Lucerne

After torturing the kids with tours of IKEA and Media Mart all day Saturday, we headed out on Sunday to the city of Lucerne. It's about a 45 minute train ride from Zurich. We didn't have a lot of time before our train, so we popped into Burger King for a quick, cheap lunch. Well, it was quick. I wouldn't call $47 for two adults meals and three kids meals cheap. The food tasted just like home. I doubt fast food will be a regular event.

We walked around Lucerne for a bit. The kids bitterly complained that all we ever do is walk around cities. Their feet hurt. It was hot. There was nothing interesting to do. Sound familiar? I noticed on the map that there appeared to be a "Great Wall of Switzerland/Lucerne" with a photo opportunity spot. So, figuring that tired, cranky children who didn't want to walk around town just needed some hill work -- we ventured out. It took a group effort. John got us into the right neighborhood. Brendan did some scouting work by running up a hill to see if there was "anything interesting" at the top. Finally, C.J. seized control of the map and got us going the right way. We were just about there, peering into people's private steps, when a nice older gentleman helped us find the right steps. Sure enough, we found a fantastic wall and series of towers to explore. The kids insisted that we climb every step of every single tower. Who needs knee therapy when you can just do about 500 tower steps? We did get some great views. You can see the slideshow and read the commentary here:

Lucerne pictures

On Monday, I got to visit IKEA again. Seems I completely destroyed a pot that was in our temporary living house. I burned popcorn, destroying the inside. That was probably salvageable, but not wanting to put a hot pot on the counter, I rested it on a towel. Who knew that microfiber towels melted? The entire towel melted and melded to the bottom of the pot. I didn't want to risk Swiss Jail by leaving the apartment with one less pot, so I took myself to IKEA to replace it. It was a lot less crowded on a weekend. I see myself visiting IKEA regularly over the next few months. Besides needing closets/wardrobes, we are going to need to supplement the furniture over here. We no longer have our great built ins!

C.J. brought home a permission slip for his first field trip. It read, "Please send a packed lunch and your child's passport." That's a new one for us. He's off to Germany for the day to visit a museum about ancient civilization. Being a great big brother, he was sure to share this news with Brendan. I'm sure you can imagine the manner in which it was shared.

Brendan had the last laugh. At his Parents' Night last night, I was informed that his class would be going on their first field trip of the year at the end of September -- an overnight excursion to a chalet in the mountains. The idea is for the kids to only speak German for 24 hours. They will be matched with native/fluent speakers so that they have a chance to actually say something. To give them something to do/discuss, they'll have arts & crafts, hiking, cooking, singing, etc. They even get a night hike (which was the highlight of C.J's outdoor ed last year). Needless to say, Brendan has a bit of ammunition when C.J. talks about his trip to Germany.

I'm really liking the homework situation over here! Brendan's teacher, like Abbie's, feels that kids need less structured time at home after working hard in school all day. Brendan will need to write in a journal each night and read, but otherwise, he will have very little work at home. Even spelling words are practiced at school. The teacher said that they are no longer working on random lists of words -- they will be learning a spelling rule or two each work and the goal will be for them to apply it at the end of the week. She feels that when you give a kid a list of words for a test, they learn them for Friday and then can't spell them in creative writing. She hopes the "rules" will take them further. Like Abbie, Brendan doesn't have a math "book" per se. He is also taught math through the use of games and manipulatives. It sounds ideal. I didn't get to sign up to volunteer in the classroom, but I will be an assistant Class Parent with two of Brendan's friends' moms. They both seemed very friendly and want to schedule regular class coffee dates.