Winter und Weihnachten

I will apologize beforehand for not posting anything for the past two months. To be honest I COMPLETELY forgot I even had a blog but (hopefully) I'll keep this up more often.

I'll start by saying the November-December were not the easiest months of my exchange. The weather has gotten colder, the days have become shorter, and a variety of other frustrations have been lingering in the air as well. I'm dealing with everything the best I can, which is really the only this I can do. Anyways, the colder months have not stopped me from seeing more of this beautiful country. At the end of November, all the Rotary exchange students in Switzerland (which was about 111 students) went to Zermatt in Canton Valais to see the Matterhorn, one of Europe's most famous mountains. We took a beautiful gondola ride to the top of the "small" Matterhorn and got an amazing view of the mountain range. I have to admit that the air all the way at the top of the mountain made it really hard to breath and I almost passed out. After drinking some water and sitting down for a bit I was good to go!

I current;ly have 2 weeks off from school because of Weihnachtsferien (Christmas vacation) and spent all of last week in Canton Graubünden skiing with my wonderful host family. I was a little nervous at first because the last time I was skiing was back in 2007 but once you get the hang of it there's no stopping you. :) My host mom even compared me to Olympian Brody Miller because I was "so fast" (I love her sense of humor). I even had to opportunity to ski with a few classmates of mine that just so happen to be skiing at the same location. To put it simply, I HAD A BLAST. Skiing in the Alps is so far my #1 highlight of being an exchange student in Switzerland. You haven't lived until you've skied here, you just haven't. The conditions were perfect, the scenery was beautiful... what else could you ask for? I soaked it all in as best as I could and had the time of my life.

                          Frohe Weihnachten und ein gutes neues Jahr aus der Schweiz!
                         Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from Switzerland!