Before I go into my Spanish adventures, I wanted to talk about last week a little bit. Christmas is starting to pop up here. Last Friday, the kids and I went to a Christmas mart/open house thing at the grandparents' farm store. The shop was filled with lots of homemade Christmas decorations and there was hot apple cider and music and lights. The kids also had the opportunity to decorate a gingerbread star with different colored frostings. The grandparents have a really cool pool in their backyard which is made to look like a pond. The pool was frozen over of course and there were lots of little candles glowing on top of the ice. It was so pretty. Also, Santa Claus (I don't know how to spell it but here, they say something like Salmon Claus) and the dark man (also not sure how to pronounce or say his name) made an appearance with their donkey. They brought chocolates and peanuts for the kids. It was freezing outside so I mostly just stood by the fire drinking hot cider but it was so pretty, especially since it was dark and there were lights and candles glowing softly everywhere.
Earlier that day, I went with the kids and their grandpa to the Uster mart. Uster is right across the lake from Maur. Their grandpa speaks no English but I went along to help him with the kids. At first we just walked around one area of the mart looking at the many many tractors and boring farm equipment set up in tents. This got old fast. After that the kids had a chance to spend all their francs on dumb games where they won 10 rappen prizes. The kids had a lot of sugar that day. Each had their own huge stick of cotton candy as we were leaving...I was actually quite jealous. We were there from about 9:30 - 13:00 that day. And it was so freezing cold outside. And we were outside the whole time of course. I was layered like crazy, yet I was almost unbearably cold the whole time. At one point the grandpa realized we were all dying of cold so we went into a coffee shop and I had some tea to warm me up. Also, holding a heiss marroni (hot chestnut) helps, too. Nick and Sanja decided to go on a ride which ended up being a little faster and scarier than I think they realized. I (and the grandpa too I think) had a hard time trying not to laugh when the two kids would whiz by with increasingly terrified looks on their faces.
Last Thursday was Thanksgiving as you all know. I was extremely sad to be missing out on Thanksgiving at home this year. I really missed my family that day. It was so weird to me that it was just another day here. But I decided to educate the kids a little on the holiday so I had them make turkey hats. They love creating little arts and crafts like this and it was even funner that they could put it on their head. It was something I found online and it was a huge hit. I don't know if the kids really knew what a turkey was because they don't seem to have them in Switzerland. However, I told them that a turkey makes a "gobble gobble" noise, so the rest of that night, there were 3 turkeys gobbling all over the house (ok, 4 if you count me).
I will eventually get around to telling you all about my trip to Alicante. I have pictures to show off and stories to tell but you must have a little patience with me for now.
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