Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Goats and pigs

Yikes!  It's Wednesday!  What have we been up to?  Here are some of the cool highlights:
Last Saturday, the 22nd, I left the house- alone!  Again! Second time out was a much bigger success than the first. It helped that Eli slept almost all morning. I attended a Day Away Seminar. English speaking women!  Traditional Continental/Swiss breakfast! And a great speaker who focused on overcoming frustration. I have had some of that recently.  Really great morning. It was a rainy day so we just vegged out the rest of the day.
   Sunday, we finally made it to Peter and Paul Wildpark.  We tried once before, but only managed to find some nice woods for walking.  Sunday, we realized that those nice woods would have led to the Wildpark if we had gone up more. Oh well.  It was a nice little outing, if you block out the whining. The place is kind of zoo like, except only mountain goats, deer, and reindeer in the pens.


Wildcats too, but we couldn't see any.
 The creature in the background was Kenny's favorite "exhibit"
I taught the kids to traverse the hill, walk in a zigzag pattern. Jackson kept reminding me to "reverse the hill."
   On Monday, after leaving a distraught Jackson at kindergarten, Johanna and I met up with new friends. Noga and Ytomal (I have no idea how to spell them) are from Israel. They are the family of one of Kenny's classmates. They are only here for a week right now, but they will be back in December and are then staying through the end of the school in February. Ytomal is Johanna's age, but after playing again today (wednesday) I think he prefers Jackson.
    It was really windy Monday evening so the kids and Daddy finally got to fly a kite!  There is one in the toy box and they have tried several times, but never had wind. I wish I had a picture, but they were too far up the slug infested hill for my liking.
  Tuesday I finally accomplished something I meant to do weeks ago- got a doctor for the kids! Eli can finally start his shots. I had the help of my fabulous neighbor, Andrea. Who not only arranged for the doctor, but also called TWICE to the immigration office to help figure out our health insurance situation. The Swiss have national insurance, residents (like us) must participate in this insurance. The loophole (and it may only be for students) is if you can prove you have insurance and the Swiss find it comparable to their plan, then you don't have to buy theirs. I think we are in the clear.
 Jack and Jo borrowed awesome hats from the neighbors. Jackson spent Tuesday afternoon being Teacher Firefighter Jackson and Jo and I were his students.
   I also learned on Tuesday that for Jackson's final day of school before fall break, the class was going on a field trip to see cows!  This is an annual event, all over this region of Switzerland (maybe more of the country). The cows have been grazing in the Alps all summer, and the farmers bring them down to their farms. There is a sort of fair/competition where the winners get very large cow bells.  All the kindergartners go to watch. It's a public event so Jo and I invited Noga and Ytomal to join us and we all went and checked out the cows.  There were a few other farm animals there for the kids to pet. This was Ytomal's first time for seeing real pigs.



 Women in traditional dress
 Ytomal and Johanna with the bells
 Ringing the bells
 Traditionally dressed men (at 10 in the morning) enjoying a beer and singing, or at least harmonizing. No real words involved.

   The overarching event that has permeated this entire week is the much anticipated arrival of not one, but two Grandma's. Diane and Debbie will be here next Wednesday and two weeks from today I expect to have extremely rotten children from all the spoiling.  I might just be rotten also, my list of things I get to do (kid free!) while they are here keeps growing (date night! haircut!, grocery shopping!) We even have a countdown on the fridge.
  

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