Images of this February Day

 

Pretty things

Kids ready for playing in the snow after I went to a kids second-hand store and got Hazel’s coat and snowpants and Jethro’s snowpants for 1/2 price. Sweet. And Ethne’s cute little suit was a hand-me-down from a family in the ward. Really sweet. :) Talmage was all bundled up too, but he wouldn’t stand for a picture.

Hazel is sooooo pretty. I can’t decide which picture I like better. (I know, they’re close to exactly the same. But that’s why it’s so hard to choose.) She really looks good in pale pink. Then her cheeks just match so well.

This is a picture I took when I was back in Utah. Don’t you just LOVE the color of a winter evening? When it’s getting dark fast but it’s just a shade of beautiful blue? I love it. That’s one of the things that’s great about living in the country. You can’t really see it the same when you’re surrounded by houses and lights on all sides.

The end.

German

Brett wants me to learn German. Let's just say I am not as enthusiastic about the idea as him. I won't go into reasons.

Anyway, Brett ran across a blog post the other day entitled 'Don't Learn German' and we thought it was HI-larious. Here are some of my favorite parts, but you can click here to read the entire thing:

Living in Germany is great, and I would recommend it to anyone. Speaking German, on the other hand, is terrible and it should be avoided at all costs. In fact, Mark Twain warned us way back in 1880 in his essay The Awful German Language not to bother with this language. There are countless reasons not to learn German, so let’s discuss a few:

The German language is, in fact, impossible to learn unless you begin learning it as a baby. Starting to learn this language is impossible if you start later, because your brain will lack the capacity to learn so many senseless details, such as the different forms of the word “the”.

• You probably know in German there are three different genders der, das, and die. So for every single noun out there, you need to memorize a gender as well (the are some rules for determining gender, but for every rule there are just as many exceptions as examples that fit, so you still have to memorize every single one individually). But you also need to change the article, based on the case that you are using the noun in. Let’s see what this looks like in German:

	German
Nominative	der	das	die	die (pl.)
Accusative	den	das	die	die
Dative	dem	dem	der	den
Genitive	des	des	der	der

Now let’s translate that table into English:

	English
Nominative	the	the	the	the (pl.)
Accusative	the	the	the	the
Dative	the	the	the	the
Genitive	the	the	the	the

Do you really want to learn a language that has 16 ways to say the word “the”? And it doesn’t stop there, you need to learn 16 ways to say “a” (in English 2), and 32 ways to change adjective endings (in English we have 0). And you want to try to do this in real-time in your head while trying to carry one a conversation… forget about it.

No matter how good your German gets, most Germans will speak English much better than you can speak German. Let them do the work in learning your language, since they have to do it anyway to talk with the rest of the world. The British have figured out you can live in Germany with no problems without speaking a word of German, so just follow their lead.

Use your lack of German speaking abilities to your advantage in the workforce. For every professional job in Germany, English is a required skill. So by default, any professional working in Germany who doesn’t speak English fluently either lied to get the job and/or is incompetent. Forcing these people to speak in English gives you an unfair edge in order to dominate negotiations. Try negotiating in German and you have the exact opposite situation… don’t set yourself up for a weaker position by learning enough German to get you into trouble.

You will never learn how to say ö or ü.

Where we live.

I always like to be able to visualize in my head where someone is when I talk to them. Like if one of my siblings moves, I like it better once I’ve been to their house so I can place them in it. Anyway. So here are some pictures of where we live. (But only nice pictures, because if you saw the pictures of all the boring, blah stuff, how fun would that be?)

So these are pictures of the awesome colors in our house. Andrea, tell me you wouldn’t kill for these oranges and (kinda) limes. :) We have 3 bedrooms, a nice-sized front room and a small kitchen. Oh yeah, and there are two bathrooms, but one of them we turned the shower into a closet because we’d rather have the space than the extra shower. And really, inside our house there’s not a whole lot more to see. When we were packing to come here, decorations somehow didn’t make the cut of most importance. And we have enough furniture to get by, but not any more than that. That is okay. I will definitely, however, get some pictures printed and hang them up somehow.

