花栗鼠の旅遊誌

 Finally, I am going home.

  Two and  half months in Europe, I miss my family and friends in Taiwan already. Never do I being so homesick before, it is not that I dont like here(it might be my favorite country in all countries so far I have been to), but because the first month in Luzern, I alway have friends coming from Taiwan talking and traveling together, suddenly when it is time to work in the farm, I have no one to talk and far away from city, internet and everything.

  I am really lucky to have two very nice Swiss host family. The one in Luzern, which makes me feel very much like home, with similar lifestyle of my own family and similar interests to do together. Here in the first month,  I experienced swimming in the lake for the first time, like being in a big natural swimmin pool, seeing up is the blue sky and around me are mountains and beautiful sceneries. At the end of my stay in Switzerland, I got a chance to visit my home mother Cecile again, it was so good, we talked like old friends, and she made me a lot of delicious food, which are all my favorite, the Eintoph, the Hazelnuss apple pie, at the moment I feel like in heaven and could go immediately without regrets.

  The food in Bruendler's house are so so so delicious, yummy~~ My home mother Cecile and I try to do spring roll the first time, turns out they explode in the oil pot, so we have our Malaysian neighber, Selina to help us with the disaster, and it ended to be great spring roll. My home father Markus loves it!!

   
  The second month I started working in a small bio farm in Graubuenden which located in Verdabbio, a small mountain village very near to Bellinzona. It is the Italian part of Switzerland, people speak italian but my farm family they can speak German, French, Italian and English all very well, pretty amazing!! The farm life frankly speaking is not really for me, I had a hard time to adjust the life style there, you have to learn being lonely and enjoy with the nature and animals. For me who grow up in the city, even though I am studying Agronomy and did farming in the school before, still not easy to get up early in the morning, milking the sheep, weeding the garden, feeding animals, collecting hays for winter etc. However, I learned so much, more than I can expected, I think mostly is because of the big differences between me and the farm life.

  Hard to imagine that nowadays it is still possible to lead a good life with only a little money, even in a country like Switzerland with everything so expensive, things 10 times more expensive than Taiwan. Markus Lanfranchi, is my farm home father, quite and extraordinary farmer and pioneer of Organic farming. In his farm, which is very small scale both in Switzerland itself and in Taiwan, with seperated lands for about 3000 square meter, but contain crops of potato, tomato, peper, spinach, bean, corn, fig tree, apple tree, pear tree, a lot more and each kind of crops has more than 15 varieties, for tomato as an example has 36 varieties in his farm.

  The pepers and tomatos looks so colorful, makes me feel happy even just look at them. oh, and there's one day that I cut a lot of pepers, and turns out I had a allergic reaction. My skin looks terrible and very itchy. and this is the potato.

  After two months staying in Switzerland, the first big change is that I start tp love cooking and I think it will last even when I back at home, where normally dont cook myself. Also, learn to enjoy me everyday life, I think later on I will give myself more time to travel and do things I am really interested in like going bicycling, mountain hiking, or some extremely sports if possible.  Moreover, I realize how difficult and lonely it feels without closing friends, spending more times with my dearest family and friends will be a very important thing back to Taiwan. I make good friends when I was in Switzerland, especially with other Taiwanese girls. we spend one day in Emily and Grace's home family and we cook some taiwanese food together. 蕃茄炒蛋、螞蟻上樹、蔬菜炒飯!!

  This is another unforgettable experience, the memory will no doubt be something precious in my life and will think about it every now and then. I thank everyone who ever help me, it is not easy to be a foreigner, and I was very luck always have someone there to give me a hand, also, my parents, if it is not them, I couldn't have the chance to go out see the world. Others, I want to say to Vivian, how precious to have u traveling with me, I will never forget that we went to 3000m mountains and freezed to die, stupid us but also a thing to remember for a lifetime. Bye bye Swiss, bye bye my dear Swiss family, I will certainly come back one day.