Last Week before Christmas break

Dear all!

We hope you are all enjoying your 2weeks-relax-possibility and wish you a nice New Years Eve and how we would say in Swiss German: "En guete Rutsch". The last week before the Christmas break was kind of weird, because although there were not many days to wait until holidays, the Christmas feelings couldn't  really break through. We had some tests..and it was so, that till Friday evening after our last test in biology it was a bit difficult to believe, that time is running so fast and another year is almost passed.
By se Way: In English we discussed chapter 5 of Animal Farm in halfclass and in the whole class we played taboo and Miss Nyffenegger even brought us a yummie cake :D. It wasn't always easy to explain the expressions in English, and also this noisy thing which should mark when the time runs out, was not always used in the right second xD but we had a lot of fun.
On Wednesday evening was this traditional Christmas celebration and the theme of this Year was to make it British. The Monastery church gave these perfomances of the Orchestra, the Vocalensemble, the Sax-Quartett, the Smus-Choir, the first class Choir and the KantiChoir a wonderful sound and atmosphere. After that, we met us in room S402 to solve out everyone's Secret Santa. We ate those nice Sandwiches from the 'Catering of the Kanti- Gmbh' and sadly, relatively fast after our 'Christmas-Höck' we had to go home, (start for some to) study Economy, because of the test on thursday afternoon.
At last on Friday evening, the most of us went home, finally enjoying the break. And some went to the Volleynight, enjoying sport before the break.
All in all was it a very heavy week, and there would be more to tell about. But..let's enjoy the last days before the break of the break!

Great, Meryem and Timna

Curley's characterisation

One of the most memorable characters in this book is probably
Curley. The first impression we get of him is when he came into the
bunk-house. An image of a young, self-confident man, who doesn't
really care about politeness. He asked: 'Seen my old man?' It seems
that he doesn't show respect in front of other people for this man,
who is actually his father. Also in general he treats other people like
he is better than them. He is bad tempered and often provocates
fights to show that he isn't weaker just because of his small height.
Especially with the big guys he has problems. Lennie didn't deserve
Curleys loathing. The only reason for being treated badly was his
physical superiority.
Curley is always jealous, often of Lennie and Slim. And also apart
from them he always finds someone to envy. It's like he is just waiting
for a chance to have to pick a bone with someone and all the time
he has to control where his wife or Slim is. Whatever you do he's
always looking for your faults. Yes, Curley has many faces. Another
one which is a cause of his jealousy is his possessiveness. Whenever
he catches his wife with Slim or another guy he completely loses his
already limited composure. Because he really is a restless person
who gets blind of anger so many times like little children do. When
something doesn't go their way they start to scream and throw a
temper tantrum.
Curley is not over-protective of his wife because he wants to take
care of her. He doesn't see her as a independent person instead she
is his possession. She doesn't even deserve a name, she is just
known as 'Curleys wife'. Her death finally showed us his indifference
towards her. The first reaction of him was not a sorrowful gesture for
her death but a scream of anger to this person who broke his 'toy'.
He only wanted to get his revenge.
But the most of his character traits come from the assumption of a
very low self-esteem. Another cause of this is the probably true
rumor of his infertility.
All in all he is very one dimensional, that means he doesn't have much
character depth. Through the whole book there is no character
development and we see just one side of him. In this book he definitely has the bad-man-role on which you can focus on different aspects concerning his faces.

Meryem, Timna

:)

Good evening

I am getting closer and closer to the end of my exchange, but I wish I could stay longer, because I am having such a good time here in England. But I really look forward to see you again. I just wanted to wish you a merry Christmas and a really nice time over the holidays. Only ten days left and it is Christmas eve. Here in England it feels like spring, because we haven't had snow so far and it is not even cold :)
Greetings
Elena

Lennie Small (Of mice and men)

This essay discusses Lennie and his character as well as his development, his perspectives and his symbolization; what is the author trying to show us through Lennie.

„Behind him walked his opposite, a huge man, shapeless of face, with large, pale eyes, with wide, sloping shoulders; and he walked heavily, dragging his feet a little, the way a bear drags his paws. His arms did not swing at his sides, but hung loosely and only moved because the heavy hands were pendula.“ (p.12 l.11-16)

This is the very first impression we get of Lennie. This shows us, that Lennie is a tall and strong man. But he is not only a good and hard worker, he is handicapped. He is mentally retarded and therefor he acts like a child; as a result, George takes „care“ of him. 

