At least it was her left arm

Our time in the United States has not been kind to our health. Recall my earlier whining about my broken and extracted tooth and the two-week suspension of my contact lenses.

Now we can add Lindsey's broken arm to the list. She was wrestling with her cousins and brother tonight and managed to break her arm just above the wrist. She's doing fine. She's in a splint now, and if we can get an appointment, we'll get a cast before we head back to Switzerland. She'll certainly have a fun story to tell her classmates when she gets back. Unfortunately, her last ski season in Switzerland is going to be somewhat abbreviated.

Total system shutdown

Have any of you read the children's book Parts? It's about a little kid who thinks that various parts of his body are becoming unattached or nonfunctional. It's pretty funny.

Well, I'm living that book. At a time when I'm still mourning the loss of one of my wisdom teeth, I'm now coping with the news that my contact lenses have been grounded for two weeks. I have to drop a steroid and an antibiotic in one of my eyes several times a day to clear up an irritation that's been bugging me for a while.

Sheesh. I'm going to wait a couple of months before I start to deal with what I think is a case of plantar fasciitis. One thing at a time.

They pulled it out!

Well, my tooth is gone. They weren't going to waste time and effort trying to reconstruct one of my wisdom teeth. They just pulled it. It's quite something to hear the saw and catch a whiff of your bone as they cut it apart to get the tooth out. I forgot to ask the dentist to give me the tooth to save.

She gave me a prescription for Vicodin and then told me not to drive. What? I'm here all alone and I've got work to do and places to go. There hasn't been much pain, so I haven't taken a pill yet. Maybe I'll take one tonight after I get back to my hotel room. I'll get by with ibuprofin until then.

"Have tooth pulled out" was not on my to-do list when I came to Minnesota, but that's how life goes.

Some days are like this

I'm going to bed and hoping that tomorrow will go better than today.

First thing this morning, I noticed a big red pimple right on the tip of my nose. I look like Rudolph. This was particularly timely in that I've been in meetings today with a bunch of people I've never met before. I know that my nose must have been quite a sight. At my age, one shouldn't have to worry about pimples.

And then, just a few minutes ago, I broke off part of a tooth while I was chewing a piece of gum. GUM!!!!!! What's with that? How does one break a tooth by chewing gum? Sheesh. I hope I can get it fixed before I leave Minnesota.

At least it's not snowing and it's above zero. Yup. See, that proves that I'm a glass-half-full kind of guy.

A Christmas miracle

I've written before about the whole issue of jet lag. I love having the day extended by seven hours on the day I fly over to the States, but the days after that can be tough when I wake up at 3:00 in the morning and start crashing at about 6:00 at night. The morning after I get here, I always have that dreaded moment when I wake up, pray that it's later than 3:00, and then look at the clock.

I just had that moment, and much to my surprise, I slept all the way until 4:43 a.m. I was so excited! To quote Tiny Tim, "God bless us, everyone!"

(Okay, okay, I realize that an entry like this is more appropriate for Twitter or Facebook than for the Wood family blog about life in Switzerland, but since I don't tweet and I'll never have a Facebook account, this will have to do.

It turns out that there are now only two Americans who aren't on Facebook, me and some guy living in a rundown shack somewhere in the Montana wilderness with no electricity or running water. I talked with him the other day. He's about to give into the unrelenting pressure and get a Facebook account, so then it will just be me.)

And off we go . . . .

We fly across the ocean tomorrow, assuming all goes well with weather and such. (I wouldn't mind taking a bump, but it's not looking good.) Stace and the kids will be heading straight to Utah. I'll be spending a few days in Minneapolis so that I can start learning how to deal with a real winter again after living through four wimpy Swiss winters. Ugh.

No reminders in Switzerland

Our American phone rang the other day. It was a heating and cooling company in Minnesota reminding me that they were coming to inspect the furnace the next day. I had asked the tenants living in our house to have the furnace inspected before it got too cold, and they had made the appointment. I asked the caller to get in touch with the tenants instead.

That got me thinking about another Swiss cultural norm: no one calls to remind you of an appointment. When you make an appointment to visit the doctor or the dentist or to have someone come over to the apartment to fix something, they just assume that you'll be there. It would be unthinkinable to miss it. American companies have learned through hard experience that they have to remind people about their appointments or they'll have gaps in the schedule. One explanation for the difference might be that the Swiss impose an automatic six-month prison sentence for missing an appointment.

Well, okay

Awwww, no one wanted to take my quiz. Okay--maybe it wasn't such a fun quiz.

Here's the answer: Why on earth would you want a six-car garage? The only possible reason for having a six-car garage is so you can tell people that you have a six-car garage.

Quick quiz

I looked at a couple of houses in Lakeville while I was there last week. We're not ready to buy yet, but I wanted to get a sense of the market. One of the houses has a six-car garage. When Stace saw the flyer that I'd brought back with me, she looked at it and asked, "Why would anyone want a six-car garage?"

Dear readers, I consider the answer to that question to be obvious. There's only one right answer, but I'm curious as to what you all think. What's the answer? You can leave your answer in the "comments" section or shoot me an email. I'll tell you the right answer in a couple of days. The winner will receive either an all-expenses paid trip to Switzerland or a Swiss chocolate bar.

