Arrivederci

   
    I know that I pretty much fail at blogging consistently. This last month has been truly wonderful. I spent most of my time surrounded by my friends that I love dearly, and studying for finals that I did not quite love as much. What I love the most will come in 3 hours, the moment when I lock up my room and catch a taxi to the train station, where I will catch a bus to the airport in Milan. From there I fly to New Jersey, Denver, and then Redmond. I cannot believe that I will be in the United States of America so soon! Of course I am beyond excited, but what will it be like? I haven't been in an English speaking country in four months, let alone seen my friends and family. How much have I changed? This adventure continues to prove exciting and terrifying. I'll enjoy every moment. <3

And with this I say:

Arrivederci Svizzera, e ciao gli stati uniti d'america!

Week Update

This last week has been by far the roughest week I have experienced at Franklin. Last week I received the news that my great grandmother passed away. The news of course made me extremely sad, but luckily I have a good support system here and back home. The roughest part has been being away from home and my family and friends during this time.

It turned out to be quite a busy week on top of staying strong. The game of Assassins is currently being played on campus here, which I have found to be quite distracting and entertaining. For those of you who don't know what Assassins is, each person who wants to play pays 10 francs to the school (as a fundraiser for my residence hall's Swiss living community). Each player receives a card with the name of another player, who is their target. Their job is to find their target (outside of the safe zones) and touch them with a spoon. It sounds simple, but keep in mind that someone is chasing you with a spoon as well. The game gets very intense because everyone wants to win the prize of a 100 franc gift certificate to one of the local grocery stores. I did not play, but I agreed to help my friends win. I aided them by getting them food and walking them to class to help them avoid the people trying to catch them. Unfortunately, both of my friends were caught within the week!

Another element to this week was a trip to Milan for my freshman seminar class. We went to Milan all day on Saturday to take pictures and videos of people in Milan using their cell phones or other mobile devices (I am in the mobile communications freshman seminar class). It turned out to be quite an enjoyable trip despite the freezing weather! I enjoyed Milan more than I thought I would, I pictured it to be the typical touristy Italian city, but it was very beautiful and had a completely different vibe from Florence and Venice.

Next week will be rough as well, so I'm hoping it will be okay. Through it all I'll be strong with the knowledge that I will be visiting Oregon in less than a month!

Picture discussed in the academic travel post.

Extremely exhausted by this point in the trip, but here I am in Firenze!

Torre del Lago! I can see how Puccini was so inspired.

My favorite city: Lucca!

Rainy day on top of the wall in Monteriggioni

Taken from Castello di Verrazzano after the wine tour!

Academic Travel

        
For my first academic travel at Franklin I chose to go to Tuscany, with the main city focuses being Florence, Lucca, and Siena. Honestly since this was my first academic travel I had no idea what to expect, maybe some tours and sight-seeing. I was pleasantly surprised to say the least!

     The first town we went to was Siena, which was about a 4 hour drive from Lugano. On the way we stopped in a town located on the top of a hill named Monteriggioni. Monteriggioni is surrounded by a large wall to prevent attacks from other cities. It was pouring rain but I couldn't help but be in awe of the city's natural beauty. That night we arrived in Siena. While still pouring rain we walked to dinner, which took us an hour and 45 minutes because our professor was lost. At this point I was ready to go home. Then we arrived at dinner, and it was the best meal I have had in my life. The restaurant continued to put more food in front of us until we were full, and then a few more courses. The next day we went to San Gimignano, another town surrounded by a large wall. There we went to a torture museum and a death penalty museum, like all medieval towns have.

     The next day we left Siena and headed towards Lucca. On our way we stopped at Castello di Verrazzano, which was my favorite stop on the entire trip. We took a tour of the wine cellars and the castle faculty fed us lunch and we tasted the most delicious wine I have ever had. I even bought a bottle to take back to the states for Christmas break for my family to try!

