Oh, Fasnacht.

We were placed in our prospective classes after the proficiency exam and I was placed in B1. A1 is beginner and C1 is a level to shoot for with things like a resume builder, so I am in an intermediate level, kind of. Well let me just say that when they said intensive Language course they meant it. I can’t believe that how much I have learned in one week of school. In about four days I have written over ten pages of vocabulary words, which may not sound like much, but let me tell you that it is. Luckily, I took three semesters of German at home and that helps so much.

My teacher is super Swiss and has a very Swiss accent in German that is actually difficult to understand. My class has about twelve people, that all come from different countries, besides three are all from Turkey. It is really interesting to be around so many different cultures and languages all the time. The class is four hours long a day, then we have around two hours of homework a night, give or take an half hour. It is actually very difficult to follow everything because we do so much each day in class. But this is exactly what I need because I can feel it happening already: I am losing my fear to speak in German. When learning another language, understanding and reading are the easy parts, but speaking is very difficult. It takes me quite a lot of time to feel like I am at a level to speak to someone and not make a fool of myself, which shouldn’t be on my mind. I don’t speak in class yet, which I’m sure will be changing soon because I feel comfortable that my level of proficiency is on par with that of my classmates.

Andri and I always say that we have to speak German, but once I speak English because I don’t know how to say something he reverts back to English. It’s so easy. I wish it wasn’t, but now I am actively telling him that he has to speak German to me. The majority of the last two days has been in German, although when I get tired I always speak English because I am too lazy to try to get a point across with minimal vocabulary.

I have met quite a few people since being in school for one week. This makes me so happy, because I now receive phone calls, texts, and emails on my phone that rarely ever rang before. Every day I meet two friends at the train stations so that we can all go to school together and this is great. I like being able to pass the time and it gives us all time to learn about each other, an hour a day to be exact. It feels nice to have someone to meet. So far last week I have hung out with three classmates outside of school. That doesn’t sound like much, but in one week that is quite a bit.

One word: Fasnacht. This is the Swiss carneval and Bern has the third largest one in the country, which is great for me. Another way for me to integrate into Swiss culture, aka drink and dance. Fasnacht in Bern when the bear is let out, so of course I was waiting on the square with my camera ready for it to start. The show was in very thick Bernese, so I didn’t understand anything, but nevertheless it was very interesting. The bear was let out (he walked down the side of a building, as he is not a real bear, but a man in a bear pelt costume). Then as we were walking there he was and I touched him! It is a real bear skin costume, so it felt very eerie to stand beside him and touch his head. Bern’s symbol is the bear, so this was very fun to touch the start of Fasnacht.



Thursday I went with a classmate, Trevor and his husband. There were bands playing all down the main street in the center, dressed in beautiful, matching costumes. It is not like Mardi Gras, more like a masquerade. There are no girls flashing their tits, just drunk people dancing in cool costumes, which aren’t slutty, so not like Halloween either. There are lots of older people in very intricate masquerade costumes, like a Venetian ball, but also lots of younger people in silly costumes, like Chiquita bananas and gorillas. The first night we danced. We danced like there was no tomorrow and it was great. There was one Samba band around the corner from where we were that was amazing. Let me explain this a little so you can picture it. There are a couple big squares downtown and one “main street” with the shopping and such. This is where Fasnacht was. There were bands lining this street, so every 25 meters or so there was a new bands with a different crowd and different style of music and costumes. We heard 50 Cent “Candyshop” played by one of these bands, which was hilarious.







On Friday I was invited to a classmate’s house for dinner, along with some other girls and let me just say OMG the food was delicious. I met a girl from Peru and we hit it off famously, so we went wig shopping and bought some things to wear that night. I had goldish pants from H&M for only 10 CHF, which is a great deal, and a hot pink wig. I felt fantastic because it’s so much fun to do anything and know that none of these people could recognize you tomorrow. No wonder the Swiss love this time so much. We partied until late in the morning, but I handed my wig to someone and then BAM we left and I didn’t have time to recover it. This was the saddest part of my next day because I think that it looked good on me.



I am starting to see things in a different way. Me coming here felt really sad because I was giving up my dream of living in Mexico and giving up my Latin American culture search. But hanging out here this weekend I realized that there is a large Hispanic population here, so maybe I can still the dream of searching for my heritage while in Switzerland. I can still go to university and perfect my Spanish with the program I want, while still learning German and it’s still possible to accomplish what I want.

Also, since I thought about all of this my German followed suit. Something seems to have clicked. I mean that I think my mind has come to terms with being here and is letting the German be understood in my mind (or maybe it’s the classes). This leads back to me losing my fear of speaking German, so this is all very intertwined. Things are looking up world!