Okay, so on to the more fun stuff, this is a little wood area that’s to the left of our house just a little ways. The day of the Fasnacht parade we came back to explore it a little.

And this is our favorite part of our apartment. Since our apartment is the last on the long street of many many apartments (making our walk to the bus stop very far), our big front room windows and deck look out on this farm. Behind it you can see (on a clear day, which has been unfortunately all too rare) a small little bit of the Alps.

See? This is closer than how we see it, because I zoomed in, but very lovely either way.

Incidentally, this farm is where we get our milk from. We walk down the road a short bit, bringing our own container of course, to this handy-dandy automatic milk dispenser. You open that little door thingee you see on the left, put your container on the shelf, put your coins in, and push the start button. The freshest milk a person could ask for. For cheaper than at the store too. 1 frank for 1 liter. So now one of Jethro’s chores sometimes is to go milk the cow. :)

And these are the cows that give us our milk. Hi cows – thanks for the milk! (Moooo-you’re welcome!)

More lovely pictures. A pretty pretty sunrise one morning.

And here are just a couple pictures of Bern from the bus station place. I like this dude’s sweet beard in this one.

Like I said, I just show the pretty pictures. All the many many boring, gray cement apartment buildings next to us on the other side of our house just aren’t as fun as the lovely mountain pictures. So you can just pretend in your mind’s eye that we are surrounded only by pure Swiss loveliness.

Fun with Fireflies

The other day when Brett was in Zurich I showed the kids the youtube video for Fireflies by Owl City. Jethro loved it, and watched a few times in a row, and before long they did this:


So having a very bare front room is good at least for dancing!

p.s. Go to this blog again for more pictures of my model sister and her handsome husband!

Happy Love Day

So, Valentine's Day is not celebrated in Switzerland. On Saturday I had the idea that we (being Americans) should make some valentines to give to our Swiss friends, but then I remembered we don't have a printer, nor did we have any plain paper. So I was lame and didn't make any. Lame me.

So for some really cute lovey posts you'll have to click HERE or HERE.

Yesterday I made us all write little love notes to each other that I read out loud after dinner. Brett had been the scribe for Hazel and Ethne, and he had written EXACTLY what they said. So when he asked Ethne what she wanted to say to Jethro, and she said, "nothing," he wrote it. Then we read Ethne's out loud, and they said things like, "I can't say anything to her," we all started laughing sooooo hard. The next one I came to that was from Ethne, I said, "This is from Ethne to Hazel," and I couldn't read it because I was laughing, and everyone started laughing, and Jethro was laughing so hard he was practically crying, and he gasped, "I'm laughing and I haven't even heard it!" Good times. Then I gave them all a sucker I had bought in Bern. Hazel's was a flower, Ethne's was a butterfly, Jethro's was a soccer ball and Tell's was an orange.

Oh, and let me not forget to mention what Brett's Valentine's Day present was to me... a RED minivan!!! Wooohoooo!! I am very excited. We haven't picked it up yet, but Brett went into Zurich yesterday and put down some money to hold it. It's a Chrysler Voyager, and Brett says it's an abomination to buy an American car when we're in Europe, but hey, we have an American-sized family, so we need an American-sized car.

Bern Munster Cathedral and iceskating

So I really have to confess that I overdramatized in my last post.  Sure, I wish that somehow Scotty could have beamed me to Utah for Lindsay’s wedding, and I was a little sad when I saw the pictures, but really, I didn’t dwell too much on missing it.  How could I when some friends helped me to have a terrifically sensational two days.  First on Wednesday, my friend Kathrin brought her daughter Melinda to my house to watch the kids while she and I took the train in to Bern.  Basically she’s the awesomest person in the world. 