     A few days later we went to Torre del Lago, the town where Puccini lived, and Pisa! Of course in Pisa I had to take the classic photo holding up the tower, and then a more creative one where my friend pretended to be a dinosaur and pushed the tower over onto me, the poor villager.

     Our last stop was Florence. My favorite part about Florence was going to La Accademia, where Michelangelo's "The David" resides. How did Michelangelo create such a fantastic sculpture? I may never know, but I appreciated how much time and effort was put into it.

     I know that is not a very detailed description of my academic travel, but what I found most important were the bonds I made with the people on the trip. I cannot believe how lucky I am to go to a college where it is required to travel for two weeks per semester to graduate. I feel very grateful to be given this opportunity! :)

Oops!

       Well I admit, I haven't been posting lately and that is entirely my fault. I have been busy with Academic Travel, and the week following which was crazy with school work. I promise, I will update everyone on what my first Academic Travel was like (and soon)!

       For now, I will tell everyone that I have moved into a new dorm which focuses on the Swiss Community, which I find funny since the title of this blog is Swiss Life. I absolutely love it in this dorm. It's called Leonardo da Vinci or LDV for short. It is the freshman dorm which contains a lot of my closest friends at Franklin. I'm now in a split double room. For those of you who don't know what that means, it means that I have a roommate but we have separate rooms. We share a common entryway, large closet for storing cleaning supplies and other objects we don't want to store in our own closets, and a bathroom. Then we each have a room to ourselves for sleeping. We are also special in the way that my roommate and I each have our own balcony! I feel like this living situation will suit me better than my last room. So it's easy to say that life is pretty great!

Forgiveness

Lately I've been dealing with the dilemma of forgiving people for events that happened in the past. It's the most empowering thing to be able to forgive someone. But how can we forget what happened? I really wish that it was so simple to move on in a way, I'm just not sure how to yet. If anyone has some good advice, send it my way!

Midterms/ Life

I'm sorry I haven't been posting a lot recently (that's assuming people enjoy reading my blog). For those of you who don't know, this week is midterm week. Holy cow, how time flies! I had a Spanish midterm today, my International Relations midterm tomorrow (wish me insane amounts of luck), my Italian midterm tomorrow, my Art History midterm on Thursday along with another Spanish one and a Communications midterm, and another Italian midterm on Friday. YIKES! The midterm I am fearing the most is my International Relations midterm. It is by far my favorite class and I find the material extremely interesting. However, the midterm sounds terrifying! I have read 320 pages out of one text book, and have to read another 200 pages in the other book (I am already on page). I have gone from never having to study in my life, to studying for one week straight for one test that is only an hour and fifteen minutes long. How is this possible? If someone has an answer, please let me know! But seriously, wish me luck everyone! Also, my motivation to get me through this week is the fact that I will be on academic travel next week! Woohoo! That is quite possibly the best reward for living through midterm week in college, and I get to go on academic travel after every midterm week, how lucky am I?
It's been getting a little difficult being so far away from home, I've begun to miss many things from Oregon. Some things that I particularly miss are my family, my dog, and people who speak English. People speaking English sounds silly, but it is slightly annoying when you go to the doctor and you cannot explain to them properly in Italian what is wrong. I still love it here! But I'm also looking forward to being able to hug my family, I'm halfway to winter break! Yay! Have a good week everyone!

TED Talks

Sorry that I haven't been posting in a while! Here are some videos that cheered me up today, enjoy them!
This is a TED talk remix that my physics class watched last year:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDHET3aCI2U
My friend Abbi showed me this one today! For those of you who get the spinny wheel of death while waiting for a page to load, et cetera, you can definitely relate:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_6SfMZxoLc&feature=share

Everyone! Message me on Facebook or comment below on what you would like me to write about!! I promise I will make a post specifically dedicated to what each of you wants to hear about.