The sweet silence of success

My time in Minnesota was a huge success in at least one respect: there's no change jangling around in my pocket. I brought over with me a huge pile of American coins that Stace had recklessly accumulated over the summer, and I managed to spend every last penny while I was here.

It was pretty scary this morning. I had 48 cents in my pocket, and I needed to buy a newspaper that cost 50 cents. If I had to break a dollar bill, it would mean two extra quarters in my pocket along with the 48 cents that I already had. Disaster was looming. It was with considerable trepidation that I approached the counter this morning looking for one of those "take a penny, leave a penny" trays. I looked on the left side of the counter, and my heart sank--there was a tray, but it was empty. Resigned to defeat, I happened to glance at the right side of the counter, and hope was renewed. There was a tray, and it was full of pennies. I happily grabbed two pennies, gave the cashier my other three pennies, two dimes, and one quarter, and walked away with my newspaper in my hand and no coins in my pocket.

I can now head to the airport this afternoon satisfied that once again, all the hassle of flying across the ocean and putting up with the miserable Minnesota weather was worth it. My pockets are light.

Ethan Wood, human pincushion

For those of you interested in following every insigificant little detail of my life (actually, there's no one doing that, which is why I'm not on Facebook), here's a blow-by-blow account of all the needles I've had stuck in me over the past two days.

1. Tetanus shot, left shoulder
2. Flu shot, right shoulder
3. Blood draw (for my annual physical), right arm
4. Platelets sucked out of me by the Red Cross, left arm
5. The stuff that's left over in my blood after they filter out the platelets and put the rest back into me, right arm
6. My weekly shot, left thigh

In other news, it took me a half hour to drive from Bloomington to Eagan this afternoon because of the snow here in the Twin Cities. I can't move back here. I just can't.

Reality smack

I'm in Minnesota right now. This morning, it was about 15 degrees and windy. I walked outside and thought, "Man, it's cold." Then I realized that 15 degrees is about as cold as it ever gets in Switzerland, but in Minnesota, the temperature can still drop by 40 degrees or more from where it was this morning.

And we're moving back here. Why, exactly?

Life in Switzerland

You look at this picture and you think that this guy is fixing the traffic light, right? Nope. He's polishing it. Try to recall the last time you saw a maintenance worker in the U.S. polishing the traffic lights.

It'll get ugly

Here are a couple of random observations from life these days:

1. I'm a week overdue for a haircut. I'm going to be in Minnesota in a week and a half, so I'm going to wait until I'm there. I can save about $750 by getting my hair cut there, and the person cutting my hair will actually speak English. The downside is that I'm going to look something like Bigfoot until I can get it done.

2. Our car is getting serviced today, and the shop gave us a loaner car. Imagine my surprise when I started the ignition and tried to drive away only to have the motor die. It took me a moment to realize that they'd given me a stick shift. Luckily, I know how to drive a stick shift, but there are plenty of Americans who don't. It's still the norm in Europe, and it's just assumed that everyone here can drive one.

3. I put down a deposit for Tanner and me to go to Egypt in February. It will be the most foreign place I've ever visited. In contrast to our usual go-it-alone approach to vacations (other than cruises), we'll be part of a very organized tour. I don't want to try to figure out Egypt by myself. Let's hope that things can stay relatively stable in Cairo.

A bit of good news

Tanner's dyslexia makes some things difficult for him, particularly reading, writing, and spelling. He has some real struggles with those things, and I sometimes find myself getting discouraged as I try to help him deal with some of those challenges when he's got a tough writing assignment.

But he pulled off something great the other day, and this may hint at where his future lies. His English class assigns a series of "English challenges," things like writing a poem or a paper about something or other. A couple of the challenges are oral. The kids are required to do at least one of the oral challenges.

Tanner's never had trouble getting up in front of a group. He's given several talks in church. He gets up there with just a couple of notes and says what he wants to say. For his oral English challenge, he decided to talk about why he loves cars. Stace and I gave him a couple of pointers and sent him off to work on his speech. He scribbled down a couple of talking points, rehearsed it in his head a few times, and gave us a dry run while we were in Barcelona. It was so-so. We spent ten minutes or so giving him more suggestions and sent him off to practice some more.

He gave his speech in class on Wednesday, and it was fantastic. His teacher said it was the best speech he's heard in four years of teaching. He said that Tanner could convince someone to buy garbage and it wouldn't be until later that they'd wonder why they had bought garbage. Students from later English classes that day told Tanner that the teacher was still talking about Tanner's speech from that morning. I asked Tanner if he'd needed to use his notes during the speech, and he said that he didn't use them; he just remembered all of his points and said what he wanted to say. He loves being up there in front of the crowd and doesn't get at all rattled.

That ability can get a person pretty far in life. Maybe there's still hope for the kid.

More fun with verbs

I'm going to geek out on y'all again in this post. I continue to be fascinated by the differences in languages.

