So I was on vacation with my host family in Jesolo, Venice.

We departed at 1.45am on Sunday morning. Yes, 1.45am. I set my alarm to 1.15am so I could get ready and brush my teeth and freshen up and all, but I went to sleep at around 12.45am so I put my alarm on snooze accidentally and I woke up with Joel knocking on my door asking me to get in the car. Obviously I jumped, and I just packed my toothbrush and all without brushing my teeth, and I didn't even really get to double check what I remembered and what I forgot. I kinda just slept the whole 8 hours of car ride there.

Basically all I did there was just sunbathing. We arrived at around 9am or so, and we had a little breakfast, then Julia, Joel and I went to the pool although our rooms were not ready yet. Played around in the water for a bit and then we got up and just laid under the sun. I never needed any towel to dry off whenever I get out of the water. I just lay under the sun and let nature take over. Went to the beach and then we had take-away pizza nearby the hotel for lunch. We just stayed there until around 5.30pm and Julia and I went back to shower and get ready for dinner.

The thing about the beach in Jesolo, is that it is SO MUCH different than what we have in Malaysia. I mean, at around 2pm to 3pm was the most crowded time, and what would you get if you were in Malaysia? Everyone hiding in their hotel rooms, sleeping or just enjoying the shade. And the beach, holy cow, the BEACH. You couldn't really see how far the beach goes, because it's all full of beach chairs and umbrellas.

For 6 of our 7 dinners there, we had it at the same restaurant, which was the hotel restaurant. Not complaining here, just so you know. The food is absolutely DELICIOUS and they had this awesome pizza called Americana which was Magheritta pizza with Fries and toppings. Plus, they have a free salad buffet, one of the food that I've grown to love since being here. Although the dressing is Italian, but eating fresh veggies, oooooooh, I can't believe how much I love eating veggies now.

Brilliant thing that happened to me that I can't control. Big ol' red aunt visited me during my 3rd day in Jesolo.

On Wednesday, I went to Venice city alone with the Marco Polo tour ship. It cost me 36euro for the boat ride to Burano, Murano and Venice City, with a short visit at the Glass Factory in Murano and lunch on boat. It was also a "guided" tour, where there was someone on board explaining about the islands and all, but the guide was doing it in 3 languages, and the speaker wasn't clear at all, so I had no idea what language was she speaking, I also kinda fell asleep on board cause I was so nervous the night before for spending the whole day alone and couldn't sleep. Venice city is CROWDED like bees in a beehive, or you could say it was packed like sardines. The weather was warm. Funny thing: I think that the weather in Malaysia is much more warmer, but the sunlight here actually stings your skin and burns it, so making it harder to stay long under the sun. I just found out about Venice City not having any cars at all when I arrived there. There wasn't any roads for cars, only rivers for Gondolas and alleys for people.

Sorry I am super duper pooped right now. I spent the whole of last night at Basel train station cause I didn't wanna pay for the ticket which costs 20fr from Hasle, so Pei San and I took the midnight train there so we don't have to pay for anything. We didn't get much sleep as it was freezing and there were no proper seats. The waiting room closes at 3am. One thing I really dislike about here is that they close everything and leaves you stranded and helpless. They even close the toilets so if you gotta go, you just gotta keep it in. Germany-Malaysians are here and we're gonna spend the whole week traveling (well, not for us cause we're just visiting places we've already been).

UPDATED

Wednesday night after dinner, we rented bikes so we could travel further down the street to shop. They close off the streets at night for pedestrians so the whole street was full of people, and occasionally with their dogs, some big some small, some even smaller than the average teddy bear size. I wonder why these people even DARE to let those miniature dogs walk on the street. I mean, there are so many cyclists around, and a cyclist would just accidentally run over the "dog" and not notice about it. I mean, that dog is even smaller than my MacBook. I AM NOT JOKING. It's length, I mean. If it were flatter than my MacBook, then I'm gonna start to wonder if I'm in the correct planet. I went to bed early because I was entirely worn out from walking around, lost, in Venice City.

