Saturday and Sunday, September 20/21, Day 8 and 9, entry 1
We got the chance to sleep in today, which was very nice because we had to get up pretty early throughout the whole week, and we didn’t feel any jetlag anymore. Unlike on weekdays, we had a large and stress-free breakfast.
After breakfast, we went to the Galvin Middle School to play basketball and soccer. Today was actually the first time getting somewhere on bike, and I thought it was a cool alternative to getting dropped off every day. At 2 p.m. we got lunch at an Asian restaurant in downtown Wakefield.
We then had to head back home as we had planned to go to an amusement park called Cannobie Lake Park. The park is located in the state of New Hampshire, so it took us about 30 minutes to get to the scream fest. We had a lot of fun, and I thought that the park displayed a great mix of a Halloween theme and rollercoasters. At 11 p.m. the park closed, so we headed back home and went straight to bed.
Entry 2
This weekend was really nice. On Saturday, we had brunch at a typical American diner, the kind I had only ever seen in movies or TV shows. That made it a pretty cool experience.
Afterwards, we prepared and decorated the house because our host parents had planned a “fiesta.” They are from Guatemala and Chile, and since both countries had just celebrated their Independence Day a few days earlier, it turned into a family gathering. There was music, lots of delicious food, and overall it was a really good time. To end the evening, we watched the live concert of the Puerto Rican singer Bad Bunny, who is really popular worldwide, on TV.
On Sunday, Ada and I went shopping with our host brother and our friend Alice. His mother is so sweet, she drives us everywhere we want to go. We went to Cambridge and visited a thrift store called “The Garment District”. It’s a pretty big store with lots of great second-hand clothes. Ada and I bought Levi’s jeans that looked practically brand new. After thrifting for quite a while, we walked to Boston and spent some time there before our host mom picked us up.
Finally, we went to the beach with our friends to watch the sunset and have dinner together. It got late, so we headed back home since we all had to wake up early the next day to start our second week here in the Boston area.
Entry 3
Today is Sunday, September 21, 2025 and I had to wake up at 4:45 in the morning to go to Senior Sunrise. We went to the beach to see the sun rise and took some fabulous pictures. For me this was really special because even though it wasn‘t a mandatory school event most of the Seniors showed up and had a good time together, which I think would be different in Switzerland.
At noon, Nelia and her host sister‘s family picked me up to go to Gloucester. I fell asleep in the car because I was so tired from my early morning but it was definitely worth it. It was a beautiful beach with a good view on the ocean. We were reading and enjoying the ocean breeze even if it was a little chilly. It made me sad that we don’t have anything like that in Switzerland. But maybe it makes the whole thing more special. My host sister came to pick me up after ,work and we got ice cream at her favorite place where she used to work. When my host sister and me drove home in the evening. she told me that she is so used to having a beach near by and that she couldn’t believe how special it was for me.
In the evening, we made a fire in her garden to make S’mores. It was actually my first time eating a real S‘more and I was very excited about it. They tasted delicious even though I burned my marshmallow.
Entry 4
The weekend was finally here! I had been looking forward to it the whole week because I knew that we (my hostsister, her bestfriend and her exchange student) were going to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. The father of the bestfriend was driving us through the beautiful fall-landscape of New England. When we arrived, I was impressed by the huge museum. When we entered we couldn‘t decide where to go first because there was that much to see.
The museum seems to be organised differently than for example the art museum in Basel, because it is organized not necessarily by era or style but by galleries, meaning by the owner of the art pieces shown in that gallery. That meant that you could find a Noguchi sculpture almost right next to a painting from the 18th century. What I liked the most was „the little dancer of fourteen years“ statue, which you can see in the picture.
After we had a delicious lunch we went to downtown Wakefield to get ice cream in a really old ice cream shop, which looked like one you could see in the movies.
In the evening we went to a party of friends of my host family's, we had a lot of good food and were playing some fusball, ping pong and billiard in the basement.
On Sunday, I had a rather chill morning, just reading and falling asleep again, because this whole week was despite (or because of!) all the exciting things we did, really tiring. In the afternoon, we went to the Garment District, which is a huge secondhand store. In the evening, we cooked dinner together and went to bed early to be ready for another exciting week.