Another week down...

It is so weird to think that Thanksgiving is this week. I will be working. This is the first time that I will not be attending a Thanksgiving with my family in Oregon. It is even weirder because there is no feel of Thanksgiving here at all. I don't think that my family here even knows what Thanksgiving is actually. Although next weekend I will be in Spain, I hope that this week does not drag on and leave me feeling really homesick. However, I do hope that everyone back home has a great Thansgiving and eats lots of delicious food for me!

Last week was pretty uneventful. I went to a play last Monday with Heidi and Amanda. It was a play that is put on by the club that organizes the play readings we go to every week. It was called "Heroes" and the only characters are 3 old war veterans now in an old person's home and a stone statue of a dog. It was a 'gentle comedy' and I really enjoyed it. The acting was ok but I know of some family members who would have done a much more convincing job. As well as finally getting my books that I ordered in the mail, I recently received my first package from home! Thank you Grandma for sending me those slippers...I really do love wearing them!

Cody has recently purchased his ticket to come to Zurich! I am very very excited about that. He comes in the afternoon of Christmas day so unfortunately we will not really get to spend a real Christmas together. However, the Swiss do not usually celebrate Christmas like we do anyways. They actually celebrate on Christmas Eve. Heidi and I came up with the idea of possibly making our own Christmas dinner at her place since she has her own apartment. If her housemate is not going to be around. I think this would be really fun to make our own turkey and yummy American Christmas dishes.

It snowed again this weekend. I woke up Saturday morning to snow all over the ground. It was cool because throughout the day there were these crazy snow blizzards for a little while that would come on without warning and then they would suddenly stop. Unfortunately, with snow comes freezing temperatures. I hate freezing temperatures. Especially when we are walking around Zurich at night. Burr! This weekend, Heidi, Amanda, and I went out. We went to the same piano bar that Heidi and I went to one of my first weekends here. It was not as packed as it was last time but we met some new people and had a good time listening to the pianist.

Thursday of last week, I took Jaime and Sanja down to the lake since it was a relatively nice day (Nick was at therapy). But of course, right when we got down there the wind started blowing and it got very cold! But the kids had fun throwing rocks into the lake and finding sticks to 'go fishing' with. Sanja had a long stick she was using and when she had to go to the bathroom she let Jaime hold onto it for her. Of course, Jaime dropped the stick into the lake and was not able to retrieve it. (Though he tried, and I was sure he was going to fall in, I would not put it past him.) And of course, Sanja was upset when she came back. To calm things down, I told Jaime that he should find another stick for Sanja to use since he dropped hers. He took off to search the woods. A few minutes later, Sanja and I were standing on the dock and we hear Jaime calling to us. I look over and burst out laughing; Jaime was walking up the dock with this huge fallen tree branch he had found. It was so large he was having trouble carrying it, yet somehow managed to make his way over to us. And, oh! was Sanja excited! He had found her a 'stick' that was ten times better than the dinky one he dropped. I don't know who was more excited, Sanja for her new prize or Jaime for his accomplishment in carrying half a tree all the way over to us. I have a picture below of the branch but it does not look as impressive as it was in real life because it is kind of hard to see.



Also, I have another picture of Sanja on the dock by the lake. You can see her outfit consists of a jean skirt over a pair of pants and a jacket that is too large for her. She thought that it was pretty and assured me that 'this is ok'. She even asked me if it was pretty. I figured it would not hurt her to wear it and could maybe keep her warmer? She is such a little model poser:

Die, Der, Das - really, what's wrong with just one?

Good news!: I just bought my plane ticket for Alicante, Spain. The last weekend in November, I will be soaking up some sun (hopefully!). Heidi and I have not really done any traveling since Oktoberfest in Munich which was the beginning of October. I'm pretty excited for Alicante because it will be nice to understand at least a little bit better what people are saying around me. Although I don't have great Spanish skills, it will be nice to hear/speak a more familiar language.

