goodbye 2012... i wish you all en guete rutsch!! my plan is to go to london with the other internationals to watch the fireworks. at the moment, it's raining, i hope it will stop soon... :D 

i went for a walk to take some photos today... in the morning, sun showed up for like 5 minutes but when i went out the sun was completely gone - unlucky, but england. 

hello spring 1

hello spring 2

boring english street - all the houses look the same - after 4 months here i'm sick and tired of that haha

the most exciting 10 minutes of my day were when i went to the shop to buy batteries for my calculator - and that wasn't exciting at all. it was raining all day long and i just couldn't motivate myself to do anything cool... and i took weird photos of my keyboard:

i went to london with ellen to go shopping today - i bought a t-shirt from hollister and some things at h&m... we had a good time :)

train-pic haha

queuing @primark

wrap at westfield shopping centre yummy

i love holidays :) no pressure to get up in the morning... i started to read some book i got for christmas and i managed to study for my maths exam in january, at least for about 45 minutes. in the afternoon i went to town with ellen, where we went to coffee nero... i took some photos of the street (the points in the sky are lights reflecting in the window) and of my cake:

christmas day in england - presents in the morning!! i celebrated christmas with my host family, my host grandmother and my host mum's sister. we got up at about 9 o'clock to open santa's presents. then we had breakfast. after breakfast (with salmon, yummy) we went into the living room to open all the other presents - i got many presents, books, chocolates, a onesie (a pj like an infant bodysuit - everyone has got one over here) with gingerbread men on it and some other cool things. after opening the presents, my host parents started cooking. we had a traditional english christmas dinner: turkey and beef with gravy and cranberry sauce, roast potatoes, broccoli, brussels sprouts, carrots... i really enjoyed it! then we opened   christmas crackers - an english thing. 

my conclusion: i like english christmas, but nothing is better than swiss christmas - but that might just be because i am more used it :D

my stocking

milk and carrot for santa

 my presents from santa :)

christmas tree

presents from my host family/from at home

christmas cracker - you pull from both sides

happy christmas! for me it is the first time without my family and in another country - but i still enjoy it here. luckily i am not really homesick - doesn't mean that i don't miss my family and friends, i do miss you! 

the 24th of december isn't really special here in england (english people mainly celebrate on the 25th, in the morning presents and in the afternoon/evening christmas dinner), so i went out with my exchange friends this evening, we had dinner at an italian place. the food was okay and we had a nice evening :)

my dinner - different from the one at home...

money tower when we paid :P

my day before christmas eve wasn't very spectacular... in the morning, i went for a run (after 3 weeks without any exercise haha), then i watched some episodes of the series true blood, in the afternoon i went to town with ellen. at first, we wanted to go to starbucks but they were closed due to a power cut, so we went to coffee nero and i had a slice of lemon cheescake, it was delicious :D 

busy town

best day for a power cut :D

yummy :D

post offices have hell of a lot to do because of me :D

my last school day before the christmas holidays was okay, in mr. h's lesson we watched 'christmas carol by the muppets' (and folded serviettes because the films was so boring), and dinner for one, even though in england nobody knows or likes it, according to mr. h. at least. while we were watching the films, we tried mince pies - i didn't really like it. 

lovely folded serviettes

mince bääk pies

ellen is staying at my place today, my host family is out... when we came home, my host mum had prepared something to do for us: colouring angels and kings for a nativity set - i don't know why and i have no idea why she thinks that i can do crafty stuff, but it was fun :D my king and my angel:

then, we made pasta and a sauce to go with it, it was really cool to cook again - i don't really have the possibility to cook here that often...

after my lesson of photography in the morning (we went on developing pictures in the darkroom) my social worker came by for the last time to see me - as soon as i turn sixteen the county doesn't care anymore what i do :D just kidding. 

in the afternoon, i went to tunbridge wells with my friends to do the last bit of christmas shopping. i ended up buying myself a christmas gift; a dress i'll probably wear like once a year - but i just had to buy it:

already half of the school week over: holidays i'm coming :D i had quite a good day, in the evening my friends who took drama had a performance and of course i went to watch it - mr. h. came as well, he made my friend and me sitting next to him. during the whole play, he made annoying comments - he's obviously one of those people you tell to shut the f*** up in the cinema or theatre hahaha... the play was about autistic children, and i quite liked it. 

