Athletics

Brendan is on the Athletics (Track & Field) team for his school, and they had their first (only?) meet yesterday. He had fun running his races (hurdles, 60M, 200M, relay) and throwing the javelin for his field event. For anyone who might be worried about a 9 year old throwing a javelin -- rest assured that it was the nerf version. Unfortunately, the nerf was really affected by wind, so the result were all over the field. (pun intended)

Game Winning Goal

C.J. played in his first soccer game for his club team here in Switzerland. It was a milestone night for two reasons. First, his team won. It's been a long time since he has been on a winning team. Second, he scored the game winning goal. It was right after his mother was complaining that he wasn't "in the game" and was just "watching." Hmph. Guess he proved me wrong. The final score was 4-2, and C.J. scored the 3rd goal for his team. C.J. has historically played left defense or sweeper, but he was left midfielder for this game, so he had a lot more scoring chances. It warmed our hearts to see his team members all congratulate him after the goal. They even shouted play instructions to him in English. C.J. is glowing in the aftermath; the goal really boosted his game confidence.

He played on his practice field, under the lights. It's an all weather sports complex complete with several changing rooms and a snack bar. BUSC can only dream of a such a facility. Something tells me they place a higher value on good soccer fields in this country.

There's even a perk for me. The club keeps all the uniforms and distributes them before each game. That means no uniform laundry for this mom!

Oh, and in case you were wondering, there was practice the night before the game -- even though it was hailing, thundering, and lightning. Apparently, the team waited 15 minutes for the lightning to go away and then went out to practice. After all, they don't melt in the rain -- or so I've been informed.

My Favorite Things

I'm not going to tell you where we were today or what tour we took, but I have confidence that you'll figure it out.

Anyone up for a boat ride?
Or perhaps you'd rather have some pink lemonade on the patio or a waltz on the balcony?
I have confidence that 7 kids would put me way over the edge...
I am 16 Going on 17 (It just sounds so much better than 39 going on 40...)
The Hills are Alive (After 3 weeks of rain, I'd sure hope so! Funny how nobody mentioned this rainy season on our Look-See.)

Anyone want to get married? I know a church with a long aisle. Well, actually, it's about 1/4 the length that you probably think.
Do-Re-Me
Me, A Name I Call Myself
When the rain comes...

Oil Delivery

This morning was oil delivery day. In typical Swiss fashion, they showed up at 6:40am for a delivery window of 7-8am. I am really going to struggle with the U.S. delivery windows when we return. We have never had a person come 5 minutes past the start of their delivery period here. The more typical experience is for them to be a few minutes early.

We burned 2800 liters of oil this winter. I was worried that we'd use an embarrassingly large volume of oil, but it looks like average consumption. Phew. I had to give the delivery man the house "record book" which has every delivery since the house was built in 1976. It doesn't look like the bill will break us either. By my calculations, we'll owe around 2,500 CHF. Never having bought oil before, I had no idea what to budget.

When the delivery man first told (showed) me that we used 2800 liters, I thought he was saying that I owed him 2800 CHF. Cash. Right then. (If you've never been to Switzerland, trust me when I say this scenario is not as far fetched as you might imagine.) Anyway, I was taking deep breaths and trying to explain in my very limited German that I didn't have cash. I am, we've learned to carry a lot of cash on us, but even pooling our resources, we wouldn't approach 2800 CHF. The delivery man finally realized what the crazy woman feared, and clearly said, "Liters. Liters." Yippee. I'll wait for the pink payment slip to arrive in the post.

The grandmother next door arranged for the delivery (as well as our septic clean out last week). I am so thankful for this woman! She even knew exactly where we could find the aforementioned record book. Oddly, her daughter, who has also lived in the house for 34 years, had no idea where our tank was located or how the pipe was connected. (The landlord showed us how to access the tank, and we figured out the connection on our own this morning.) I, on the other hand, can already tell you that the neighbor's tank is accessed from the garage and the connection is in the same location. I guess I'm just nosy that way.

Ms. Meyer

Way back in March, I chaperoned a field trip for Abbie's class. As a testament to my blogging backlog, I just found the picture on my camera. Here's Abbie with two of her best friends and her 1st grade teacher.

Globetrotters

To celebrate C.J.'s 12th birthday, he invited four friends to attend a Harlem Globetrotters game in Zurich.

The boys came to our house first for some x-box, pizza, and birthday brownies.




