I'm glad that January is finally over. And I get to look forward to the fact that February is a short month. I have now been here officially for over five months. Only seven more months to go...yay... Also, don't forget to say Happy Birthday to Chewy today, it's her one year mark with me! So last week, I had some free time Monday afternoon. After letting the kids play the Wii for a little while, I announced I was going into Zurich. Nick surprised me by asking if he could go with me. I didn't mind him coming along because I was just doing some errands like picking up some makeup and looking for a book. He went and asked his mom who said yes. This was a different experience for me because I really haven't been many places alone with the kids outside of Maur. Nick thought it was really fun riding the bus and train. It was actually a sunny day outside so the weather was not an issue. We hung out along the Bahnhofstrasse (one of the main shopping streets) and in the hauptbahnhof (main train station) for an hour or so. I picked up the things I wanted and we headed home. It was nice having Nick with me because it reminded me of when I used to drag Isaac to places with me when I had to run errands. It was a good day until I got home. I walked into my room and immediately noticed that 2 multi-packs of gum that were sent to me from the States were missing. And a large bag of gummi bears, also from the States. And a sucker that was given to me for my birthday. Oh and a large box of Sprungli chocolates (the really expensive fancy Swiss kind) was also missing. I knew at once that Sanja and Jaime had come up to my room, YET AGAIN, to steal these. I have been having problems with this lately. Sanja has been stealing whole packs of gum from me (which is really expensive here) and Jaime has been known to steal candy from my room as well. This is why my mom sent me these things from the States in the first place. Of course, I asked Jaime and Sanja about it and they both denied denied denied! Obviously, they had taken this stuff but they were fervently lying to my face about it! I was so mad and eventually found the evidence (empty wrappers) in the large room upstairs. I again, tried talking to them about it and explaining (for the third or fourth time) that lying is not ok, nor is stealing from me. But they still both started yelling at me that they did not take anything. The week progressed as usual. I had a box of cake mix and frosting that my mom sent me for my birthday that I decided to make with the kids on Friday. They helped me with the ingredients and the stirring and, of course, the licking of utensils. When the cake was baked and cooled, Jaime and Nick helped me with the frosting. They actually did a pretty good job, I didn't really have to help them much. For the final touch, we added sprinkles and voila! our snowman shaped cake was created! I asked them if they wanted to cut it up and eat it then or wait until Mami and Papi got home to show them first. The kids hesitated but eventually decided to wait to show Mami and Papi. They were supposed to be home at 19:00. I got a call at 20:00 from Christian asking if it was ok for him and Jana to stay and "have one more drink". Exact quote, mind you. Obviously, all I could say was yes, although I was planning on going to meet Amanda and Heidi. I figured one more drink meant another hour at the most. So I put the kids to bed and read for a little while. Around 21:30 or 22:00 I eventually went upstairs. By this time it was too late to try to catch a bus to Heidi's since it would take me about an hour and a half to get there. I was annoyed to say the least. I just decided to watch a movie and listen for them to come in, which had to be soon. So at 1:45 AM, I hear Jana and Christian come in. No phone call, no text, nothing, since the call at eight asking if it was ok to stay for one more drink. I felt pretty used at this point. And the kids went to bed without even trying their cake since they wanted to wait for their parents to see their work. The next day, I went to meet Heidi at the Hauptbahnhof for our trip to Mulhouse, France. This is a two hour train ride from Zurich and it's just on the other side of the border from Basel, Switzerland. We arrived in the early afternoon and just walked around. It's not a touristy place or anything so there weren't really any sites to see. We did do some shopping, though. The stuff outside of Switzerland is cheaper than buying it there, even with the franc/euro exchange. We ran into some sort of African wedding party when walking around Mulhouse. There was a crowd outside of a church and several drums and a guy with a really long and slender horn. He would wave this horn over the heads of the crowd and blow on it. I have a video of the horn, it's hard to see the dancers and drummers but at least you can hear the funny sound the horn made. It looked like a cool party, there was dancing around and good music. It was funny because we had several people come up to Heidi and I and say something in French, which we figured they were asking us what was going on. We didn't know either and none of the people knew how to speak English because they just walked away after we said we didn't speak French. We have this happen to us a lot. After hanging out a bit we went back to Basel and got some coffee. We ended up going back to my house to get ready to go out to an Irish pub we visited last week. It was pretty late by the time we went out, and there weren't as many people in the pub as there had been last week. We tried another bar in a different area of Zurich and headed back to Heidi's house on the night train. Below and above are a few pictures of the kids with the cake we made. Also, there's a picture of Nick in his robot costume he made and Sanja, well, being Sanja. 
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