home early - my health and social teacher wasn't in today :) so i had only 2 lessons. in photography we went on developing our films from the analogue camera - it is so much work! after almost 3 hours we achieved having a contact sheet of our pictures - they aren't developed yet! but it looks very nice - even though there water marks and fingerprints on the pictures ;) a little part of the contact sheet: 

in maths, we had a mock (test exam) for the big exam in january - that we can see what we haven't understood yet. 

the end of the week should be calm, not that much to do anymore - i'm looking forward to the holidays and my first christmas turkey :) 

i tried to teach my german friends a bit of swiss german - it is harder than i thought it would be. for example when i say 'säuli' (a little pig), they understand 'säule' (column), then i have to tell them that this would be 'sülä'. very funny as well was 'herdöpfel' or 'rüebli', or 'gruusig'. but sometimes it is hard to be the only swiss, for example when i say 'ich hab kalt' instead of 'mir ist kalt' - they always laugh :D

i baked biscuits with phoebe today - they look more like spring biscuits not christmas ones but never mind - it was great fun :) 

my recipe is soo easy yet soo good (thank you svetlana for giving it to me): 
55 g plain flour
200 g butter (yes, it does work with salted butter hahaha)
180 g sugar
2 eggs
mix it, dough into the fridge for 15 minutes, make biscuits, preheated oven 180°c for 15 minutes

this was a rainy, 10°c day... i don't feel like it's christmas in 10 days at all! 

and something i forgot to mention a few days ago: a friend from germany asked me recently, if it was true that we eat cats in switzerland, my friend read that it was allowed by law. i explained to my friend that there are always weird people doing weird stuff but just cause it is allowed by law, it doesn't mean that many people do it - at least i don't know anyone personally that eats cats... the best question i've been asked before here though was if we had warm water in our houses in switzerland (asked by an english person)... i mean i don't really expect people to know the difference between sweden and switzerland (many mix those two up), but they could assume that i know how it is to have warm water in the house... :D

mr. h. was ill today, i had only 2 lessons in the morning :D so i went home early, and in the afternoon i went to ellen's place and we watched a film and talked, and then i had dinner at her host family's house. we had lasagne and salad (something i have hardly ever over here :D)... ellen's host parents are really nice, her host dad even gave me a lift home because otherwise i would have had to walk for 20 minutes :) 

the school trip today to the german christmas market in birmingham was soo cool! the trip was organised by the german teacher of our school and some other teachers and was open to all year 7 students (about 12 year olds) and to the internationals. after a 3-hour coach ride to birmingham, the german teacher split the students up in groups of six and every german-speaking international student had to take one group to walk around on the christmas market as a leader to make sure they don't get lost and explain stuff (even though i have never been to a german christmas market before haha). i had some students which started to study german this year and at every sign where there was standing something in german they asked me what it meant :D after an hour we brought them back and then they were allowed to walk around alone, and so were we - we went into some shops as well, not only the market, there is a very big shopping centre in birmingham... then we met up again. the coach ride home was the funniest part of the whole day as we were 'am umeblödle' all the time with the german teacher... 

huge shopping centre

i had a photography trip to london today - it was just great! we visited two art galleries, the national gallery and somerset house. before we went into the national gallery, we could take pictures with an old camera with film in it. we are going to develop our pictures in one of the next lessons. it was quite hard, as we could only take 12 shots each (we worked in groups of 3) we really had to think about what we wanted to shoot, not like having a digital camera - it was a different way of thinking. in the national gallery, we looked the exhibition 'seduced by art'. it was all about how art influenced photography, and if a good photograph can be as valuable as good artistic work. in the somerset house, there was an exhibition called 'story teller'. it was about fashion photography, photography with very freaky objects in it... a lot of different stuff.

me with the old camera :D

seduced by art

story teller

i had quite a boring day - but i am very looking forward to tomorrow and thursday. tomorrow i have a photography trip to london, and on thursday i go to birmingham, to a german christmas market. the german teacher of our school is taking his class on the trip and he asked the other german speaking internationals and me if we wanted to come along as well, as we are helping from time to time in 'german club' (it's just in one of the breaks in the morning, all the german students can come and we talk to them, or, more often, we sing the 'fliegerlied' hahaha). 

today in the bus: cake, stuck to the window. weird english people! :D

happy 2nd advent!!

london today... i've been there with the german internationals, first we went to a christmas market at the thames in the southbank area, then to camden, then to covent garden - it was cool :)

the perfect second @southbank

christmas market

camden - walking around in the crowd

river in camden

covent garden whiskey christmas tree :D

london from the train back home