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.