I'll start with the Swiss version of a lawn mower. See picture below! Imagine my surprise when I came home one day to this in my front yard! Two days (and two very full horses) later, the grass was perfectly short!
I have been on 2 field trips this week and both were a great time! We took the 5/6 graders to a Safari Park in Italy with real live African animals, falcon shows, and amusement park rides! It was great fun (we even got to see the rare leone bianco -- white lions -- which apparently there are less than 100 of in the whole world)! The kids were so excited to see real life safari animals (not caged up)!
The Pre-K/Kindergarten kids took a much shorter trip to a local town where there was a great little "nature walk." Of course it had rained the night before, so it was a quite muddy nature walk, but that made it even more fun for them. They were so cute in their little rain boots, trying to find brown leaves and spider webs! I love that I get to call this work. :)
After all of that field trip fun, we finally got a few days off. I jumped a plane to Madrid, Spain, to meet Morgan for a girl's weekend! It was such a blast and the hotel was super nice. All we did was eat, drink, and watch UT football via Slingbox in our hotel room (while eating chips/salsa of course)! We probably should have done a better job of seeing the city and touring the museums, but both of us were much more into living the Spanish life (siestas, margaritas and yummy food)! The weather was great and we even saw a parade of sheep, haha! We also spent time in a really nice spa getting massages. This was after we walked the ENTIRE city looking for food during siesta time, and happened upon a restaurant that said "queso fundino" and it was open! You better believe we stopped in there for some queso and margarita fun! :) I had a great time with my friend!! Pics coming soon!
I finally got all moved in this week, and thanks to the help of Blair and Allyson, I literally got the place looking "lived in" in less than 24 hours! I had planned a housewarming party for the weekend, so it was a race against the clock getting all moved in, unpacked and getting pictures hung on the wall. I don't know what I would have done without them (especially Blair who was my choffeur, decorating guru and picture hanger). I feel so blessed to already have such great friends here! Here are a few pics of the new place!
The weather has been really yucky lately, so I was totally bummed that Eason and his two buddies, Eric and Adam, were going to leave rainy London for rainy Lugano. :( But, even though it rained the first night, the rain lifted by Saturday morning and stayed relatively sunny and warm through out the whole weekend! For the first time in 2 weeks I could see the mountains and the lake (way too foggy lately for all of that!). There is so much snow on the mountains, it's crazy! So the boys got to see Lugano at its finest and that made me happy!! Friday night Blair and I drove to Milan to pick up the boys and then enjoyed a chill night in the apartment with a few friends over. Then Saturday we got up, took a tour of campus and saw the beautiful mountain and lake views of my 'hood. After that the boys, Blair, Lizzie and myself hopped in a van and headed up to Belinzona to go to the famous castles! We scaled the walls, took some great photos, and the boys plotted out how they would most strategically shoot their canons if this was their castle. :) After that we headed a little further north to a quaint little town called Soazza. We had never heard of it, but Eas and Eric work with a guy who's family was from there and he recommended we check it out. What a great idea because it was beautiful! There is a great church up there and awesome views of the snow-capped Alps. Pics to come soon from that trip!
Then we went down to downtown Lugano and walked around the lake. It was beautiful at dusk -- I'm so excited to have people here to show off this lovely place! After another yummy Italian dinner (that's all we ate all weekend!) we came back home to prepare for the Halloween/House Warming party. Little did we know it would turn into College Football Headquarters and Karaoke Center! We hooked up a projector and projected football games all night on the blank wall (I call it my flat screen tv)! The boys around here loved it! Eason's team, Cal, won...and we won't talk about my Horns. Definitely not happy to stay up until 4:00 a.m. watching that hot mess. But in between the games Eas had the great idea of playing songs from my Itunes and googling the lyrics. We had a proper karaoke night -- it was hilarious!! My personal favorite was "Sweet Caroline" and Adam's rendition of "She's Lost that Lovin' Feelin,'" with dance moves and everything - classic!
Today was another lovely day in Lugano, so we took a hike up the mountain to our favorite restaurant in all of Montagnola - Bellevista. The boys loved the view (it's a hike to get there, but definitely worth it) and the food was yummy as usual. This afternoon I took them back downtown for some MORE pizza and a gelato hunt! We found both and we were all happy! Tonight I'm relaxing and catching up with family/blogs. If I can stay awake I think I'll watch more tv on my "flat screen." Living in Switzerland is great - I can see my family over Skype, my friends who come visit in person, American TV (thanks to slingbox) and outside is a view you couldn't pay money for! Life is good! More soon!
1 comment:
when i saw that picture of the horse, i thought it was going to say, "and this was my dinner, ed!" :)
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