John drove the boys to the train station and they all took the train into Zurich. Since I had only bought the tickets a week in advance, the boys were in the back row. Guess I could have opted for the cheaper seats, huh?


It just gave them some more room to dance to YMCA:


After the game, the boys were able to meet the players and get some autographs. Brendan even got Big Easy and Flight Time, who were on the Amazing Race.

All the boys had fun. Brendan and C.J. both told stories of stunts and jokes all night. Two of the boys in attendance were 2/3 of a set of triplets (the third being a girl, and not invited) whose dad had always dreamed of seeing the Globetrotters. He said he had planned on buying a single seat and going, but work got in the way. The other boys were Swiss and British. The Globetrotters were a great way to showcase a bit of American culture. And in a nod to Swiss culture, one of the boys took the train from Zurich to our house by himself. No need for parents to chauffeur these kids around!

Lest you think Abbie was neglected -- she and I stayed home and watched 101 Dalmations together. Abbie loved every minute. Except for when I fell asleep halfway through the movie.

Amos Visit

After Easter, we had our first non-related, overnight visitors -- the Amos girls! Christy brought the twins to see us and we all had a great time -- although they may conveniently "forget" their hiking shoes next time.

Day 1: Cheese Territory. Yes, I took lots of pictures, but we also went to the birthplace of Appenzeller Cheese. We started in the town Stein AR to visit their cheese factory. In reality, the "factory" was smaller than our local grocery store, but we did get to see the process. The kids and Christy also watched a great video that showed the entire process from cow to table. (John and I were off trying to figure out the best route to the town of Appenzell.)


The kids also enjoyed some time on the playground:




John and I had determined that we would need to take the bus back to St. Gallen to catch the train to Appenzell. Unfortunately, we had just missed the bus, so we didn't think we'd have a lot of time to explore the town. Our suggestion was to take a short, one hour hike around the area. Christy realized that Appenzell was "only" 7.6 km away, so she said we should just hike it.



4 hours later we arrived in Appenzell. First, you can't walk as fast on a single path trail as you do on a street. Second, Appenzell is a significantly higher elevation than Stein AR. (And, if you can prove otherwise -- no comments are necessary.) Third, we just may have taken a wrong turn or two along the way. It seems I left my hiking maps on the kitchen counter. Fortunately, Christy had brought us some Girl Scout cookies and I was smart enough to put them in my day pack. Abbie made it the entire four hours with a thin mint and gummi bear "stick". She was a real trooper! The kids even found some snow on the way. Of course, they threw the snowball down the hill, into a gully, knowing full well that our dog lives to fetch... but that's a story for another day.



We had a pizza dinner in the town of Appenzell, which is adorable. Unfortunately, all the cute stores were closed when we arrived. We made it home very late, and the girls said that they were up for anything the next day as long as they could (a) sleep in and (b) not hike.

Day 2: Taking their advice to heart, I suggested a short hike from our house to Lake Zurich and then a boat cruise to Rapperswil, a historic town at the bottom of the lake. This hike, we know very well. It's an easy, one hour, downhill hike. I even promised unique features: a dragon's cave, a princess' house, and inventoried rocks. (Yes, the accountants in the family just love that the rocks at the end of the hike have inventory control tags on them. The Swiss are nothing if not efficient. Except, when they aren't. But, again, I digress.)



We had fairly good weather while they were here -- no rain, but it was always hazy. I insisted that we had great views of the Alps from our town, but I don't think I was very convincing.

Day 3: Zurich, finally. We did a quick walk through Zurich. Just to make sure everyone got in their exercise, we suggested climbing the 183 (yes, they counted) steps to the top of Grossmunster, a 12th-century Romanesque ex-cathedral.

See the Alps behind those clouds? It's gorgeous, I swear.

Day 4: Lucerne. Somehow, I didn't take any pictures. My unfortunate kids had to return to school and John went back to work. The Amos girls and I headed off to Lucerne to see the historic wood bridges and the gorgeous views of the Alps. At least they saw the bridges! They did some tower climbing as well, but I stayed below to (supposedly) take pictures.

Day 5 Good-bye. We sure hope they come back to visit again!

Here's the link to their gallery

Secondary Open Morning

On April 15th, I went back to school. I became C.J. for the morning. And, I loved every minute of it! It made me wish I could be a student at ICS myself. Except, I wouldn't want to give up my husband, or the kids, or an income... or deal with puberty drama and hormones again. Hmm. Well, it sure seemed like a fun idea!

