Snow day!!!????!!!

The international school has closed today due to snow. I thought we left all this behind us! I think the Swiss schools are open; it's just the international school that shut down. I attribute this to three things: 1) some students travel very long distances to get to the school every day, whereas the Swiss go to local schools; 2) the international school is off the beaten path, so clearing roads is probably tricky; and 3) the Europeans who run the school haven't ever seen what a real winter is like.

So, the kids have an unplanned holiday today. They're having a blast playing out on the terrace right now. If we can ever find the cable that connects our camera to our computer, I'll post a picture.

Zeeeeeeeeeeeeee

The international school is already converting Lindsey. When I was putting her to bed tonight, she sang the alphabet for me. She ended it with "w, x, y and zed."

It's snowing here a lot right now. The good thing about being here rather than in Minnesota is that we won't be staring at this same snow in late February. The snow actually melts here between rounds.

Twenty-nine and counting

Nothing profound here. I'll just share with you a somewhat surprising fact that just occurred to me. It turns out that I've been on 29 separate flights so far this year (with more to come). So far, not one of them has been cancelled or delayed by more than a few minutes. What are the odds of that? What am I doing right?

Church in German

[Those of you who aren't Mormons can feel free to skip this post. It's full of Mormon insider references. If you find it overwhelming, just take a deep breath and remind yourselves that Sarah Palin beat out Mitt Romney for the VP spot on the Republican side. You'll feel better.]

[Well, maybe not. Anyway . . . .]

Today was the annual Primary program. In contrast to the Lakeville Ward, which has about a hundred kids in the Primary, the Lucerne Ward has about a dozen. The ward still went to a lot of work, though. They even dressed the kids, except for Tanner, as sheep, complete with sheep hats for the ears. Tanner had the distinction of being a shepherd. There was one point where the shepherd was looking for one of the lost sheep, so Tanner had to wander around the podium searching for the straggler.

I wish I could tell you exactly what the program was about, but of course, it was in German. They did have a banner above the podium saying "Ich bin ein Kind von Gott," which is a sufficiently simple phrase that I can translate it with my limited German ability. It means "I am a child of God." Other than that, I don't know what was going on. I'm sure it was all very meaningful, and it was definitely cute. Tanner and Lindsey did their best to sing along with words they didn't understand. I hope they'll be a little more Swiss by next year. Just by watching, we could tell that Lindsey had an easier time learning the words than Tanner, which illustrates the point that the best time to learn a foreign language is when you're really young.

Overall, church is an interesting experience. When we showed up on the scene during the summer, they continued to hold services in German rather than switching to English to accommodate the ignorant Americans. Imagine that. We do get some limited translation from one of the missionaries, but the headphones don't always work, and it's kind of clunky. I know enough German that I can sometimes follow along a little bit as long as they're speaking high German. If it's Swiss German, forget it. Luckily, they usually speak high German in church. I just go it alone during Sunday School and priesthood meeting.

I could say more about the distinction between Swiss German and high German, but this post is already getting a bit wordy, so I'll save that for another day.

Bankruptcy and cost of living

Well, we had to file for bankruptcy again for the second time this month. Why, you ask? Because we had to put gas in the car. As painful as gas prices have been in the United States over the past couple of years, that's nothing compared to gas prices in Europe. They're about double what they are in the States. Today, we paid 1.75 Swiss francs per liter, which turns out to be about $6.50 per gallon. They make it very convenient, though. When you get your receipt for the gas, they just automatically print out a bankruptcy petition that you can file right there at the gas station. Very handy.

Overall, the cost of living here is, in a word, outrageous. I routinely have heart failure when I go shopping. Gas is just the beginning. I went to buy contact solution after I'd been here for a couple of weeks. A bottle that would cost me about $6 in the States was the equivalent of about $25. Yikes! Stace's Minnesota driver's license is about to expire, so she needs a Swiss license. That would cost about $25 in Minnesota. It will cost us about $130 here. Fortunately, my company gives me a cost of living allowance. When they first told me how much it was, I started salivating, and I thought, "Really? You'll pay me that much extra? We're gonna be rich!" Wrong. The amount is fair, but we go through cash a lot fast here than we would in the States. The Swiss even charge extra for ketchup at McDonald's. (Yes, there's a McDonald's here. Of course, it's about twice as expensive as in the States.)

I'll talk more about Swiss money in a later post. The bills they use are kinda cool. Before I do that, though, I'll have to figure out how to post pictures with the blog so you can see what I'm talking about.

Daylight Saving Time

We go off of Daylight Saving Time a week sooner than you folks in the States. We'll be moving our clocks back an hour on Saturday night. Too bad our kids don't realize they're supposed to sleep in for an extra hour. So, for those of you keeping track, we'll be six hours ahead of Minnesota and seven hours ahead of Utah during that week. Makes us seem all that much closer, right? You'll drop back the following weekend.

Here's a Lindsey story. A few weeks ago, I took the kids to see a castle on the French side of Switzerland. On the way back, a soldier from the Swiss army sat across the aisle from us. (You know, the folks with the famous knives.) Unfortunately for him, he spoke enough English for Lindsey to be able to strike up a conversation with him. She's never been shy.

At some point, she told him that our car is an Audi. Then her brain really started working. She lifted up her shirt to show the soldier her belly button and proclaimed to him that she has an "outie." (It helps if you read this section out loud.) She then went on to tell him that the rest of her family members all had "innies," pointing at Tanner and me individually. Like I said, at some point, I think the soldier started wishing that he didn't speak English.