Thursday was normal, nothing special, lay under the sun and bake away. Friday night, however, we had dinner at a different restaurant. I don't know if it's any better, but the pizza was just as delicious. I went to search for a T-Shirt for my brother. A troll face T-Shirt. Bro, if you're reading this, I want you to wear it out in public. I don't care if you wear it to your "Mahjong" place or in Saxon. WEAR IT OUT. *a-hem* Back to topic, every shop I asked were selling the same price. Then I came into a shop, where I heard a familiar language. MANDRIN! These are people from China. So, naturally, I asked them the price of the t-shirt in Mandrin. The lady answered me, which was the same price as the other shops, but then added another sentence behind. “一样中国人，给你便宜一点啦！”. I tried to hide the astonished look on my face, but sometimes I'm not a good expression hider. Although it's just 1 euro cheaper, but 1 euro = RM4. I'll take it. I told my host family about it, they thought it was amusing. Well, it IS amusing. Who would've thought I would be given a discounted price because I was Asian in Europe?

Saturday was our last day in Jesolo. We checked out early in the morning, right after breakfast, and spent the day at the beach again. I had a tattoo made for 5 euro. At evening, we went up to the rooftop pool shower to shower. I know, in public. Of course, we were wearing our swimsuits and all, but I still think it's weird. Nobody saw us, I guess, because the shower is located a flight of stairs down the pool. We had our last dinner at the same restaurant we ate all week, and then we went home. We reached back home in Hasle at around 3.30am or so. I slept the whole way there, but I didn't get a blink of sleep the whole way back.

And something weird, I actually get the feeling of "home sweet home" when I got back.

Imagine how strong the feeling would be when I actually return back to Sri Petaling, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia?

Oh the wonders of my mind.

The last week of school.

Okay so on Monday, I finally had to perform the violin. I played Leehom's Song (Of course) 落叶归根 :) I chose a Chinese song because IF I play some wrong notes, no one would actually know. But my performance sucked anyway. I've never had SO MANY out of tune notes EVER when I performed. I was practically shaking. Glad that's over, though.

On Tuesday, we had no school. There was some kind of sports event for all the school in Kanton Luzern, which took place in Schüpfheim. So, basically all of the students from the Kanti had to help out today and we have no school. There was football, basketball, volleyball and unihockey. I was assigned to selling hot-dogs. My shift was from 1pm to 3pm, but by the time it was my shift, the hot-dogs were all sold out. So, I didn't have to do anything AT ALL. Went to Migros before it ends and bought some food for Isaac's party later with Julie.

Isaac's party.



It was kinda like a farewell party for him and the other exchange students. It was in Wolhusen, some where up some hill and we had a small BBQ. The party was fun, and we were all goofing off. Marcos and I kept "exchanging" racist jokes. Him telling me Asian racists jokes and me telling him Black racists jokes. I kinda just used the Indian jokes I heard last year in school and just changed them to black :\ We went home with the 10.30pm bus (CAUSE THE STINKING RAILWAY WAS UNDER MAINTENANCE AND I HAVE TO TAKE THE BUS WHICH IS ALWAYS LATE FOR THE WHOLE SUMMER) tired and worn out.

Wednesday was practically the last day for Isaac, Gabriel and Marcos. Gabriel and Isaac skipped Music cause they didn't wanna perform. After Biology, Isaac and I walked to the bahnhof to meet Marcos cause he went home after lunch cause he wasn't feeling well. Yeah, they were kinda emotional about although they hated the school, it's already their last day there and all. And with packing and leaving, boy, I didn't know guys could be so emotional.

Thursday we went to Basel for our class trip. The funny thing is that the whole school are going on the class trip, to different places for each class. Karin arranged everything and we had a whole section in the train reserved, just for Kantonsschule Schüpfheim 3Ka :D We went for "Foxtrail" in Basel, kind of like a scavenger hunt around the whole Basel. My group was Anja, Martina, Megi and I. We kinda took things slowly. We didn't intend to finish the whole thing, so we took our time and walked around and sit around. We met a Singaporean lady, though. She was SO typical Singaporean. She was using Lahs and Ahs and Lehs while speaking English with us, and her Singlish accent is so strong, the girls couldn't understand what she was talking at first. And she was there "sharing" her story of Jesus and all. Sorry, I'm not Christian so I thought the whole talk she gave was baloney. Megi is Hindu as well so we both just kinda kept rolling our eyes. We met up with the rest of the group at the train station and then went for a little ice-cream, which I didn't eat.

