Lions and Tigers and Barry!

Since I have not written anything all weekend, I have quite a few topics to choose from just for you, dear readers. To start, Jaime and Nick had their 7th birthday on Friday! This was a very exciting day for them. In the evening, their aunt, uncle, grandmother and cousins unexpectedly stopped by with some gifts. I was glad that their aunt spoke English because the grandma does not. I think that their aunt is Spanish because she was speaking this language to her daughter. Her daughter, by the way, was probably only about 3 years old and had the curliest hair! It was perfect tight ringlets! I was surprised at how glad I was when I heard them speaking Spanish because I am used to not knowing what people are saying around me when they speak in a foreign language. But I could actually figure out what they were talking about and this made me feel more comfortable.

The next day was the birthday party. Oh my! I have quite a few pictures that you can view on picasaweb. But I wanted to put a few on here for those of you who are not as computer literate as others..... :)

This is the family's little cabin up in the woods by their house. It does not look very nice here but it is actually a pretty neat little cabin. It is very small but there are picnic tables and a fire pit and a huge field for kids to run around. The walk up there took about 20-30 minutes with all the kids but a normal person could have done it a lot faster than this.

One nice thing about this day was that Rachel, another au pair for my host family's friends in Basel, joined us. She is from Salt Lake City and actually lived in Dallas, OR for awhile. She is the same age as me and came to Switzerland about a week after I got here. I enjoyed her company and we plan on doing some traveling together.

The food was delicious at the boys' party. Jana and Christian (in the picture) barbequed ribs that were very good! They also had sausage, of course!, and bread rolls. I tried this darker colored roll, which turned out to be some sort of pretzel but in a dinner roll form. I loved it!

There was also plenty of candy to go around. Chocolate francs and SpongeBob candy. After most of the kids walked back to where their parents could pick them up, I stayed at the little cabin with another family friend and her two kids. On a side note, I actually was originally supposed to look after these two, Kaisja and Noah, as well as the 3 Bergers but right before I got to Switzerland, Jana decided 5 kids was too much for one person. She was definitely right. As I was saying, when I stayed behind with these two kids and Sanja, Mia (the mother of the 2) pulled out a huge bag of marshmallows. The marshmallows here are a little different than in the States. They are flavored and colorful and differenty shaped. (But they are still very good, I actually prefer them to the white ones!) We decided to roast these marshmallows with the little bit of fire we had left going. Apparently roasting marshmallows is a worldwide thing.

I was a little upset when we started eating. I had just gotten my ribs hot off the pit and Barry who is seen here (the huge bear-like dog) decided to grab the ribs right off my plate! I was so sad because there were only a few ribs left, so I got a smaller portion the second time. Grrr!

Barry, who is the grandparents' dog, is the biggest one I have seen in Switzerland! And the friendliest, cuddliest, most lovable one, too! He's very gentle, you don't have to worry about him hurting the little kids. It's hard to tell from the picture how big he actually is but you can see that even 2 year old Isabel, who is probably a quarter of his size, loved him!

This was a surprisingly fun way to spend a relatively nice Saturday in Maur. It was also good to meet some of Jana's friends, mainly because they can speak English and I am just happy to hear my own language!