Lennie is a constant character as well as a dynamic character depending on the perspective. Looking at him as an uncontrollable force, in other words a lose canon, we consider his character to be static, because he is constantly messing up things every time. But if you consider his thoughts and look at his actions individually, you will conclude, he is a personality.

At the beginning we never see Lennie‘s thoughts and because of his handicap we never hear him talk much. The impression we get is a quiet and „dumb“ person, who is almost incapable of doing very basic work.

Most of the people do not understand Lennie and therefor they judge him for his actions and his behavior. They do not care about Lennie, they keep their distance or even want to get rid of him.

George seems to be the only person, who has a certain connection to Lennie and understands him, but he actually does not. George is accepting him, but he does not understand him. This becomes clear in situations when George chews him out without considering Lennie‘s motivations.

The person who understands Lennie the most is Slim. Slim, the skinner, has been working with animals for his whole life. He developed a feeling and sensitivity for understanding people‘s or animals‘ thoughts and intentions without words. So he‘s the only person who considers not only Lennie‘s few words but his thoughts and motivations too; thus he‘s the only one who has the ability to understand Lennie.

As a conclusive interpretation we claim that Lennie symbolizes all mentally weak people in society. The author wants to tell us, that the majority treats him like an old useless dog; thinking of old Candy‘s dog. Society doesn‘t care about those people and keeps a distance.

There are few in society who try to help and accept those people, however, they do not understand them completely either. Just some individuals (like Slim) have the ability, patience and empathy, we all should have, to accept and understand shortcomings of people like Lennie.

Greetings (Great)
Adrienne, Jacqueline and Manuel

Character analysis of Candy

Character analysis- Candy

Candy is the oldest man on the ranch, he's the swamper. His job is actually the least important one and that's how he feels as well. He's missing one of his hands, so he's handicapped in doing important things. His age is also seen in his appearance: He's tall, but stoop-shouldered, he doesn't look fit or happy, because he knows what being the oldest man on the ranch means. The old man in jeans and with a broom in his hand is the owner of an old dog. Between the two of them, there's a huge resemblance: Both of them are old, not fit and not useful, both are handicapped. One difference is, that the other guys of the ranch talk about all these bad things of the dog in front of Candy, but they don't talk about Candy like this. Even though they don't say it directly, Candy feels like they think about him in the same way like they do about the dog. They complain about how badly the dog stinks, that he isn't able to eat and that he's just laying around in the way, he's a burden for everyone. Even though he knows about his possible fate, he's an extremely nice person. He doesn't feel like being useless or being a burden.

His dog is his family, the only thing he has left, he's a constant companion. Since the dog has been a little puppy, Candy has been his owner, he feels connected to him. Just like he doesn't see the dog the way the other guys do, he doesn't see himself as an useless men. He sees the dog like it was in its prime, how good, useful, hard-working, faithful, loyal and intelligent it was. Candy sees the best possible in his companion, he tries to think in the best possible way.

The issue of the other men is that they forgot about the past. How hard-working the dog and also Candy were in their prime. They delete these memories out of their minds and just accept how it is nowadays: Both of them are old and because of that they want to get rid of the dog, and maybe also of Candy.

Beside all of this issues with the thoughts about him, he tries to be as cheerful as possible. His smile's all over his face, he's polite, gentle and friendly. He tries to help everyone, at least the ones he likes. This is seen as he tries to help George and Lennie to adapt as soon as possible to the farm, so they don't get into any trouble with the other guys.

Candy likes being around people, having good relationships and talking to them, the social contact is important to him. When he first heard about George's and Lennie's dream of having an own ranch, he was fascinated. Without any second thought, he offers his help to the two of them. During his whole working-career on the ranch, he has been saving money, and now he wants to contribute this money, so the dream can be realized. Even though this money is the only thing he has left, he would contribute it. This shows how important this is for him, having the guarantee of a save future which he can spend with people he like. This guarantee is important to him because he's scared of loosing his job on the ranch because of his handicap and the age.

He would do anything necessary for realizing the dream of an own ranch, because in a society Steinbeck describes, there is no place for an old, crippled man like him. The young people want to get rid of old, useless people or even animals. One way is shooting them like they did it with the dog and the other way is putting them into an old age home. But for Candy this is no acceptable solution, it would be like a prison. He tries to escape from this form of society. 

Best regards,

Lisa and Michelle F.

No Grammar at Last!

Hello everybody!

