Breakfast in a Swiss households consists of muesli and bread and butter. I tried a jam made of maribelle fruits I think, which pretty much tastes like honey (it’s delicious). Renat also said she has her own honeybees, although I’m not sure where they are, but she has honey from them too. Our schedule of classes for the week goes as follows:
Monday – 10h45-12h00 Independent Study Project discussion in
Tues/Thurs – 9h00-12h00 Seminar/Lecture in
Wednesday – Off, but we are supposed to use the time to study and do research
Friday – 9h00-12h00 Field Study Seminar discussion
Our first discussion on Monday was even more orientation stuff, where Earl, the Academic Director, talked about everything we’ll be doing this semester, et alors, it was a little bit intimidating. So far the workload is kind of intense, as we received a giant 3-inch thicket packet of photocopied readings for the semester, and we read one giant packet from the entire thing a week. I placed into the Advanced French class (go me!), and there are only 5 of us in the class, with people also divided into the beginner and faux-beginner (they know a little but not much) classes. I really like my French class – the teacher is very energetic and nice, and since we’re so small we’re always engaged and always asking questions. It’s pretty much a lot of vocab and little corrections she makes when we speak, so it’ll be hard to remember those little things but at least we can communicate pretty well. I have a lot of trouble understanding people, although it helps that Renat speaks mostly in French to me.
Tuesday was our first real day of lecture, and it’s interesting finally getting to the meat of what we’re studying, which ranges from environmental studies and public health to international affairs, politics, and economics. I’m super excited since everything is right up my alley, and don’t really know where to start. I’m interested in everything, which is really good, but also kind of sad because I’ll have to narrow my focus a lot for my paper, as liberal arts are so broad and vague J Not everyone here has a major like mine, in fact there are a few Bio/English majors who are pretty lost in our discussion, and I feel kind of bad (but at the same time I’ll admit that it’s a little bit of an ego boost that I know what’s going on and can answer questions). That night we had traditional Swiss food, which consisted of un tomme, basically a small round of cheese with sesame seeds sprinkled on top that’s heated up so when you cut into it it pretty much oozes cheese; rôsti, basically the Swiss version of hash browns, and I also tried turnips for the first time (and decided I didn’t like them). Otherwise everything else was pretty much delicious.
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