Sales Tax, Making Friends, and Conversions

I love this country!!!

To start off this post, the three weeks that I have been in this country so far, I have absolutely loved it.  There are so many reasons.  The landscape is absolutely wonderful, and just in the short time that I have been with my host family and with the things that they've shown me, I am excited to see what the next year has in store for me.  Another thing that is pretty small, but I think is amazing is the fact that in stores, THE LISTED PRICE INCLUDES THE SALES TAX (hint, hint, USA, you need to start doing this).  It is absolutely wonderful that I can look at the price tag and know that is the exact price that I am going to pay for the product, not a single Rappen (penny) more.

One thing that I have been able to do while I am here is go swimming.  Twice now, I have gone with my host brother Michael to a mountain stream/river where there are deeper pools and we can swim in the water and jump from small "cliffs" into the deeper water.  Another thing that I did just today was going with a bunch of my rotary friends into part of Zurich where there is a swimming area on a river.    There is a bridge that spans the river, and you are able to climb under the bridge and jump from it into the water, about 30-ish feet below.  I did not know we would be going today until I arrived at school, so I did not have my swim suit, but next week we plan on going again so I can bring my swim suit and swim with the rest of my friends.  While I did not swim today, I did get a bunch of pictures with my friends and some really cool slow motion videos of my friends jumping from the bridge.  Even though I was in my cloths, I decided to climb under the bridge with my phone to take the videos, which was worth the risk because the videos are a whole lot nicer.

Photos from under the bridge.

Some photos taken mid jump.

I really loved how the slow motion jumps from the bridge turned out, and I have quite a few of them, however for some reason I cannot figure out how to include them in this post.  I'll keep working on it in the next few days and post them separately when I can.

One thing about being an exchange student, at least I think, is that making friends tends to be, in a way, easier than it might be in your home country.  While it can be a little bit awkward because of the language barrier, most of the time your peers are very understanding and want to get to know you because you are different.  You are a foreigner living with them for an entire year, and I think they want to get to know you.  This is something that I have thought about because of my experience with all the exchange students who have stayed in my town along with being an exchange student myself.  

I currently have two groups of friends: I have my friends from my language class who are other Rotary exchange students, and I have my Swiss friends who I have met that go to my school.  The second group I don't know quite as well because I have not started Swiss school yet, however after this last upcoming week of German class, I will start school and get to know them a lot more.  Most of them I know from a party that my host sister, Sarina, had before she left for Canada (by the way, she left Wednesday morning on her exchange.  I'll put a picture from the morning at the end of the post).  Even though I only saw them for about 4 hours, I absolutely love them!  Some want to hang out this upcoming week and see a movie or something so we can get to know each other.  I think that I'm going to like starting school because I will go already having friends that can help me and that I am comfortable talking and hanging out with.  

The last thing I want to write about is converting measurements.  In the good ol' US-of-A, we use the Imperial system for units and measurements, instead of the metric system like every other country.  This is not so bad, until you are living abroad for a year (or if you are an international scientist, which I am not).  It can be very bothersome to have to convert things from feet to meters, from inches to centimeters, from miles to kilometers, and worst of all, from Fahrenheit to Celsius.  I imagine that in the next few months I will get used to it, but to be honest, another thing that the United States should change (along with listing the sales tax) is to use the metric system.  While it would be a very large task to completely switch, and might take some time, it would probably be worth it because then we would have the same system as everyone else, and unit conversions within the metric system are a million times easier.  You just divide by 10.  

That will be all for my weekly post, however there are a few more things that you can expect from me before the week ends.  The first are the slow-mo videos that I took today.  The second are pictures (and maybe videos) from a street parade that I am going to tomorrow (Saturday, August 28th).  I am going with almost all my friends from language class for, and I think it will be a ton of fun.  There will be musicians, dancing, and a whole lot more.  I also plan on styling up my hair, which is something I normally don't do.  Pictures from this I hope to post either the night of, or the day after the parade, so look out for those.  

A pic with my host sister Sarina the morning she left for Canada.

Today we took photos during lunch hour with our country flags.  The big group pictures I will post when I have them, but I do have the picture that I took with the other two students from the USA on the east side of Switzerland (in the entire country, there are over 30 from the United States, but there are only 3 of us on the east side).

As always, please ask questions!  Anything you want pictures of?  Something you want to know more about?  Drop a comment on the post or send me an email at ethankiffmeyer@gmail.com and I'll try and get back to you!

Bis Bald,

-Kiffy