Last week was more literature than grammar. In fact there was no grammar at all, so a great week;). On Monday we listened to "Poetry and Power", a speech by John F. Kennedy, and analysed it. Then on Wednesday we worked on our characterisations of "Of Mice and Men" characters, in Groups. Some Groups were very productive, others...well...less productive.
In half-classes we talked about our oral grades and began to discuss our new novel, "Animal Farm".
We hope you enjoy the rest of the week:)

Michelle S. and Isabel

Dear all - as you're working on your Of Mice and Men analyses, here something two of my G2B students and I found online: Steinbeck's classic tale as facebook newsfeed (not to be taken seriously - think "satire"). Enjoy! Your "Miss"

http://thewallmachine.com/iyuUf2.html

Beards

Hey here is my speech about beards.
I'm giving you a Dropbox link if you want to see it in full quality.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/rl3dt3tqswnhl5k/Speech.English.mp4

Great
Alex

My Speech

About downloading Media

Enjoy; I am open for comments

Thanks for watching
Manuel

Hey guys

Have a look at the vote, located on the right side of the blog! ;) Please vote!

About Movie-Night, Speeches and the new book (11.11- 15.11)

A week full of talking and watching

And again a week full of interesting things.

Beside an intense argument between Miss Nyffenegger and Alex about "how many slides should a presentation supporting a speech contain?" we got, after finishing our first English novel, our new book "Animal farm". (Miss Nyffenegger won the argument ;) )

On Tuesday in the evening we had our Movie-Night. We watched the movie of "Of Mice and Men". We all enjoyed the cakes, muffins and appetizers some girls and Miss Nyffenegger brought. The pizza we ordered was rather a disappointment because of its price and size.

This week was the week of the speeches. Everybody had to talk and convince the others. We heard various speeches and all of them were good up to brilliant and touching. Think you're going to be able to watch some of them uploaded to the blog soon. The topics were various; from "Growing a beard", "Sport" to  "death penalty".

Have a look at the upcoming speeches and enjoy them!

Great Gideon & Manuel

About cooking and NawiTech-day (4.11 - 8.11)

An interesting and scientific week:

Hey guys, this week on monday we had one of our famous "Group discussion". The original topic was school, but then we digressed via Manuel's statement (Only women should learn how to cook at school) to the discussion whether Miss Nyffenegger should offer a cooking course for Variowoche next year or not.

In half classes we made some final talks about our book "Of Mice and Men".

On Wednesday, sadly, there was no English class. But we had the possibility to visit various scientific places and universities. For example at ETH, we had the opportunity to have a look at particle accelerators and at some pieces of "Ötzi" or listening to a presentation of a Nobel prize winner about quantum physics. 

Some spent the day at Technorama or at other universities. There were many different options.

Pieces of "Ötzi"

Great Gideon & Manuel

About brains, twilight and mice & men

Hi everyone

This week (28.10.-01.11.) was quite easy, because on Monday and on Wednesday we discussed our listening comprehension test. Some students faught about every single point and that was a bit exhausting for Miss Nyfenegger (and not just for her). But on Wednesday we also talked about books we had read so far and how they have influenced our way of looking at things, this was fun. We found out that Manuel was born as a genius and that Eike likes Twilight. And as to Twilight: Miss Nyfenegger told us that Twilight is like a 'Happy End mix' of Pride and Prejudice and Romeo and Juliet; such a cheating.
In the half class we finished discussing 'Of Mice and Men'. Now we've finally read our first English novel, what a feeling.

Greetings,
Alina & Meret

Having good and bored time at the old expensive Cafeteria during a break

Great Eike, Gideon and Manuel

Hello guys :)
I promised to show you some pictures of England and my exchange.

Chester - The big town 15 minutes away, from the village I live called Mickle Trafford. In Chester are a lot of different shops and on the weekend  there are a lot of people. For me the town looks like in a fairytale :)

 Helsby High School

 Every wednesday we have these assemblies in the big dinning hall. Here you can see the chairs for the assembly, but to be honest, it is often boring but it is obligatory. 

The big dinning hall if we have break or lunch -  it is like in a jungle :)

My timetable - it is a bit confusing but basically we have five periods/ lessons per day and after one week we have timetable 2

The big fields of the school

My new home

My own room 

My view out of the window

Rain- Even if the sun is shining in the morning and you think the wheater will be good, it rains almost every day. 

My hostsister Viki and me 

The cat Fibi - She is so cute.


Have great time in school :)

Before the Holidays...

