Both luckily and unluckily a majority of Swiss citizens speak English. In this way I never felt as though there was a struggle due to language barriers, for which I am incredibly thankful. However I fell in love with the country and wanted very badly to learn the language of this beautiful country. I would try to order in Swiss German as a means of practice and would be met with a friendly English reply with the intention of being helpful. These friendly natives were not just present when I was trying to practice but also when I was struggling. The one way in which language became a struggle was in the grocery stores, however, I was always met with friendly help from native speakers. Early on in my exchange I was attempting to buy brown sugar and was standing helplessly with my google translate taking pictures of bags to find brown sugar. As I was scanning a bag of brown flour, a friendly swiss man came up to me and offered to help me find everything I needed and taught me a couple of helpful words. As an overwhelmed American I am very thankful for the help of kind Swiss natives who bridged the language barrier gap. In my housing, I was lucky enough to make great friends with German and Swiss exchange students who were very enthusiastic to help me learn. They helped me with more fun and casual phrases than what I learned in my German course. Now that I have had to say goodbye to my friends, I can confidently say my favorite German phrase is “I love you/ Ich liebe dich”.  They would help me by teaching me their favorite words and by reading signs and papers with me as we passed by. Here is a sign, I was very proud to translate on my own as we passed by it. While I was happy to translate the sign, I was less happy that it was raining and the sign said open during good weather. 

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