guess they need people to help them eat all that cheese. After eating we went outside to see the rabbits, chickens, and dog they have. Andréanne and Nicolas went home after that because they wanted to do homework, but Béatrice, Bernard, and I went to a music festival. Every first weekend in May the various band ensembles from all of the various villages in my district (a district is a step down from a canton.. mine is about 10% the size of Hennepin county) hold a festival over three days. Fifteen villages rotate hosting it (it's a huge huge responsibility), my village did it around three years ago. On the Sunday around three is when there is the parade, and people from all corners of the district show up. We went to the village where it was, which is at 200m higher altitude than us. The parade was awesome.. I took pictures but they are on film so I will have to get them developed before I can share them with you. The highlights were definitely the paysans.. farming people wearing their traditional costumes. The whole thing started out with some cattle farmers bringing a decorated (flowers and bells on their heads) herd of cows down the road. The dairy goats came later after some bands had passed.. and still later a herd of very stressed and confused-looking wooly sheep. Not to be confused with the sheep were the "barbus".. that is, bearded men!! They all walked past together in their traditional dress.. the requirement is to have a big bushy paysan beard. Highlight of my life! Also there were lots of really well-done floats, marching bands, and little kids from the village school in various costumes. After the parade we went home right away.. Since then I have been working on even more homework. For once I am looking forward to Monday, because, oddly enough, I have a feeling I will do less work than I did this weekend.