Hi everyone:)
Here's just a quick reminder of what we did in our English lessons in the last week before the holidays:

We looked at and completed most of the excercises on pages 52 and 53 of our student work books. We also looked at the education vocabulary on page 150. In our half-classes we carried on with discusing our novel, Of Mice of Men.

We hope everyone had a fun vario week and great holidays:)

Meryem and Isabel

Elena in England :)

Hello guys :)
I am sorry that I haven't written earlier but I am very busy here in England. Anyway now I have time to write and tell you a bit about my exchange. =) I am really happy here in England and I wish I could stay longer than just half a year, because the time passes very quickly. I think I have the best hostfamily ever. I live together with my hostmother and my hostfather and my hostsister from Hungary. I also met the children of my hostparents, but they don't live in our house, because they are 19 years old and 22 years old and go to the university. Our hostparents are very easy and we don't have to help a lot in the household. My hostsister is lovely and we can talk about everything. I am glad to have her, because the whole exchange makes just more fun. I have my own room and it is so cute. It was the room of the daughter and that's the reason why the most things in it are pink and red =)
In England are a lot of things different than in Switzerland especially the school system. I only have 4 subjects, which I could choose. I chose photography, media studies, english language and history. No sciences and no gym :) The school starts at 8.45 o'clock in the morning and finishs at 15.05 o'clock in the afternoon. During the year we never write tests, we just have a big exam in the end of january and also in june. For me it is literally like vacation. The teachers are all very young except of my male photography teacher, but he is really funny. In every subject we have two different teachers and mostly two different themes of the subject. That's the reason why we often have a lot of homework but it's fine. This weekend I have written an essay of three pages for history about Russia between 1924 and 1930. I has taken hours..... :)
I have learned a lot of new words in English and I've already started to pronounce the words in British english. I just love the english accent.
Everybody told me that I will miss the bread in England, but I have to say I don't miss it. There is a bread called "Crumpet", maybe some of you know it and  you have to toast it but it's really good. :)
At the moment the wheater is really cold and windy. I always wear a lot of clothes, because the school doesn't turn on the heaters until november. I hope they will turn on the heaters in the near future.
My holidays start next week and I will go to Liverpool for the first time.  I am really excited :))

Maybe I will post some pictures, so you could see how I life here in Chester in the north of England :)
I wish all of you a really good start in school tomorrow :))
Best regards
Elena

Hello guys!

We hope you enjoyed your Vario-week and your holidays! We did! :D
We're a bit late but we thought it could be a good idea to write something about our Vario-week.
In this week, Jaqueline, Manu, Gidi and us ( Timna and Michelle S.), learned a lot about how to groove and a little bit how to do improvisations on our instruments. Every morning began with rhythm exercises. After this, we rehearsed some songs. The songs were quite cool and really groovy and we all liked them. During the song "Guantanamera" we even had to dance Salsa because one of our teacher loved to teach us some Salsa steps. By the way Manu was the chosen one for doing the "claves" (a very important rhythm which was the basic for all other musician there). We were really proud of him. Finally, in the end of the week, we had two gigs. The first one was quite spontaneous because we met Miss Kuenz and she wanted to hear us playing so we (there weren't all of the group... just us from our class and Serge)  did a little gig only for her. Because of this little gig we were almost late to our "real" gig at the Zentrumsplatz in Wettingen.
But all in all, it was a very nice week with a good gig at the end and we had a lot of fun together! :)

Here some pics from the last day:

Many greetings

Timna & Michelle S.  :)

The G1C (G2C) Haka

Hope you all enjoy Autumn break - here's a first treat, because some of you have been at work on this blog ;-). Ameet, Eike, and Ben - giving their very best!
Cheers, your "Miss"

Hello from Arkansas

Hey guys. I have been here in Norman, Arkansas for more than one month. For me it is unbelivable and it is awesome here. They people here are so nice and I have a very good time.

 This is my lovely host family: My mum Ginger, my brother Braden (21), my sisters Bailey (left, 20) and Kobie (right, 15). There are a very good family for me. Of course it is different to my family in Switzerland, sometimes that is good and sometimes it is not so good. From Monday to Friday it is just my mother, Kobie and I because the other two are at college. Sometimes they come over on weekend. On the picture we have been on a wedding in Dallas, Texas.