By the way, I don't get French. A voice announced each stop that the train made while we were in the French part. I swear that each town in the French part of Switzerland is called "bleh."

Crime

It basically doesn't exist here in Switzerland. People leave bikes out in the open and they don't get stolen. Hotels don't have electronic keys that change with each new guest. Eight-year-old kids ride city buses by themselves. And get this: when a young child first starts school, the Swiss put a fluorescent vest on the child that announces to the world that this child is just starting out in school and may get lost. The idea is that adults can then help the child if he or she ends up going in the wrong direction. In the U.S., that vest would be equivalent to hanging a sign on the child saying, "I'm alone and vulnerable! Please kidnap me!" In Switzerland, though, everyone just pitches in to help.

Also, cars actually stop for pedestrians. It's kind of fun just to walk around and approach random crosswalks and watch the cars stop for you. In return, Swiss pedestrians don't generally jaywalk. If they're waiting to cross a street, and there aren't any cars coming through the intersection, they still stand there and wait for the light to change.

If there's a downside to all of this, it's that the Swiss have so many rules to govern this orderly society that it can feel a little oppressive sometimes. More on the rules later.

Swiss speed limits

To illustrate how speed limits work here in Switzerland, I'll tell you the Parable of the Waiter.

You sit down for dinner at a restaurant that serves beef, chicken, and fish. You know you want the beef. After you've looked at the menu for a while, the server comes to take your order. You say, "I don't want the fish." The server walks away to convey your order to the kitchen. Twenty minutes later, he returns with the exact beef dish you wanted.

That's how speed limits work here in Switzerland. You can be driving along and see a sign that says "60." (I'm talking kilometers here, not miles.) "Fine," you say to yourself. "I can drive 60." A half mile later, you come across another sign that has a "60" with a slash through it. That means that the speed limit is no longer 60 and that it has reverted to what it was before you entered the 60 zone. Heaven help you if you can't figure out what the speed limit was before it went to 60, but that's what you're supposed to do.

It's doubly important to know the speed limit because the Swiss have cameras posted everywhere to enforce the speed limit. We've already been zinged once, and people tell us that traffic tickets are just part of the cost of living here. You may or may not see a flash, but a couple of weeks later, you get a ticket in the mail. Bummer. I'll have more about the Swiss fondness for rules in general in another entry.

The kids

Now that the introduction is out of the way, I should probably update everyone on the kids.

Tanner had his tenth birthday yesterday. We had a quiet celebration at the house, with just family and the Laws, another American couple living in Zug. Tanner got a couple of PlayStation games and other gifts. We also told him that we're going to take a family trip to Paris to go to Disneyland Paris and to see the sights. He's pretty excited. He's in fourth grade at an international school here in Zug, and he loves it. He recently spent a week tromping around Switzerland as part of Field Week, which is something they do at the school. He had a blast.

Lindsey is four. To let you know what it's like to raise Lindsey, I'll tell you that Stace recently had to convince her that it was not safe to jump off of the balcony even though Lindsey had carefully wrapped herself in a contraption consisting of yarn, string, and pipe cleaner. The balcony is four stories above the ground, but Lindsey was certain that her new invention would allow her to fly. We think we got her past the danger point. One never knows, though. Lindsey already considers herself to be an adult, and it's hard to convince an adult that she may not have everything figured out. The teenage years should be fun. Lindsey goes to pre-kindergarten every day at the same school as Tanner, so they're able to ride the bus together to and from school.

Both Lindsey and Tanner have friends from all over the world. Lindsey's best friend at school is from Australia, and Tanner's best friend is from England. It's quite a different experience from what they'd be having in the States.

So, here we go

Okay. The Woods are finally going to start a blog. We'll see how this goes. I wonder if, like many blogs, it will start with a full head of steam and then quickly peter out as we realize that our lives aren't nearly as interesting as we'd believed and hoped they were.

As you all know by now, we moved to Switzerland this year. I got here in June. (The "I" in this sentence refers to Ethan, who is doing the writing.) Stace came with me for a few days in June because she'd had to sign up for this whole Switzerland deal without ever having actually set foot in Switzerland. She wanted to see it before we brought the kids over. (The reason Stace couldn't come with me in March for a look-see was that she'd had surgery in late February. I won't go into the details of the surgery, but it had two dramatic effects: 1. Stace lost just under four pounds in an hour; and 2. when I hug Stace, it no longer knocks the wind out of me and doesn't crack my ribs.)

Anyway, Stace and the kids arrived for good in July, and we've been Swiss ever since. When we got here, we quickly discovered, much to our dismay, that the English is not the official language of Switzerland. It's German, or French, or Italian, or Romansh, depending on where you are. In our part of Switzerland, it's German. I'll write about German in a future entry.

In fact, here are some of the topics I'm thinking of addressing in the future: the language; our apartment; the Swiss love of rules; the refusal of the Swiss to adopt English as their official language; the refusal of the Swiss to adopt the dollar as their official currency; the refusal of the Swiss to adopt baseball as their national sport; cheese; the refusal of the Swiss to use 110-volt power; our Swiss bank account; the art of exiting a train in Switzerland; pedestrians; the scenery; the schools; Swiss garbage; cows and their bells; walking sticks; the tendency of the Swiss to tell you what the speed limit isn't rather than what it is; sitting through a church service in German; time zones; and anything else I can think of. I'll take requests, too.