My Journeys in Switzerland: February 2015

Hey everyone!

So last blog I said something about Rotex and so I'm going to go into that a little more.

The friday before the weekend my host sister, Alina, had a birthday. As she turned 16 and can now legally drink in Switzerland we of course went out drinking. I, being larger than my entire host family and 10 and a half months older than Alina, was to go with and watch over the 6 girls that were going. And on your 16th birthday where else do you want to go other than Austria for your first drink. We spent an hour on the train to get there and then took a short bus ride to get there. After one of us got caught with a fake ID we had to wait an hour for her dad to pick her up. We then got in, the girls had a round of drinks and we got to dancing. It was extremely hot and packed with people. Every couple minutes a guy would come up and ask to dance with one of the 5 girls (at this point I should say they do gymnastics and are all gorgeous). If they said yes they'd dance a little and then the girl would come back. If they said no the guy would look like he'd want to make an argument look around at the group and see me. At that point they normally went away and there was only one case in which I had to shift over so that the girl could come near me where no one would bother her. It was a lot of fun except the music was really loud and not that good. A lot of repeats and remixes. We got in around 11 and left at 3. We got picked up by my host parents and got home at 4. I went right to sleep because I knew I had to wake up early in the morning.

The next morning my alarm woke me at 8 and I had to be ready to go at 9. Got ready, got a ride to Amriswil, picked up my newbie Kat from my old host family and we went to the train station.

(Picture is from before. I was on the other side)

At this point I was a little bit tired but excited as always to see all my multi-cultural friends from all over the world. We got on the train and in the next two stops picked up 2 more newbies. Caitlyn from New Zealand in Weinfelden who is technically also my newbie and Gloria from Zimbabwe in Winterthur.
And then we came to Zurich and met up with about 20 other exchange students. And had a good half hour until Zug where we met 5 more. 45 minutes later we were in Luzern and got on the platform for the Engelberg train where we met the rest. Our weekend was to be East and for some reason everyone switched to West. We only had about 40 exchange students from somewhere between 90-110 of us. The train ride was another 40 loud minutes, lots of hugs, singing, and catching up. We then got off and met my favourite people: Rotex. The reason Rotexers are so cool is because they are Swiss 18-25 year olds that went on exchange. They get us better than we get ourselves. We all rallied together had a short talk and then walked to go ice skating. The ice wasn't great but it was a lot of fun racing through the Australians and South Americans that we trying to skate. But then we had an accident and someone broke their ankle which sort of dampened things down. We then walked to the house that we rented and moved in and hung out.

I learned how to play and Ecuadorian card game which is called Quatro. It had nothing to do with four but was really cool. We then ate Spaghetti and started in on the best part, questions. What do you miss most about home? People saying crazy stuff like Tim Tams, weather, friends and Family. It was cool to see how different we are and how alike even from all the way around the world. We played a game of eat the chocolate, we had to put on gloves, a hat, a scarf and ski goggles and try and open a chocolate. But the chocolate was covered in duct tape and cardboard. And we could only use a fork and knife. We rolled a dice and when you got a 6 it was your turn to try. We were then supposed to go on and eat the chocolate one buy one with knife and fork buuuut my team forget that and we kinda went crazy and ate all of it.

(Chris explaining the game)

The next morning was a lazy morning. Got up early to eat and then spent 2 hours cleaning and packing. after that we went sledding for 4 hours. Tons of fun and you could go doubles or singles. The people that were Alpine or WETHENORTH team (so we call ourselves) always raced down. I went down 7 times 3 of which were double.