Swiss Medical Care

Wow! I am seriously impressed with Swiss health care. I had to go to the emergency room this evening due to extensive poor health over the last few weeks. I was in the waiting room less than ten minutes, was immediately seen by the doctor, given five prescriptions, and was out the door within the hour. Hopefully the medicine will be just a great and I'll be better in no time!

And It's Not Even 2 pm

Well, I've had quite the adventure of the day! After returning from the laundry room downstairs because my clothes weren't done washing in time, I looked up above my closet and noticed something out of the ordinary. Upon closer inspection I discovered that it was the largest spider I have ever encountered. Not wanting to let it out of my sight I decide to kill it with my shoe. Unfortunately, it was ABOVE my closet. I dragged my chair over to the closet, stacked some books on top of the chair (because I still wasn't tall enough), and smashed it with my shoe. Terrifying experience, but necessary to kill it because it was in our room!!! Then I returned to the laundry room to deal with the washing machine that never wants to give me my clothes. After banging on the machine, I got the laundry card scanner to finally work, and so I could get my clothes. What elese will the day bring? I have no idea. But I've already dealt with spiders and laundry machines, so bring it!

Valle Verzasca

Valle Verzasca is one of the most beautiful places on the earth. Here are some pictures from my day trip during orientation!

 

 The rock just below the bridge is what we jumped off of for initiation! It was very high, and we jumped into freezing cold water! The bridge can be seen in the upper left part of the Frankin College Switzerland logo.

A Busy Saturday

    
Good morning everyone! :)

The title of this post is sort of boring, but it most accurately describes the type of day I had yesterday. My roommate, Julia, and I woke up at 6:45 to catch a train to Ponte Tresa to go to the Saturday market. Unfortunately we could not find the market after walking around for a couple of hours so we took the next train to Lugano. However we did learn how to use the FLP train! In Lugano we purchased some necessary rain gear, and picked up Julia's friend who was visiting from Sion. I spent that evening having dinner with a couple of friends out on the lawn by their rooms. It was a gorgeous candlelit dinner where we watched the stars and sipped on some wine. After a day of constant walking it was refreshing to finally get to rest and enjoy the company of my friends.

Next Saturday I am going to the Ponte Tresa market with my Italian class, so at least I will finally be able to take advantage of the cheap prices in Italy! Have a good day everyone!

It's About Time

      Hey everyone! I've been in Switzerland for about three weeks now, so I figured it was time to start a blog. I absolutely love living in Lugano. The people at this college are truly wonderful, and I'm glad that I found a college where I fit in perfectly. Tomorrow I will experience a benefit of living five minutes from Italy, as I will be going to Ponte Tresa to buy groceries! I feel blessed to be given the opportunity to study at Franklin, and to live in Switzerland!
      Living so far away from home has been difficult, especially since the time change is nine hours. Skype and Facebook have been useful when the WiFi cooperates. It's nice to see my friends, family, and my dog!
      I've gotten a lot of requests to talk about the classes I'm taking so here I go:
      I start the week of with Art History 102 with a professor from France. This class is very interesting and speaks for itself, luckily there isn't too much homework! Next I have Spanish 300 which is a great class where we talk (in Spanish) about nearly everyt topic you could imagine. Then I have my freshman seminar class, Communications 199. This class deals with how technology is changing/ forming our relationships with other people, in positive and negative ways. These three classes are on Mondays and Thursdays. My other class schedule (Tuesday and Friday) consists of two classes: International Relations and Italian both at the 100 introductory level. Yes, I am crazy for taking Spanish and Italian, and yes they are very similar and confusing (especially when the two classes are in the same room!). International Relations is a fascinating subject with more homework than I could ever imagine having for one class, but it's worth it! Italian is great, and after three classes and some Rosetta Stone I am feeling slightly more confident about talking to local Swiss-Italians in their first language.


      If you have anything you would like me to specifically talk about, write me a message on Facebook and I'll do my best to write about it! Thank you!! :)