Swiss School

Kelly was SO EXCITED to start School!

Waiting for the tram on the first day of school.

     The kids have had eight days of school so far.  I went the first two days, anticipating that I would sit with them much longer.  On the third day, as we got to school Kelly said, "You don't have to go to school with me today."  As happy as I was, I was a little sad because in two days I had doubled my German vocabulary.  But knowing they would be better without me, I left.  By Monday of the next week they were taking a bus to downtown Bern, then another to their school, all by themselves.  They are doing great and are liking school just fine.  I have been extra homesick for some reason, but Friday I went to lunch with my friend Monique from Switzerland and two other American ladies whose husbands work with Keith. This definitely helped with my homesickness.
     Saturday we went to Lucern where we had gone a few months ago with Barb Hurst and her family, but this time it was a sunny, beautful day.  We walked around the town, took a boat around Lake Lucern, and then went to the Glacier Museum. A hundred years ago, this Swiss guy was trying to build a wine cellar and found these strange swirly holes in the rock. The geologists explained how they were formed by water streams beneath glaciers, and now it's a museum. The highlight was the hall of mirrors - Josh got stuck inside for a while and bashed into about 30 walls before finding his way out.

Old Bridge - Lucern

Josh & Kelly above a 17 foot deep glacier hole in the granite.

Hall of Mirrors

     Monday I was able to take my friend Renate out for her birthday and we had a wonderful time.  They invited us to spend the evening with them floating down the Aare River.  Which we did and brought along Mike and Uma and all had a great time.  The water was so refreshing and they had a great place where you could float for 15 minues, then get out and walk through a tunnel for less than five minutes, then float down again.  It was beautiful and relaxing.
      Monique, Uma, and I  went to Kelly Hale's house - She is the first of the four of us from the states that has moved into their permanent flat.  It was really nice and she did a fabulous job of decorating it and making it feel homey.  Makes me realize just how nice it will be to get into a place of our own.  Unfortunately, ours doesn't have her big, beautiful windows or her great deck, but it will be fine none the less.  Kelly also showed us a great used furniture store where I found some cool old stuff.  It may be a strange mix of old antiques and new modern IKEA stuff, but we'll see how it goes.
     Tonight we headed downtown to meet up with Lara and drop Kelly and Lara off at young women's when we ran into Keith's co-workers and their wives from the states.  We dropped Kelly off, then all went out to dinner and had some pretty good mexican food.  It ain't no Cafe Rio, but it was good.