I will be traveling to Alicante with Heidi, of course :), and Amanda who is a friend of Heidi's from her home in Kennewick, WA. Amanda just got here a week ago and is also staying here for a year as an au pair. So far she loves her host family and being an au pair. Her host parents do seem like great people. They are Argentinian and have lived there, in Memphis, and Frankfurt (and now Switzerland of course). So the whole family speaks Spanish, German, and English. I think it's cool that Amanda lives with such a cultured family. And it should be fun having another American au pair to hang out with.

This weekend was not very exciting. Friday night, I met Heidi and Amanda in Zurich for a few drinks. We showed Amanda how to take the train home and saw her off. Heidi wasn't feeling great so I was home pretty early. Saturday, I mostly just read Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and caught up on The Office and Grey's Anatomy in the morning and then met Heidi and Amanda in Zurich in the afternoon. We had dinner at a place called "Papa Joe's" which Heidi's host mom recommended for their great Mexican food. Out of the three or four options for "Mexican food" on the menu, I chose nachos. Not that they were terrible or anything, but this was probably the worst plate of nachos I've ever had. The Swiss so far have not had very good foreign food. Perhaps I'm a little biased or maybe it's just what I'm used to but Mexican, Asian, and Indian food here (that I have tried, anyways) has been pretty crappy. However, the regular Swiss or German food has always been delicious. The other day I had what was basically a sausage sliced down the middle and set in a hot pocket. And it was so good.
Anyways, after dinner at Papa Joe's, Amanda went home to hang out with her family. Probably the last thing I want to do on a Saturday night is to go home and hang out with my kids. But that's me. Heidi and I decided not to go out to bars since she was not feeling well and we were not really dressed going-out appropriate. We decided to see High School Musical 3 in a theater. Such a great movie, although I don't know many people my age besides Heidi who would appreciate it as much as I did. Oh and a weird thing about Europe: they have intermissions in movie theaters. Why? No idea, but the lights went up and we had a 10 or 15 minute break before the movie resumed. Personally, I thought it was annoying.

I do not have any pictures to post this week, sorry. Honestly, it's just been pretty uneventful in my neck of the woods lately. The highlight of my week has been checking the mail every day to see if the books I ordered recently have arrived yet. It's definitely time to do some more traveling!

"Uno!"

Well, we had fondue for dinner again. I love fondue nights....so delicious.

So, not too much excitement going on here lately. I was feeling a little under the weather most of last week so I did not do too much. Although it was Halloween on Friday, the Swiss do not feel as strongly about this holiday as I, or Americans in general, do. I didn't even dress up :( or go out :( :(.

I have just finished reading War and Peace by Tolstoy. This is quite an accomplishment because the book is over 1300 pages long and it has taken me several weeks to finish it. I love reading big books because I feel good when I am done. This was also a surprisingly intriguing read. I was a little hesitant at first but I honestly can say that it is one of my favorite books.

I don't think that I have mentioned before, but Sanja is obsessed with Uno. This is a card game for those of you who may not know what Uno is. I love card games myself but Sanja is sooo into this game! We literally sit for hours playing this game. The boys are really poor sports when it comes to playing games so they do not participate very often. (This is something I will have to remember to write about some other time.) Sanja can handle losing, unlike her brothers, however she is actually really good at the game. She definitely wins more than I do. And I don't even let her! After every session we finish, Sanja will inevitably shout "One more!" Every...Single...Time...
Sanja is fascinated with my shuffling abilities and I have tried showing her how. Unfortunately, her 5 year old hands are not quite large enough to hold onto the cards while shuffling/bridging. But we do take turns with dealing.

I thought I would put up a few pictures of our couple of snow days last week. The snow lasted for 2 or 3 days and it's pretty much all gone now. It still seems so crazy to me that it wasn't even Halloween yet and we had snow all over the place!
Anyways, here are some pictures of the snowman Jaime and I made. Also, a picture of Nick building a lump of snow on the little hill in their backyard for the sled to jump over.