Of mice and men...

I just saw this poster, being suspended on the wall of my school, staring at me xD I always have to think of you when I pass it. So I thought, I have to take a picture...
Of mice and men is a very popular school book over here. There had to read it in years seven to eleven. To discuss it, to analyze it, to present it...and now, no one wants to talk about this book any longer, because they just hate this book after all this years xD

I hope this isn't happening to you so far ;) Enjoy your reading :) Vanessa :*

Holiday

Hi there

This week is now our week off from school here in England :)
No school, but still quite a lot of homework....
But first I enjoy my holiday.
From Saturday to Tuesday I was in Edinburgh with a group of about 25 other exchange students.
We had a great time and saw a lot of this fabulous city!
The other exchange students were from Norway, Finland, Australia, Netherlands, Germany and Switzerland, but we talked all the time English. We tried to speak German once or twice, but it felt so strange that we changed back to English after one ot two sentences. We are just so used to it after two months of English all the time!
I met a few Swiss girls and we spent a lot of time together, exploring the city and the Scotish culture.
My camera was with me all the time, so I can show you a few bits of Edinburgh:

Shopping was also a part of our Trip ;)

Scotts Monument and National Gallery

View from a little hill next to Edinburgh

Edinburgh Castle

I hope you don't have that much of work and you can enjoy the autumn!
Bye
Lena

First week after autmn break

Hello everyone!
Full of energy & super motivated (haha) we started school after the long break.
In the half-class English lesson on Monday morning we began easy with talking about our Vario-Week and how holidays have been. After this "welcome back to school" we grabbed our books "Of Mice And Men" and discussed about chapter IV. Every student will have to pick a character of the book and write a description about him/her.

On Tuesday, full-class English lesson, we talked about our holidays again and got our exam about time tenses and vocabulary (describing people) back. The average is a solid 4.7 :)

And today, Rahels 18th birthday, we tried to sing "Happy Birthday" for her, but it didn't sound very good... Miss Nyffenegger wasn't really content with us ;D After that we solved some exercises in the book about vocabulary to the topic "Education".

We wish you a nice weekend :)
Romina & My-Nhien

About stereotypes

'England is the country where it always rains'
I'll never use this sentence again. It is just not true. In this more than 50 days in which I'm now staying here, I just had one week rain. No really! I think i had probably less rain that I use to have back in Switzerland :P
To tell no something about the english weather; it is most of the time quite similar to the swiss weather and temperatures. Maybe we have a little bit more wind over here because of the location of the island... But in general it is really nice weather and I'm really enjoying it. :) The thermometer shows still temperatures around 20°C. And even though the sea is now going to bee more rough, it's still so beautiful.
On the weekend we had fish and chips (my first fish and chips during my exchange^^) at the seafront in the warm light of an orange sunset. :) :) It was very nice.

But still there are some existing stereotypes. Like the tea. I've never seen so many people drinking tea. So I have to say, they don't really have a 'tea-time' like we would imagine it (so at any rate nobody who  I know..) but still they drink a lot of tea. A friend of my class told me that she sometimes has 20 cups of tea in a normal day... xD 

Another funny thing which they told me is, that the schools in England are closed if they have more snow than 10cm. Because the trains shut down and all the buses are unable to pass the streets. And you don't go to work any longer. 

But the most stupid thing about this is, that every family starts to buy a lot of food and rations, in case that i would snow for more than three days...So the english people can't handle snow^^

I though it would be funny to have the same rule in Switzerland too- we wouldn't have school the whole winter xD 

I hope you are all enjoying your holidays ( I'll have mine in two weeks :) ) 

With nice greets; Vanessa :) 

Dear all,

I hope you all enjoy autumn break - it's been lovely to catch up with some of you on here, hence a little treat from our country project days last February/March:

Welcoming a tiny visitor in our classroom

A special "concert"...

Have a lovely time, and keep posting - cheers, your "Miss"

Enjoy your holiday!

Hi there:)
I hope you enjoy your holiday!
My school started only four weeks ago, so I don't have holiday already. But that doesn't matter. I really like the school and my subjects. I have only three, English language, maths and geography. All the people are very nice and the teachers, or the tutors (that's how they are called), always look that we exchange students understand everything. Altogether are the subjects mch easier than in Switzerland. In maths for example we do things we did in Switzerland in the third or forth Bezirksschule. And in English we looked at nouns and verbs. But I think it's getting more difficult with the time and at the moment I'm glad about it, because it's easier to understand. Though the understanding is acctually no problem anymore. :)
I didn't really make friends yet. It's quite difficult, because there are different classes in every subject and you see the people only twice a week for two hours. And in these you can't talk about something different than the subject. But it's still early and I already know some really nice people.
Beside the school I train twice a week in an athletics club, surprise, surprise ;)
The Training is just great! It is really hard, but the group is so nice and the coach is funny :)
I really love it! :)
And my hostmother is also really nice! Since last Friday we live now in the new house (My Hostmother and me moved house)  It's a really cute and cosy little house. I definitely prefer this one to the old one.

Old house

Moving...

New house

Again enjoy your holiday and have a lot of fun!
Bye Lena

daria í frí

Hi guys!
I hope your all doing as well as I, because I like my life here in Iceland from day to day more (:
Now I have frí (=vacation) but it's only three days -Wednesday til Friday. We don't have longer holidays because I think I have almost the whole december free, except maybe a few tests I have to take. And they finish school in beginning of may, so we don't have more school then you do..
I really enjoy my vacation, althouh I don't really have plans, except sleeping long, going to choir and violin lessons and meeting friends, but it's wonderful!
Yesterday we baked Icelandic pancakes with one of the other exchange students and an Icelandic girl. Icelandic pancakes are similar to crepes. They are really thin and not that easy to make. It needs a special pan and you have to be very skilful. Sóley, the Icelandic gril wasn't patinet enough to do it and Mateo, the other exchange stundent was sleeping, so I had to do them, but it was a lot of fun, and in the end they looked really good and also tasted awesome. But it was a lot and I ate that much, that I couldn't eat icecream in the evening and I had to look on my siblings eating the best icecream in town :(

 

 

Sóley, Mateo, Pancakes and I (:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I also don't speak that much English anymore. At home, I speak almost only Icelandic. I understand it if people speak slowly and with easy words. I can also almost always say, what I want, that they understand me, but it's not always correct, because in Icelandic every word changes and that kind of hard to learn, as the guys of you in Latin maybe know. Imagine speaking Latin, that's Icelandic :P
In school there are some people, they speak English with me, althoug I speak Icelandic, but I think they'll change to Icelandic soon.
I also have English classes, and there we learn a lot, or we should learn a lot (our teacher don't know how to keep us quite). We mostly learn vocabulary and not that much grammar but I have some grammar for you -in Icelandic :D
But the teacher is nice. In the last class before the vacation we watched Friends (:

conditional clauses in icelandic

enjoy your vacation!