a nice run in the morning, banana toast for breakfast, sandwich with ham, cheese and tomato for lunch, then just hanging around and listening to music, skyping with family and friends... then i had roast potatoes and other yummy things for dinner, apple and blackberry pie for dessert and i played snakes and ladders with my host sister: a perfect sunday :)

i'm already here for a month, and i can say: it was the right decision to go to england. :) 

in 'english, england and the english way of life' we started on playing traditional english pub games today. we shoved ha'penny this afternoon:

the game is all about shoving (pushing) a half-penny on a board in a way that the ha'penny lies between two lines. more information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shove_ha'penny

that was quite fun! 

have a nice weekend!! 

this morning i discovered something on my run: high rocks (google it if you want to learn more). i went there again in the evening with friends and i could take some nice photos:

this is yesterday's post cause the internet didn't work:

yesterday morning, it rained. but i have a very cool umbrella so that was no problem:

fortunately the weather changed in the afternoon, and i got this huuuuge parcel of swiss chocolate :D :D 

this morning when i went to school, i missed switzerland. really. i don't know why exactly today, it wasn't even raining, only cloudy, but when i was sitting there at the bus stop, waiting for the damn late bus, i really thought about how nice it would be to be in switzerland and take my bike to school and eat nice bread for lunch. but then my ipod saved me: the shuffle mode set a great, motivating, cheering-up song and all the thoughts about switzerland were gone. 

so i spent a happy day, writing my health and social care report in the breaks, and i got really far, i'm so glad. when i came home, we were having sausages, beans, a fried egg and mushrooms for dinner and it was so nice! i really like the beans. :)

sorry for this contextless post, i am tired. 

looooooads of homework (just done two hours of maths, for wednesday my next photography research has do be done and photographs have to be taken, and in health and social care a ten to twenty pages report has to be written for next week- i didn't start on any of that, not because i am lazy, just because i got this all today). at least i got a wonderful postcard, with a typewriter on it and typewritten, of course. :D

this evening i played english monopoly for the very first time. i think my host sis is a cheater, i did not play that bad ;D

IT'S RAINING- and it will rain for the whole next week. england, finally how i expected it to be :D in the morning i went for my run, in the middle it started raining. now i am at home with chocolate from switzerland and a huge sweater just enjoying my comfortable bed. i wish you a happy sunday afternoon!

today i had to go to school in the morning because there was an open day and the internationals had to serve biscuits and coffee or tea to the visitors and staff (i guess i said about 500 times 'do you want a biscuit?'- this question is still going around in my head).

after school i went to tonbridge castle with some friends, a really nice place, take a look at the photos:

i passed my maths test!! and i noticed that some people are permanently listening to music during the lessons.. it's allowed!

mr. h. has his own flagpole at school and he takes the flag of every exchange student's home country up for one week... this week it was the swiss flag!

it get's cold here! i wore two sweaters and i was still not warm.

i got two letters today and one parcel :D makes me even happier than i already am. 

the photography teacher was happy with my work and the maths test didn't went that bad, i could do 18 out of 20 questions. in english, a boy wasn't sitting properly on his chair and after mr.h. told him like ten times he should sit straight- the boy had to stand on one leg and with two heavy folders in his hands... after a minute he dropped one folder :D 

after school it took me one and a half hour to go home, because of an accident on the A21 -> traffic.

when i finally arrived at home, we ate dinner (spaghetti and salad) and after dinner i played snakes and ladders with my 9-year-old host sister. after we played, she showed me about 10 different hairstyles for me and it was so funny... she did plaits and buns with my hair in ways i've never seen before! :)

today was a quite boring day. i had to go to school at 8:30 and then i had one lesson, then i had to wait 3 hours for the next lesson to start and then i had to wait for another hour for the last lesson... i just listened to music, but it was sooo boring! 

tomorrow i have to write a maths test, because there are too many people in the class and the teacher has to kick some students out of the course. i hope it won't be me... in photography we have to hand in our sketchbooks tomorrow that the teacher can take a look at the work we've done so far, he might even mark it... heelp! 

my first fire alarm: survived! they did a fire alarm for practice at school and we all had leave the building, five minutes later we had to go in again... 

we've had maths and we were discussing square roots of prime numbers. it was quite easy and we had to do some exercises. the teacher asked for someone to do one of the exercises at the board, nobody wanted to do it, so i volunteered. i wrote everything down and she said it was right but then she wanted me to explain how i did it. i was a little panicking because i understand the terms but i hardly know how to use them... so i was standing there, stuttering, but fortunately she helped me out, then i sat down and the class started to applaud, i was so embarrassed! 

another funny thing in maths: she always asks us 'are you happy about that?' everyone just says yes, and then she says something like 'i really want to help you but you have to tell me if you don't understand what i've done!' nobody answers even though half of the class doesn't understand it. so today she gave us cards (red, orange, green) and we have to set the color... it worked! but i felt like being at primary school, you have to know that in the course are up to 17 year old people and when they are holding this cards in the air it looks funny :D

have a nice evening!!

today i met all the other exchange students of the area around tubridge wells at sue's place. sue is the local coordinator and responsible for all the internationals. we had cake and she explained some things to us (for example that we are allowed to travel up to 30 miles around tunbridge wells, including hastings, brighton and london without informing anyone expect our host parents) and she asked us if everything is ok. almost all of the 15 students have a cool family, sue was very glad to hear that. 

i wish you all a good start into the new week (i don't even know if i can say that in english, sounds strange, but you all know what i mean)

weekend! i met an other international student and we took some photos together... 

