I've been here now for about three-ish days. I'm not sure whether to count my 17-hour sleep as a day or not...it's not like I saw much of Switzerland in that time! After my 17 hours of sleep, I wandered around the neighborhood a little bit. I didn't go too far, for fear of getting lost, but I did take some pictures to hopefully show best how truly beautiful this place is. I'm lucky I get to call this my home!
First some pictures of the house:
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| My bed and GIANT window |
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| My shelves and desk (no chair yet) |
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| The kitchen |
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| Dining room table |
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| Living room |
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| Patio table |
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| Love the view! |
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| Upper-level backyard (behind patio). There is a lower level backyard too, but I didn't really take any pictures of it. |
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| The front of the house! |
And now for a couple of pictures from my wandering:
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| Some cool looking houses |
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| This is what I get to see every day! :-) |
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| I just love it. |
Yesterday, Dorina (the other intern), and I explored downtown Winterthur. We walked around mostly but also stopped in a couple of shops. I meant to take pictures but didn't. Maybe next time--I do have a whole year! We spoke entirely in German, which was an odd feeling when I thought about it, because it's been so long since that happened, but it was great! I felt so rusty when I got here since I hadn't practiced my German much over the summer, but I seem to have fallen back into it rather quickly and nicely :-)
Today, Dorina and I went to church together. It was quite a large church but I enjoyed it. Everyone spoke Swiss German (which, if you haven't heard, is quite different than standard German), but luckily for me, there was a headset with an English translation! If there wasn't a headset, I probably would have understood less than 10%. Maybe once I listened I'd catch more, but it really is quite different than standard German. Some of the songs were in Swiss German, though, and I could understand them better when written, but spoken is always harder. I saw after the service that they also offer a translation in standard German, which maybe I'll try next week, if we go back to the same church :-)
Cool!
ReplyDeleteI never thought much about the different types of 'Germans' before!
I think I always assumed that Swiss would be different, etc, but wow, that's crazy!
Yeah, there are a dozen different dialects throughout Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. Switzerland's is definitely the one that is most different--some even argue that should be considered another language, not just a dialect!
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