Diary of an Exchange Student: Made it to Switzerland :)

Hello!!
Well after 11ish hours of travel, I have arrived in Suisse, and it is even more beautiful than the pictures (of course ;) )!
My family is wonderful; they have all been really nice and welcoming. My host dad speaks English and Julian my host brother speaks English- but no one else in the family does, so I've been using the thumbs up sign and smiling a lot haha. Most of the time I don't really know what's happening, but it's still been lots of fun. I also have a host sister Sophie who is 23, and a host brother Simmon who is 11. Sophie and Julian have been gone all week to Spain, so it's just been Simmon, me and my host parents, Jacques and Francine. Simmon has been helping me with my French a lot; whenever we go swimming I'll point to things and he'll tell me how to say them in French. (He gets quite a kick out of my horrid pronunciation)

Ok since I've been here for almost a week (its hard to believe), here's a quick rundown of what I've been up to:

Ready to go!

Friday:
Goodbye Oklahoma!!
Left for Dullas at 11:48 am:

Melanie helping me get my bags down to 50 lbs each

Bye Grandma and Grandpa; I will miss you lots!!

Goodbye Dad, Mom, and Rachel; I will miss you tons!!

All the exchange students from America headed to Switzerland met up in Dullas

Saturday:
Arrived in Zurich at 8:05 am and met my host family for the first time. We drove around Zurich, and then headed to Sorens. I meet Julian and Sophie when we got to the house, and later that evening they took me to hang out with their friends in the village. Super busy day!

Simmon, Francine, Me, and Jacques at the airport

My new room

View from my window :D

My new backyard

Sunday:
My host family took me to the town of Gruyeres, and we toured the castle there. I also tried double creme with meringue and raspberries, absolutely AMAZING!! :) The town is really picturesque (although what part of Switzerland isn't?), it is frozen in the middle ages, so there's a lot of history there. I felt like I had been whisked away into Cinderella..... And guess what? Turns out they do have ice tea in Switzerland! It's not exactly like our sweet tea, but it's still pretty tasty.

Monday:

My host dad took Simmon and I with him to his hunting chalet outside of Charmey, which is about 30 min away.

Hunting Chalet. (Simmon's Grandpa)

In the 1800s this is where they would make cheese

Tuesday:

My host family and I went to the Ballenburg. Its this incredible "museum" that has actual houses from the 1500s- early 1900s from all over Switzerland set up historically over 60 acres. It was kind of like a Swiss Williamsburg. It's located outside of Interlocken.

I'm really glad my bed is bigger than this one :)

Wednesday:

On wednesday we went to a friend of the Ropraz's chalet in the mountains. When they told me we were going to a friend's house i the mountains I didn't know that meant we would be hiking up a mountain for 30 mins to get there lol. But the view was definitely worth all that cardio. For lunch we had "mountain macaroni" which is homeade over a fire. Than they put it into a big bowl in the middle of the table and you eat it with these hand carved spoons. It was very Swiss!