Here in Arkansas it looks simillar to Switzerland. Of course everything is bigger., except my town. Norman is very very small. Here are huge forests, fields or lakes like the Lake Ouachita. It is very pretty. The forests are very important for the people here because their biggest hobby is hunting. Almost every guy is addicted of hunting. It is usual here to have a couple of different guns. There are even some guys at school, they skip some days school to go hunt. For these guys it is also unthinkable that huntig is not very important  in Switzerland.

This is my school. The CHHS: Caddo Hills High School. It is very small. There are just about 250 students from 9th to 12th grade. That is pretty cool because everbody knows everbody and it is like a huge family. Here you can do basketball, and cross country (runn ing). I am in the basketballteam. Although I am almost the worst of the team it is a lot of fun. We have practice evey day after school. Besides me there are ten other exchange students from Brazil, Spain, Mexico, Germany, France, China and South Korea. Sometimes I feel like I am on a International school but we have a lot of fun together. Here you can chose your classes. So I have every day the same eight classes. My classes are English, US-history, International Travel, FACTS (family and consumer sciences), Child Development, Algebra 2, Drama and Basketball. In some classe we do something and some classes are just to hang out. 

This is the fair of the Montgomery county. Here this is a big attraction. You can do some rides with stuff like the ferris wheel. I had a lot of fun because there have been many other students. Today a part of the fair will be the rodeo. 

Last weekend we have been to a football game of the Razorbacks. This is the the footbalteam of the University of Arkansas, a college which is placed three hours away in Fayetteville. The Razorbacks is the famous team here in Arkansas, because they don't have a team in the NFL. 

The game was awesome, because to be live at a game is a highlight. And after my brother told me little bit about the rules of football it was more interesting. We had a  lot of fun. 

I hope I gave you a little impression of my life here and I wish you first a good vario week and then a very nice break.

Love

Nora

Hey guys!!
We hope you're enjoying your exchange! :)
Last week, sadly there weren't as much English lessons as usual. So there was just the test about all tenses and other weird stuff. The class hadn't really a good feeling about it. And our feelings were right: As Miss Nyffenegger told us today, it wasn't really our best test.... So let's move to something else ;)
Tomorrow will be the 5km Marathon, so you guys from the exchange are very, veery lucky that you don't have to run too (especially in this rainy and cold weather -.- )  ;) . But after this marathon and two other exciting tests, we will finally have holidays :D By the way, would you mind to put some pictures of your exchange into this blog? It would be very nice to hear or see something from you :)

Happy Birthday Bianca and Elena D. :) we wish you all the best for the new year of your life!:))

 

Week of the 2. september

On monday we talked about the SoNaFe. We were talking about how our Bar and the Sonatopia went. By the way we had profit. After talking about the SoNaFe we started repeting tenses. But rather then that we didn't do anything else on Monday. On wednesday we talked about how we arn't very active in our Blog and that G2b are way more active and theirs looks better but I bet we can change that :)

Luckily the weather at the sonafe was really great. At the beginning with blue sky and later in the night with a delightful latesummer breeze. At 7 o'clock when the gates opened and the SONAFE officially started our bar was not visited often and we started worrying about our concept. But with time also came the rush on our thai and nachos. World Record suspicious were we taking new orders and filling in thai and nacho cups. But our bar was not the only masterpiece of understanding the needs of the young crowd, an especially unique highlight was the Sonatopia bar wich attracted magically the crowd into its futuristic party paradise. Alltogether this years sonafe had a greater atmosphere and spirit than the previous. And finally we could fortunately gain a big profit out of our first SONAFE bar! But brace yourself for next year!

For more pictures visit the www.kswe.ch homepage.

 The legendary Aaron & Ben

Have you guys ,while enjoying your exchange, already seen the new english class-chat?

Our pick-nick in the park right before summer break. Hope you're all well, wherever you are. Keep us posted! BTW: I do remember that the guys brought the lion-share of the goodies - next time the ladies will be in charge of food. Look for an interesting post after our legendary SONAFE this Friday.
Cheers, your English teacher

Hi everyone,

So this is our first post and we'd like to collect what we did until today, the 28th August.

- We covered the grammar section 3C on p. 134-135.
- On p. 44 we solved the exercises "I'm a failure".
- On p. 46 we did the Vocabulary section with the -ed/-ing adjectives.
- On p. 47 we read the text "Never give up".
- In class we talked about "I'm able to", "I would be able to" and "I'll never be able to".
- We read and discussed the first two chapters of our new book "Of Mice and Men".

There you go,
Lisa and Franziska

We'll miss you guys! Have a great time on your exchange!! :)