America :D

Hey my lovely Swiss friends :P

I hope you all are doing well and had a good start in school again.:) My school over here is really small (we have about 300 students) and it’s pretty easy compared to Wettingen ;-). I’m also playing sports; in the fall-season I played volleyball and now I’m doing track. We practice six times a week, which is really hard sometimes, especially because we have to run outside! (Today it was -10 degrees Celsius and we have snow.) But a bit of exercising isn’t too bad, because the American food might be a little unhealthy sometimes ;P

I’m having a lot of fun here in America, I’ve found many new friends and my host family is making my exchange to an amazing experience. They took me to beautiful places and we also went to bigger cities like Boston, New York and Washington D.C.

Now I’m enjoying my last month and I’m looking forward to see you soon! :)

Leana

 

My host sister and my host dad went to a Bruins ice hockey game with me. It was really loud and everyone made sure there was a great atmosphere. :)

This is in Boston, at the Harvard University. It brings good luck if you touch his toe.;-)

Once a year, the girls try to play american football. It was funny to give it a chance, but I don't think I'll ever do it again. :P

My host family and I in New York. It was amazing. :)

Hello everyone! :)

I hope you're all good and enjoying school.. I wish you all a late merry christmas and a great start to 2014! And for the ones with any new year's resolutions, good luck!

I've just started my school again this Tuesday after a lovely and festive holiday with loads of cake, sweets, presents and christmas shopping besides no snow at all here in England. Nevertheless I had a wonderful time and now I slowly have to face my return to Switzerland, which is pretty soon. It's gonna be hard to get used to the kanti lifestyle again, since I only have 5 lessons a day at max, and  sometimes I just have two lessons a day, which is more than relaxed!
I simply enjoy everything here, in England: friends, hostfamily, school, visiting cities and places, food (especially all sorts of cake, cupcakes, shortbread,..) and of course the shopping! ;) Even the weather is totally fine, sometimes rainy and cold but since there's no snow it means there's no danger of slipping or getting attacked with snowballs..
So to make it simple, I'm very well. I'm looking forward to seeing all you mates again soon and until then, have a great time!

Got some pictures for you too, if you are interested..

In Liverpool at the beach, however the city is cool too, with great stores.. ;)

One day I went to Cambridge (an awful long car drive) and had the experience of 'river punting', which was great! It's kind of the 'gondola' in Venice.

And this was one of the best HOT CHOCOLATE WITH MARSHMALLOWS, I've ever had. Besides a lovely maltesers cheesecake! yummy! Maybe you've heard of the place, it's called 'Central Perk', the local cafe in the famous sitcom called 'Friends'.

However, this wonderful picture is located 5 minutes away from my home by foot!












Lovely greetings from abroad, your Lara :)

Christmas

Hi there :)

Looks like you had a lot of fun on Wednesday :) I love the little film :)
Today would be my last school day, but because I have the final rehearsal for the concert with my orchestra I'll miss my lessons. It's such a shame ;)
The last few weeks weren't really excinting. But I still did some things :)
A lot of my free time was filled with baking.
I made a lot of Swiss christmas biscuits, but I tried a english tradition as well; Mince pies.
I don't think they are really the way they should be, but you can eat them and they are not too bad ;)

Now I wish you merry christmas and a very happy new year :)
I'll see you soon :)
Lena

Dear class mates abroad
We are celebrating our "Wiehnachtshöck" at the Spinnerei with mister Werner. At the beginning the two children of him were here too and miss Geisser of course (our German-teacher). We were bored and  so we began to dance a little bit XP I hope you will enjoy it. We wish you all a Merry Christmas and a happy new year.
Cheers Danilo and the whole class G2B
<33333333333333333333

We miss you!!!!!!

http://host-d.oddcast.com/php/application_UI/doorId=1177/clientId=299/?mId=54139513.2

Hey There!

This are the delayed news from last week (2nd- 6th of December).
Monday was as boring as usual. But Tuesday was horrible! Because on the afternoon we had a English test and afterwords directly a 90 minutes math test about trigonometric functions. The results were disastrous. The average was a 3.1. (AWESOME!)

In the evening the Chinese people(haha Jana, Poorvi & Nicole) had a cinema night with the Kanti Baden (they were soooo looouuud -.-).

In English we read the 3rd chapter of our book Animal Farm.

On Thursday in history class we got a very lovely text about Ludwig XIV's health.
Here a little taste of that: Well his doctors thought that it was very dangerous for a king to have 100% healthy teeth. So they took all of them out and broke jaw twice and a piece of palate followed the teeth... (Delicious!)
And that wasn't even the worst part (but it was very interesting).

So now we wish you a lovely stay & bon appétit!

-Jana & Alexandra

George Milton

George

appearance:
small and quick, dark of face, restless eyes, sharp and strong features

small, strong hands, slender arms, thin and bony nose

personality:

smart and intelligent, sensitive, caring, distant, adapting, no trouble maker, careful, protective
→ his behaviour is bipolar: he's short-tempered in general but with Lennie he's patient as soon as it concerns very serious issues.