i love crumpets! today in mr. h.'s lesson we could eat butter crumpets- it was so nice! (for those of you who don't know what a crumpet is; wikipedia says: 'Crumpets are generally circular roughly 7 cm in diameter and roughly 2 cm thick. Their shape comes from being restrained in the pan/griddle by a shallow ring. They have a characteristic flat top with many small pores and a chewy and spongy texture.'

in the evening, i went for my run. i came back and wanted to shower. i waited patiently for the warm water coming (it always takes about a minute). and i waited, and waited... and i started feeling a bit cold. the shampoo took ages to get out of my hair. i asked my host parents if they run out of warm water often... they explained to me that they have only warm water in the morning and during the day for dishwashers, in the evening there is sometimes no warm water anymore. hahahaha :D 

sunny england! in the afternoon i went to a park (photos) in tunbridge wells to enjoy the sun with two friends and then i went to town to buy trainers :D so i went for a run, the shoes are perfect and i feel good!

nothing interesting happened today, i only got loooaaads of homework. in photography, we're now working on focus, and i found a picture i took a while ago which i can use for my sketchbook: 

it started raining this moment. the third time since i am in england! 

hug to friends and family! 

i had a good day. in photography we've been working on light and how to manipulate light when taking photos, and we had to do two pages about that in our sketchbooks as homework, and it took me about two hours to do it, so a lot of homework (see picture). health and social care was nice, we discussed makaton which offers a way to communicate through gestures, pictures and symbols for autistic people. in maths we had statistics, and i never had that before so the first thing to do was to understand the terms, but as soon as i understood them it wasn't so hard anymore. 

i took the wrong bus to go home so it took me an hour but finally at home i got cauliflower cheese for dinner and i really liked it! 

hope you are all fine!

this might have been my first totally normal day here in england: i got up (you don't care about me cleaning my teeth and so on so i won't write this down), i ate breakfast. toast. then i went to the shop to buy some lunch (an apple, something looking like ciabatta but definitely not tasting like one, mini-babybel and water because i forgot my bottle at home). the bus came 15 minutes too late, but i was still on time. i had english, we talked about the guy who invented the toilet, i don't know why we talked about that. lunch. then i was supposed to have photography but the lesson was moved- moved to the morning, but 14 people out of 16 in the photography class didn't know about that. health and social care, really interesting, we're discussing the four main types of communication (verbal, non-verbal, special and written communication). then i had maths. i went home, the bus came too late. pasta for dinner. kind of pilates (i don't want to get elephanty)... i'm going to bed soon.

actually the plan for today was going to hastings. while driving to the train station we wanted to go to the petrol station. we stopped to go right, the car behind us didn't stop. craaaash. we're all fine but it was kind of a shock! luckily the police was passing by on the opposite side of the road, so it didn't take long and we could go home. car made a weird noise and it has to be repared, as you can see on the photo. so no hastings... but we went to the park and my host sister and me played tennis :) 

i've been to the 'town' today, bit of shopping and hanging around with the other exchange students, was fun! we found a sweet shop - paradise! 

sweet shop (photo unfortunately not taken by me but from the internet)

flowers!

street musicians playing songs by mumford and sons

today i can finally tell you my proper name mr. h. gave me: amazen. mazen from my surname and the a from the word amazing, so i'm called like the short form of amazing. i'm happy i got a nice name and not one like cheater or something. he told me he was thinking of giving me the name toblerone, because he thinks the only thing we swiss people eat is toblerone, but then he decided not to do so. 

we went to leigh this afternoon with mr. h.. leigh is a typical english village not far from tunbridge wells. we inspected the church and the churchyard and it was very nice to see that, the church is very old and nicely built. then we walked through the tiny village and mr. h. could tell us loads of things about the history and i found it very interesting. 

now i'm glad the weekend arrived. i went to the library and i have a card now so i borrowed some books. funny story, i wanted to lend a henning mankell book, and they asked me if i was 18 because it's violent. i told the guy that i'm not 18 but that i read books of henning mankell before, so he agreed to give me the book. for those of you who don't know henning mankell, he is a swedish crime author and some of his books are kind of violent, but i never heard that there are age limits on books!

have a nice evening! 

PHOTOS :)

i was at school today for one hour of photography, was cool... i changed my subject history to health and social care, history was kind of boring and i want to do things i really like. then i walked to the bus station and i saw this sign: 

i was just laughing :D i've noticed that the population of tonbridge (where i go to school) is very old but i've never seen a sign like this before! hahaha. 

i almost forgot: i haven't got my proper name yet (as i told mr. h. gives us names)... he said he has to think about it a little longer. keep you posted.

another day at hugh christie

school bus

today i went to school with the school bus. school started today for all the year seven students, and year seven is the first year at secondary school so there were crying mums at every bus stop letting their child take the school bus for the very first time... was really funny. some might say sweet. year seven students have to wear school uniform, everyone but sixth formers have to. i'm glad i'm a sixth former (you haven't seen those skirts i'd look really creepy!)... mr. h. told us loads of things about britain. and we got our time tables! i have 18 lessons a week but lessons last an hour so it's like 24 lessons of 45 minutes in switzerland. (i used to have 34 lessons in switzerland so it's still better) :D as you can see on the photograph below, i have to go to school on tuesday only in the afternoon and on thursday only for one hour of photography... efl (teached by mr. h.) means english for foreign language or something like that, just that nobody's going to ask. friday afternoon will always be fun stuff like drinking tea, getting to know traditional english pub games, cream tea... and so on. 

my excuses for the bad photograph...

so that's it for today... hug/kisses from england to whom it may concern 

some photos of london