Monday, September 26, 2011

Rotex Weekend!

Hey everybody! I just came back from the Rotex weekend (Rotex are exchange students who have returned from their exchanges) and it was so much fun!

We started the say by meeting in the Bern trainstation. All the exchange students from the West side of Switzerland were there--over 60 teenagers. We then met our Rotex leaders, who brought us by bus to Bern's Ropetech. A Ropetech is a park where ropes and bridges are suspended from tree over 50 ft high for you to walk on. About half of the students and I got to go first. We go suited up in harnesses, and learned the basics, and then got to try it out. In Switzerland, it is a lot harder to sue someone than it is in America, which is part of the reason why we got to do this semi-dangerous thing without any superviosion, which was super nice.

It was so so so much fun! We walked on ropes (clipped in of course, so it we fell we wouldnt die) 50 ft in the air! Some of the obstacles were so scary, and I am proud I was brave of enought to do them. One of them was where you had to walk across a log path in the air. The logs were standing vertically, and were suspened each by one wire, so you had to walk on the tops of them as steps. It was really freaky because they tipped when ever you walked on them, and the girl in front of me fell, and was hanging in the air by her harness!



You can see a person here stating to make the climb up the steps (right in picutre) to the starting of the lowest platforms.







A lot of the course was also ziplines. My parents would not believe you if you told them what I did...haha. I climbed up a series of ladders until I was parallel with the top of the forest, and then went on a 50 meter long zipline. I didnt get any pictures of that one, but here is a picture of one of my friend's Emily going on a smaller one. You can see here standing on the platform.




Later, we all took a train to a log cabin in Langenthall, and stayed there for the night. Immagine 60+ teenagers (and exchange students for that matter, which I think are a very...welll...open breed of teenagers) alone in a cabin for a night, with the only superviosion being four 20 year olds. Yep, it was a very fun night. We were all up until 4:30 in the morning...haha. I bunked with some girls I havent met yet, and they were all so nice. We talked so loudly that some Spanish girls who went to sleep early had to kick us out in to the hallway.

In the morning, after a great breakfast of bread and Nutella, (Swiss people loooveee Nutella!) we played a relay race and other games (which my team SUCKED at...we got an A for effort though!). We also took some picutres.
Here are all the exchange students who happened to be outside when this was taken.











We also took some country pride pictures.....yeah, America was not impressive. Here are the Canadians:
And here are the Americans. Only country which had no flags at all! Goooo America!!! I think we were the least patriotic group, but hey, how can you compare to Canadians or Argentinians? Those exchange students are weirdly partriotic...when I said I didnt like hockey, I think Patick got angry at me.








Here are the South Americans plus dark skinned people. (As you can tell by the addition of three Americans...haha)








To end a great weekend, some of us hung out afterwards in Zurich and made plans to meet again during break in 2 weeks. My new friends Hailey (a Canadian...boo) and Kelsey (weirdly enough, from Portland!) and I are planning on tracing the outline of Switzerland by trains, so we can get postcards from 6 different countries in one day! Yeah, strangly enough, from Switzerland, you can visit Italy, France,Germany, Austria and Lichtenstein in one day! I'm so excited! And Emily, Kim might come with us (more Canadians...double boo) to Ticino during break too. Ticino is the Southern most Kanton of Zurich, and the speak Itlalian there. We hear the gilatto and pizza is super good!


 Most popular game of the night: Ninja! We are such mature people.










You probably wont hear from me for 2 weeks or so. Next week is work week, and my class is preforming  music in the streets of Basel. Then, its vacation (and all my fun trips!) but I wont have acess to a school computer, and my computer crashes on this website. So until next time! Thanks for reading :) I'll try to update my last post tomorrow, sorry I have been so delayed--its just hard finding time to do this, Im a busy girl!

1 comment:

  1. wow... amazing times! this computer crashing is getting old though.. maybe time for an upgrade? miss you like crazy!!!

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