Lennie and George grew up together and he started to take care of him when Lennie's aunt Clara died. George is like a big brother to Lennie even though he's sometimes mad at him because Lennie often gets into trouble. He's constantly trying to keep Lennie safe and one of his biggest desires is to make their dream, to own their own farm, come true. The first time we hear him telling Lennie the story about the dream it sounds like a fairytale, but later on, when it seems to come true, he starts telling it in another way.
In the group of the „underdogs“ (Crooks, Lennie, Old Candy) he's kind of the boss who's telling the others what to do and what (not) to tell. This responsibility is kind of forced upon him.

relationships

-Curley: distant, weary, careful because he knows that he could get into trouble with him

-Curley's wife: no big interaction
-Slim: admiration, understanding without many words, respect, trust
-workers: the closest “friends” they could get in their situation

One day when they were young, George told Lennie to jump into a lake even though he knew that he didn't know how to swim.
Then, as George realised that Lennie's in serious danger, he jumped into the water too and saved him.
Lennie didn't understand, that he just got into trouble because of his “hero” and he was so thankful that George started to feel guilty. Maybe this is a reason that he still feels responsible for Lennie. He probably searches a way to make up for what he has done.

It could also be possible to connect this situation to things happening in the current time.
For example after George was screaming at Lennie and Lennie proposed to leave and never come back, he replied in a way as he would be afraid that something's going to happen to Lennie just because of him.

→ page 20: “ I want you to stay with me, Lennie. Jesus Christ, somebody'd shoot you for a coyote if you was by yourself.”

Also the relationship to Slim is special. He seems to be the first person after a long time, who's really listening to him. And probably he's the right person for George to tell his story, because he doesn't receive any cynical comments from him. It's just important to him not to keep everything in his own mind because there's so much he's worrying about that it would drive him crazy if he couldn't get it off his chest.
Slim's the one who takes on his burden.

George symbolises the perfect “mouse”.
Under all the other workers he nearly seems to be invisible, he doesn't get into big trouble and he's just like everyone else. A part of the big mass.

Lisa, Nicole

Carlson

Carlson is more of a "flat" character than a "round" one (If you don't remember: at the beginning of our first year, we talked about different types of characters. There were round = usually major, important characters where we see a lot of different facets and flat = usually minor, secondary characters with one particular character trait). He doesn't really play a central role in the book and therefore he doesn't appear a lot. I found precisely four scenes where Carlson played a part . Not the best circumstances to write a 1 1/2 pages long essay about him, right? Just kidding, I decided by myself to write about him, because after finishing the book, I saw Carlson only as a ruthless dork and I was kinda interested in if there is more behind this guy. Due to the lack of information in the book, my text is mainly based on these few scenes where Carlson plays a role, and a lot of interpretation from my point of view.

The first time we meet Carlson in the book is when George and Lennie just arrived at the ranch and were talking with Slim. Carlson asked Slim if he could give one of his puppies to Candy because the dog Candy had right then was really old and stank, he also wanted Slim to convince Candy to shoot the old dog. Not a nice first impression, right? This scene shows that he hates that dog and tries everything to get rid of it, only because it stinks. This is a very egoistic and ruthless behaviour.

The second time we meet Carlson is when the dog gets shot. He talked so long to Candy until the old man gave up and had to agree to kill his dog. When Candy told him he couldn't shoot it, Carlson offers to shoot the dog by himself. To reach his goal, he would do everything. He doesn't understand the relationship between Candy and his dog, he doesn't understand Candys emotions, he just carries his own point.
Carlson got his Luger, a pistol and probably his most precious property and dragged the poor dog out of the barn. At least he promised Candy: "It won't feel anything". But if he really meant it that way, or if that was just an empty promise to calm Candy down a bit, we don't know.
When Carlson dragged the dog out, Slim even had to remind him to take a shovel with. I'm asking me if Carlson really planned to just shoot the dog and let its dead body lying on floor. He didn't plan it through, he just wanted to get rid of his object of hate as soon as possible.

In the very last scene of the book where George killed Lennie, Carlson appears once again and we get another impression of this guy. George just shot his friend Lennie in the head and of course feels horrible right after. But Carlson, he doesn't care at all. He just asked George if Lennie really had his precious gun, "Did he have my gun?".
And when Slim took George away to help him to get over the incident, Carlson was standing, not comprehending anything and said to Curley, who also didn't understand anything: "Now what the hell ya suppose is eatin' them two guys?"

He totally doesn't get Georges emotional state and how he feels. It seems like he never had a friend, has always been alone and never felt friendship. Carlson is a perfect example for what being a lonley worker in California turns you into. A cold-hearted and emotionally blunted.

I hope I could give you an impression of Carlson,
My-Nhien