I can’t remember what this building was—but I think it was some sort of government building. Then we went to the Munster Cathedral. 

“The unique Bern Münster dates from 1421. Looking a bit like a great Gothic rocket, this former cathedral boasts the tallest spire in the country. It also shelters some important medieval art, including painted sculptures over the portal and fine stained glass windows.”

“The most exceptional feature of Bern's Münster is the magnificent depiction of the Last Judgment over the main portal, which contains more than 200 carved wood and stone figures. Justice occupies the center, flanked by angels and the Wise and Foolish Virgins. Above is the Archangel Michael, with a sword and scales. The saved are on the left and the damned are on the right. Such a significant survival of religious images is rare in Protestant Switzerland, but apparently the graphic depictions of salvation and damnation appealed enough to the Reformers to spare it from destruction.”

   

Gargoyles are awesome.   

“The Münster's 100m (300-foot) bell tower is the highest in Switzerland and can be seen from almost anywhere in the city. The tower's viewing platform provides a panoramic view of the Bernese Alps, the old town, Bern's bridges, and the Aare River. Getting there costs a small admission charge and a spiral climb up 254 narrow stone steps.”

 

“The Münster's 10.5-ton bell was cast in 1611 and is the largest in Switzerland. You may wish to plan your tower climb around its resounding ringing!” 

So we WERE there when they rang the bells, and we ran down the REALLY narrow spiral stairs to right next to the bells, and of course had to cover our ears when we were that close, but it was sooo awesome to feel the enormous vibrations in our chests and bodies.  Really amazing.I really like this door, and think maybe when we build a house I’ll put one in just like it.

This is the ceiling.  I tried to take a close up but it didn’t turn out, but there are statues at each intersection of the lattice. Then we just walked around window-shopping and smelling.  I had to go into one of the chocolate shops and it was awesome.  I couldn’t even buy anything because there was simply too much—impossible to decide on any one thing.   But later I did buy this little cheese-pie thingee (can’t remember what it was really called) and it was delish.

   

So anyhow, I got to spend a wonderful day in the city seeing the sights, tasting the tastes, smelling the chocolate, and visiting with a wonderful friend.  It was GRRRReat!  Unfortunately, I didn’t think to take any pictures of her and me, so we’ll have to go back and do it all again and get a picture of us.  Darn it.  :)

Just as a random note, remember how I said the cars are small here.  Some are very VERY small.  This one I like to call a raindrop car, but it’s really called a Twike.  If you’re at all interested in cars, you should go to twike.com and see them.  (Brett made me.)  One kind can be pedal-powered, but the other kind runs on a battery I think.  Very eco-friendly and all that jazz.  Guess how much one of these little babies cost?  I’ll tell you.  $16,000.  Wow. Then the next day, my friend Melinda came over to hang out with me because she’s has a holiday from school and she’s awesome like that.  We took Jethro and went into Bern and went iceskating (thanks to Brett who came home because he was feeling sick and then watched the other kids for me).  :)  It was so fun.

It was the coldest day of the last two weeks though, of course.  But we had fun anyway.  I told Melinda my sister was getting married that very day and that since I wasn’t there with the rest of my family she had to be my surrogate sister.  She said she’d be honored.  Yeah, she’s pretty much the most wonderful girl in the world.

 

Then Melinda and I took the train to another friend’s house where we had a movie and snacks with some of the girls in the ward.  I don’t know how I suddenly somehow became cool enough to hang out with teenagers, but I’m glad I am (or that they’re nice enough to tolerate me ;) ) because they are awesome.  (And I mean that when I say it—I used to think the worst calling in the world would be Young Womens, but here I think I would have an awesome time!)  When I left to go home at 9:30 or so, Melinda and Talitha walked me to the bus stop and it was grand.  They are funny and fun and I felt so light-hearted.  And I looked around me in the darkness and thought, I can’t believe I’m really in Switzerland.