The Klassenfest was on Thursday as well, in a small house in Entlebuch. They rented the house just for the party. The party was AWESOME. We kinda just jumped around and danced to the music, singing out the lyrics at the top of our lungs. We were acting like we're drunk, but we're not. There was also a game that I got pulled into. Everyone stands in a circle and passing kisses on the cheek. It was weird and awkward for me, but hey, I guess this is one of the culture shocks for me. Yeah I kinda updated this on another post, so I'm gonna just leave it here :)

I've been putting this off for almost a month! Gotta get back to recalling what happened a month ago.

24th June (Sunday) I was home alone. The family went for a mountain bike tour in Wolhusen, which I am not capable of doing, so I just stayed home and I worked on my presentation on Malaysia for Geography class.

25th June, I did my presentation on Malaysia in school. Nothing much special. I showed the class the video I made and I guess that's it.

26th June. AFS organized a trip to the Bundeshaus in Bern for us. Well, all of us Malaysians except Pei San went, and there were altogether 50 AFS exchange students participating. That was the maximum number of students allowed, so we had to send in our participation form early as it's "First come first serve" (I guess this is the term for it?) And so yeah, we got to know a bit of the politics of Switzerland, which is much different from Malaysia, I guess, I'm not sure either because I forgot about the parliament facts right after SPM Sejarah. We also visited the Kanton Bundeshaus, which is in charge of the Kantons and it is much smaller, plus the security ain't so strict either. We had to go through a metal detector gate and we were not allowed to bring cameras or our bags into the Bundeshaus. We had sandwiches for lunch in the Kanton Bundeshaus, didn't fill our empty stomachs much but it keeps it from growling like a lion. After the whole trip we stayed around in Bern and hung out a bit. The weather was really shitty so we couldn't really have a picnic or anything.

 

The next day, I was supposed to perform the violin in Music class. BUT, it turns out that EVERY SINGLE TIME the class is canceled, I'm not informed. And that just sucks really really bad. Julie and I went to Luzern to shop after school. The sales, oh god, the SALES. There was a dress that I almost bought during my third week here. It was 39.90fr and that time I was spending money like crazy. I SAW IT FOR JUST 10FR NOW. But I didn't buy, cause now I'm watching over the money like crazy. We had dinner in an Italian restaurant which the price was quite reasonable.

On Friday, Vera from Indonesia invited me to go to Luzern to a club. I didn't want to go alone so I dragged Shu Chien, KC and Jun Khee along. Vera was going back to Indonesia in a week and I've not been able to show up every time she asks me out, so I guess I should go now. Funny thing. We met Vanessa from California and another girl from Austria, but they were both living in the Italian part of Switzerland.

Shu Chien, KC and Jun Khee bought beers from Coop and they drank it before entering the club. Shu Chien wasn't allowed to go into the club because the security thinks she was drunk. The guys went in and Shu Chien and I ended up eating fries at a nearby Kebab shop. 2 tourists from China sat next to us and we chat a bit, seeing our "own-skin" people, we really just couldn't stop the urge to ask where are they from. KC and Jun Khee came out early cause they said it was boring inside, and we took the last train back to my house. They spent the night over here.

After breakfast the next day, we went to the Schwimmbad in Schüpfheim and just goof around, lying under the sun and swimming a while till almost 2pm. We walked there from my house and it took us 1 hour. ONE HOUR to walk to the swimming pool. There were moments I REALLY WANT TO FORGET.

We had Kebab for lunch and took the train to Luzern, where we practically did nothing but sit next to the lake and waste time. The Luzerner Fest was that day but we had no idea what should we do. After sending Shu Chien to her train, we 3 just sat at the train station and waited till it's 7pm. The weather was hot and the flies, OH EMM GEE THE FLIES were buzzing here and there.