Instead of having a traditional Open House where your kids walk you from class to class, and you get all of 30 seconds to assess teaching styles, parents at ICS were given the opportunity to attend 4 classes. I chose Technology, Art, English, and Science.

In Technology, I fell in love with the teacher, a Miami-vice type guy whose screen saver is his adorable daughter. What's not to love? I'm sure this school-girl crush was just my way of getting the total experience of my 6th grade adventure. The Smart Board was my second love. All the parents were mesmerized by what this board could do. Those darn kids didn't seem to know how good they had it. Back in my day, teachers used chalk and you were lucky to have a computer in the school much less a whole classroom devoted to them! Wikipedia explains the Smart Board a bit better than I can:

The SMART Board interactive whiteboard is a large interactive whiteboard that uses touch technology to detect user input – e.g. scrolling, right mouse-click – in the same way normal PC input devices, such as a mouse or keyboard detect input. A projector is used to display a computer’s video output on the whiteboard, which then acts as a large touchscreen. The SMART Board typically comes with 4 digital pens, which use digital ink and replace traditional whiteboard markers.

The students were working on a presentation for their research of endangered species. They needed to include words, charts, and pictures on each slide.

The dreamy tech teacher suggested that I ditch my scheduled art class and attend C.J.'s class instead. (C.J. wasn't actually in my tech class. It turns out that he takes design tech instead of computer tech this year.)

I introduced myself to C.J.'s art teacher and explained that I would just observe from a corner, since he hadn't been expecting me. He immediately said, "Absolutely not! Every student in this class participates. And that includes you!" Then, he tossed me a hunk of clay and asked C.J. to show me what to do with it. Yes, C.J.'s is currently doing pottery in art. He was working on a great vase, while I got to do a thumb bowl. It was fun to be sculpting clay. The teacher commented that C.J. was a great pottery student -- he was able to get a thin shape and keep his vase line straight. (There were a few leaning towers of Pisa in the class.) I enjoyed having the opportunity to work side-by-side with C.J. while he told me about the class and his day. Supposedly the teacher was going to fire my bowl, C.J. was going to glaze it, and I would have a new work of art for our home, but my bowl hasn't shown up yet. Sigh.

Next up: recess. I'm not sure what C.J. did, but I made a bee-line for the parent's meeting spot where they served us tea and amazing chocolate chip cookies. (C.J. did mention that this part of the day was a departure from reality as they do not provide him with free cookies each day. They are, however, the same cookies they sell in the school cafeteria.) I believe the cookies were meant to provide us with energy for our stair workout. The middle school building is at least 4 stories, and classes alternated whether they were on the 4th floor or the 1st floor. I'm sure it's scheduled this way to stimulate the brain between classes, but it was a workout for many of the parents.

So, after my cookie, I trudged up my stairs to an 8th grade English class. I wanted to see C.J's teacher in action, but the only English class offered for the day was 8th grade. We started the class by embracing our inner Macbeth and recited lines to each other. Not remembering the play too well, I can only hope that I conveyed the right emotion in my line. From there, we had a free write for 7 minutes beginning with the words "Fear is..." The final exercise was to "write your own Macbeth act." We formed small groups, were given a short description of the scene we were to re-write and then got to work. Groups re-wrote their scene in any time period -- one group cast Macbeth as a mob boss, while another scene took place in an internet chat room. I had a brilliant suggestion for my group, but I can't recall it as this time. I just know it was absolutely brilliant.

My final class was science. This class involved another group exercise. In the first half of the class (it was a double period day, and I had only come for the second period), the class had broken up into small groups. Each group had become an expert on one of the earth's biomes: arctic, desert, grasslands, forest, mountains, and rain forest. For the second period, the groups were shuffled, with one "expert" from each biome in the new group. The experts taught the rest of the group about their biome, with a quiz at the end of the class. I had to quickly study up on grasslands, as I was the expert for this biome. I am proud to say that my group got every grasslands question correct on the quiz!

While the rest of the 6th graders went on to their 5th class of the morning, the parents all headed to lunch. The food was delicious, but I do understand why C.J. chooses to bring a lunch each day. The "good" food sells out quickly and the line can be long. C.J. mentioned that if you want a wrap, sandwich, or cookie, you need to buy it during the morning break.

It was a fun morning and I definitely learned a bit more about C.J.'s day. The school emphasizes hands on learning and lots of group work. I can't wait to be a student again next year. The best part of only going for a day? No homework for me!