i already spent six months in england! three and a half months to go... time is passing by so fast! it was a good decision to do the exchange year. i've experienced so many cool things over here; visited cool places; met nice people; learned a lot, especially outside school; ate good english food (and bad english food - i think i'm traumatised by meat pie); had a lot of rain and wind, but also sun; learned to speak proper english and learned to hate american english; experienced what it means to miss certain people/places/foods; sent letters and postcards again (and got post and parcels); learned all about skype, facetime and viber; wrote hundred or more emails in one evening; learned all about photography in an amazing course at school; learned to consider maths being interesting; learned that health and social doesn't provide 'aha-effects' but is still not boring; learned many things about england in mr. h's lessons; i figured out how to deal with problems that seemed to be huge at the first look; i found out what home means; i learned to blog; i learned to stop when it's getting senseless and awkward.

a random day at school: in mr. h's class we corrected homework for nearly two hours - which would have just been boring - but unfortunately i forgot my whole english folder with the completed homework at home, so it was even more boring. in photography, i started sticking things into my exam project sketchbook, again a not very interesting work. in maths i was working on a question about logarithms for nearly an hour until the teacher told me that there's a mistake in the book and the question can't be completed at all. lol! in health and social we're currently discussing discrimination and we have to produce display material on the topic - i'm doing a powerpoint presentation together with ellen about people who unfortunately are often victims of discrimination saying that they wouldn't discriminate because of a certain reason. one example:

now i'm at home and happy that i have only two days of school left before the weekend. on saturday mr. h. is taking us on a trip to stonehenge, salisbury and winchester - he's picking us up at ten past six in the morning.

english double-decker busses are quite tall. and i knew that they sometimes pass by trees quite closely. but what actually can happen is dangerous! suva wouldn't be happy.

and note to myself of today: if you want to tell a german to erase something written with pencil, never say 'ausgümmeln' (from swiss german 'uusgümmele'). never ever.

my school bag is ready for tomorrow; however, i'm not. i took some photographs for my photography project on the topic 'home'. one weird example: 

saturday is trip-day! i went to london once again, with ellen and minky :) first thing we did was to go to greenwich (by dlr, an overground train) where the meridian line between east and west is situated (0°0'0''). the little museum about the meridian 'royal observatory' is built on a hill, and we had quite a nice view over london.

between east and west!

then we went to china town, where we had lunch at a chinese buffet. note to myself: chinese tea smells kind of fishy.

on our way to the next tube station we suddenly saw a crowd standing in front of the w hotel. a celebrity - we have to go there, we thought - but: a screaming girl told us the name of the guy - i can't remember it, but as random as john smith - and we had to ask further questions to find out that he's some kind of youtube comedian. lol

then something else caught my eye: a swiss clock! :D

finally we reached piccadilly circus, from where we took the tube to get to the famous shopping centre harrods. the interior design is quite impressive, and everything is veery expensive. 

and even though i lost my tube/train ticket some time during the day, i managed to get home. i'm good at being a stupid tourist!

actually, i went to town this afternoon to buy shoes for hopefully soon arriving spring (even though the odds are not so good - it was snowing again today). at the shoe shop: i spot some nice shoes. grab the shoe, go to the till. interrupt two busy chatting shopping assistants. the one i talk to is not happy when she notices that she has to work. me: 'could you please bring me this shoe in size 8 please?' she says something i don't understand and walks away. after 5 minutes she comes back. 'we don't have your size'. she walks away. i follow her and ask her to bring me the shoes in size seven. she gives me an angry look, walks away again. 5 minutes later i have the pair in my hands: size six and another colour than i actually wanted. i leave the shoe box on the floor, walk away. i wasn't in the mood to look for shoes anymore, so i went to the bookshop and bought two crime novels. 