19th of June was the sports day in my school. That was the most unique sports day I've ever had in my life.

Well for one thing, we didn't do track and field. And we also didn't compete against houses. We were arranged into different groups by the school and then we compete in football, volleyball and basketball with the other groups. And before that we have to swim and jog.

What's worse is that I was having the big aunty visiting me.

I was assigned to group B4. So we had to swim. We had to swim for 100m and then get up and straight away jog a big round outside the pool. Everyone had to jog wet. After that we started with football, basketball and volleyball. We had to run to 3 places to play : the school, the swimming pool and the sports hall. It was so tiring, and hot, and sunny. We ended around 3pm and then I cycled back home. I missed the train in the morning because of some reasons, so I had to cycle to the swimming pool. I don't know who won the sports day, or whether is there even a winner. I was too tired to think.

Friday was the Maturafeier. It's kind of like the graduation, combined with commencements. Did you know it takes only 1 week to grade their Graduation exams? Whereby it takes almost 3 months in Malaysia? And if you pass the exams, you graduate, but if you don't, you have to repeat the 1 whole year of school. In the morning in school, the graduating class came back for, like, our "Testimonial Day" performances. They prepared videos, slideshows and performances for us. This year their theme was Olympics, so the performances they put up was duel between students from the graduating class and the teachers, like handstands, math quiz, books-lifting, floor cleaning and so on. At night was the ceremony and I had to sing in the choir for the Maturafeier. It was kind of boring for me cause I didn't really understand what was going on. After that I had to work during the after party in cups washing. Bleh not difficult but it was boring. The party later went on to Hotel Adler, where I had a bit too much to drink and it gave me a bit of a headache. I had to cycle home at 3am, when I was supposed to work at the bar serving drinks. They said they could handle it, so I went home and sleep. I had a bit difficulty in cycling, because there were no street lamps and the dynamo light on the bike was a bit cacat. It wasn't as scary as it would be if I were to cycle home in Malaysia.

Going off to Jesolo, Venice, Italy later at midnight. I'm just excited for the pizza and pasta and ice-cream :)

This shouldn't be up yet cause I haven't updated about the past few weeks... But I really can't procrastinate this..

We had our class party yesterday till this morning. It started out really high and crazy, but when the clock strikes at midnight, almost everyone was sitting outside crying.

Isaac, Gabriel and Marcos are going back to their home countries, and Julie is going back to Kanton Fribourg.

It's just been 4 months I've met them, but they've helped me out so much throughout my first few months in the school. Like telling me what to expect in class, what to keep an eye on, and explaining the forever confusing language, German, to me.

And the times we spent together "learning" in the Glasraum during English, German and French class, the boys talking about things I would never want to know... I really can't believe Marcos and Gabriel are already on the flight home. Isaac is leaving on the 11th but I won't be around to send him off to the airport.

Although Julie is still in Switzerland, I'm gonna miss her a lot. I always go to the Mensa (Cafeteria) with her and when everyone around us are speaking Swiss German, we turn to each other and start speaking in our strongly accented German (hers being French and mine being Asian).

Today was the last day of school before summer holidays, and we had some kind of assembly in the school (we don't have a hall, so we just sit on the stairs facing our Director) and they showed some photos and videos of the events happened throughout the year. Turns out that they have Winter Sports Day here and I'm gonna miss it next year because I'm going home before it starts. Marcos and Gabriel are flying home today early in the morning so they couldn't attend this last day. Isaac went to send them off so he wasn't here as well. Almost the end of the assembly, the class teachers had to come out and say who is leaving the school this year. Of course our class teacher came out and said that the boys have already left and Julie will be leaving after the school ends, and we all got emotional again.

I thought I would be jumping in joy when school ends and summer holidays starts... But now I'm in the pits.

I still can't believe I won't be seeing them next year in class anymore. And honestly speaking I don't think there would be any possibilities that the 5 of us will meet together again..