One week in and I'm finally getting this started.  Hopefully this blog serves as a way for me to communicate more fully our family's adventure living in Switzerland for 7 months.  That is my goal.  Since we have been here a week, I'm not sure where to start in telling this story...I think I will start with today and maybe when things are a little more boring (routine) I can fill in the first week.
    Today is Saturday, 18 August 2012.  We have been in St. Gallen for 8 days now- we arrived last Saturday.  So by now our bodies should be completely set to our new time zone (1 day for every hour changed). We slept so little on the plane and did so much that first day, it doesn't seem like any of us has had much jet lag. 
   This morning the kids and I took their bikes from the awesome toy library (I know, how awesome is a TOY library!?) we visited yesterday to the closest park- nothing more than a ping pong table (there are lot of these in public places, but I never see them used) and a sand pile and some flat concrete- a rarity in our neighborhood. this was an adventure because it is further UP our (very steep) street. Jackson pushed his bike the whole way- that was the deal or wouldn't go.  Kenny took this time to look over school notes in preparation for Monday.

    We rummaged for lunch back in our flat because even though I have shopped 3 times and spent over 250 CHF (short for Swiss Francs) we still were about out of food (and my parents took us out to eat a lot while they were with us the past week).  BTW- the Dollar to CHF exchange rate is not quite 1 to 1.  It's somewhere around $.95 to the Franc. More on money and cost of living later.
   Later in the afternoon we walked downtown to check out St. Gallerfest, the Farmer's Market, and do some grocery shopping. 
   St. Gallerfest takes place in the pedestrian shopping district in the Old Town area. It appears to be beer stand after beer stand with a food (mostly Asian) stand here and there. And at every intersection or open area there is music.  Most of this was pretty dead at 2 in the afternoon, but we did find grilled meat on a stick-I don't know what kind of meat but it was great. We also ran into some Christians doing some community service/evangelizing- handing out bottles of water. One guy spoke English and in talking to him, we learned about a church that has an English translation service twice a month.  I'm really excited about this because not everybody will be speaking English so we can meet some locals, but we can still understand what is going on! and they have a children's church- double score! 

  After checking out some traditional looking/sounding singers and lounging in the grass outside the Cathedral, we went grocery shopping. Correction. I went grocery shopping :)  Kenny watched the kids outside, which I know was a chore for him and I sooo appreciated it.  I am somewhat faster and much less stressed shopping by myself. (Farmer's Market must have been canceled due to the festival) I managed to spend less than 100 CHF for the first time. Okay, the second time, but the first time I went shopping I had only 10 minutes and I still spent 50CHF.
   We caught the bus partway up the hill to our house and hoofed it the rest of the way up. And there really isn't anything too interesting to say about the rest of our evening.  Besides this is long enough.  I have so much to say about living here and what set up is here, but I'm pretty sure there will be time for that later.