when i woke up this morning at eight o'clock (this is normal here for me, i just don't manage to sleep longer - maybe because of those withe curtains, enabling the sun to shine directly into my sleepy face) i had to think so hard until i figured out if it's wednesday or thursday today - and i was quite disappointed when i finally noticed that it must be thursday. holidays just pass too fast - even though i don't do much. today for example i've done some maths homework (circle equations), went to town, had coffee with a friend, and now i'm sitting on my bed with my computer on my lap writing this post. and i'm eating chocolate chip muffins. they're just too cheap over here :D

i spent my afternoon in the park - with ellen and a cat: 

i've been to cambridge today; a beautiful town with countless bicycles, churches, students and tourists:

@the tourist information haha

the king's college:

round church!

and on the way back, i found this amazing house in london: 

ellen's host parents went to a garden centre today, and ellen asked me if i wanted to come along - i said yes and had a funny time :) after taking a look at plants and garden furniture i had my first ice cream of the year. reasonable with 9°C outside!

my plant at home missed me so much that it decided to die; thanks dad.

half term holidays for a week - yippieee!! my last day at school was pretty good. my health and social teacher wasn't in, instead the sixth form head miss facey came in for the lesson to supervise us. we had to write a report on the computer, and in the end she looked at our work - and the ones who wrote the most in the lesson (and other girl and i) got a wonderful sticker (the last time i got a sticker i was in primary school, but i was happy)...

in the afternoon, we ate pancakes with mr. h., because it was pancake day on tuesday and he wanted to give everyone the chance to do the cooking (which took place at the food technology room - unfortunately there's no such subject as food technology in sixth form). the first few pancakes we used for a little race: we had to go outside with a pancake in our pans and run round the school, turning the pancake at certain points. the winner was 'bacon' from denmark, he managed to run and turn his pancake the fastest. it was fun! then we went back in and made more pancakes, until we all were stuffed :D with us was a girl from last year, she came and visited hugh christie and mr. h. she's also from zurich and goes to the school hopro, as we found out - it was funny, meeting someone from zurich!

toppings :)

mr. h. - cooking!

epic fail - no names :D

yummy!

i think i smell like a pancake now.

i spend about an hour a day on the bus. but not even on valentine's day i found good company: just some old lads :D

i learned a new word at the dinner table today: glamping (glamorous camping) - never heard about it before! now i have something to look forward to: my host parents baked some lovely courgette cake - it just has to cool down... yummy. 

it's PANCAKE DAY (check wikipedia, it has got something to do with the start of the period of fasting http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shrove_Tuesday)! after a nasty day at school (with a stats test) i came home and found my host mum experimenting with pancake batter - in the beginning it didn't really work out, but we figured out how to improve it (in the end my host mum was making the pancakes and i made the batter) - a really funny dinner!

i already thought it's going towards spring, but when i got up this morning, there was quite a bit of snow outside, and it was snowing during the day...

i had a school trip to the houses of parliament today; my health and social teacher who's also teaching business organised it for his business group and asked us internationals if we wanted to come along as well. after almost arriving late at the train station (the buses had problems with the snow) we went to london. at first, we had some time do whatever we wanted in london, so i walked around and took some pictures. then we met up for the houses of parliament. our teacher had organised a guided tour. we had to go through a security check, got a visitors pass (i look like a crimbo haha), and the tour started, leading us through the buildings and the guide told us boring anecdotes - i couldn't even take photographs. then some lad with a weird accent explained different voting systems to us... all in all not a highly interesting trip to be honest, but i had fun with my friends.

saturday is trip-day: folkestone with ellen and lena :) after an hour on the train, we arrived at folkestone central train station. a path led us straight down to the sea, and we had beautiful weather. then we went onto a pier - to get there, we had to walk through a former train station (it was a bit creepy, look at the pictures)... then we had a beautiful view, and it was really warm, we could sit there without our jackets on! after a while, we went into the very nice town and had late lunch at some chinese place. after writing some postcards, we returned home. a good day!