You probably don't spend most of your time thinking about verb tenses, but take a second to ponder the many and confusing verb tenses that we use in English. Here are some examples: "I go swimming." "I will go swimming." "I am going swimming." "I went swimming." "I have been swimming." "I would have gone swimming." "I would go swimming." Each of those tenses conveys a slightly different meaning, but the differences can be subtle. "I go swimming" and "I am going swimming" don't mean quite the same thing.

German, by contrast, doesn't use that many tenses. The structure of their verbs tenses is simpler, and you have to pick up the meaning from the context, not from the actual tense.

Here's an example: When we first moved here, we were talking with one of our German friends, Ruth, about a nearby swimming place. She said to Stacie, "We are going swimming there." Stacie replied, "Oh, tomorrow?" But that's not what Ruth meant. What she meant was that's where her family goes swimming; she wasn't expressing an intent to go at any particular time. It's tricky for non-native English speakers to pick up on the slight differences in how we express our verbs.

Here's the example that got me thinking about this. It illustrates a tricky translation that I see all the time here. Stace took the kids to rent their skis the other day. The website for the ski shop we use has German and English. Here's what it says in English: "Sport Vock Thalwil was founded in 1937 and is owned by Fredi Vock since 1980. Since 1994 we are specialised in ski equipment rental." In English, though, we really say this as, "Sport Vock Thalwil was founded in 1937 and has been owned by Fredi Vock since 1980. Since 1994 we have specialised in ski equipment rental."

So, next time a native German speaker says to you in English, "I am living there since 2008," you'll know why.

Barcelona, Day 3

As I mentioned yesterday, there was still more Gaudi to come on day 3. We started out at Casa Milà, but we decided to spare ourselves the expense of going inside.



On the walk to our next destination, we came across this. I can't remember what it's called, but it's not Gaudi. I think it's a Gaudi wanna be.



Here's some more real Gaudi. We decided it was worth going inside this one. This is Casa Batlló.

And what good is having a rooftop deck if you don't make it a little interesting?

When we'd finally had enough of Gaudi, we walked over to La Rambla, Barcelona's well-known street for shopping and seeing all kinds of interesting things. These guys were making huge bubbles, and Lindsey couldn't stay away, of course.

After that, we went to the Barcelona Cathedral. We didn't take pictures, but it was cool. I could spend all day hanging out in old, classic churches. (Stace and the kids aren't quite as enamored of them as I am.)

And that was it. We had to head for the airport at 5:30 the next morning. Ugh.

As you'd expect me to report, it was a good trip overall. (We did almost everything that Gretchen told us to do, which was our main goal.) The people in Barcelona were very friendly. There wasn't a lot of English, but there was enough for us to get by. Barcelona is definitely on my list of cool places to visit.

Barcelona, Day 2

Barcelona is all about the architect Antoni Gaudi, and you can't get very far in Barcelona without seeing his work. Day 2 was Gaudi day for us, although Gaudi day ended up spilling over into day 3 because you can't really get it all in one day.

But first, this guy, outside the Sagrada Familia:



And now, back to Gaudi. The Sagrada Familia is, or is going to be, a basilica unlike any other. It was started in 1882. Right now, the anticipated completion date is 2026, but when you've been working on something this long, what's the hurry?

Gaudi was either brilliant or insane. Take your pick.

After we spent a long time at the Sagrada Familia, we went to Park Güell, which is sort of Barcelona's version of New York's Central Park, except that it has all kinds of Gaudi constructions throughout. It's a popular park. Half of the population of Spain got off the bus with us at the park entrance.

One nice thing about being on your own instead of being part of a huge tour group that's spending a few hours in town while on a cruise is that you can just hang out and watch the flow of life in a new city. We spent some time doing that in this central plaza with these funky benches around the edge.

Barcelona, Day 1

And we're back. It was a fun trip. The weather was great while we were there, but it was pouring this morning when we left, so we timed it just right.

We liked Barcelona. I don't know about the rest of Spain, but Barcelona doesn't have the crazy feel of some of places we've visited in Italy, like Rome or Naples. People generally obeyed the traffic laws and didn't illegally triple park. It wasn't as clean as Switzerland, but then, most surgical instruments aren't as clean as Switzerland, so that's no surprise.

In that part of Spain, known as Catalonia, the dinner hour is still quite late, and we quickly fell into that pattern. Things really didn't start to pick up until 9:00 or so. We'd find ourselves roaming the streets of Barcelona at 9 trying to find a good place to eat. The kids would get to bed around 11 or so, and then they'd sleep until 10 the next morning.

I walked the family just about to death. Barcelona is a very walkable city, and we stayed pretty close to the heart of things, so we only took the subway or the bus a couple of times. We just walked the rest of the time.

Here's the view from our apartment, on a typically narrow street:



And let's just get the obligatory Subway picture out of the way:



On the first day, we headed for the waterfront. (The hill that you can see in the background is called Montjuic. You'll see some pictures from there later on.)



Despite our best efforts to fill our kids with a sense of wonder and appreciation for all of the world's different cultures and peoples, their favorite activity on the trip was, of course, touching the sharks at Barcelona's big aquarium.



One of the coolest things about many cities in Europe is the variety of street performers. (I always give a little money to a performer if we take a picture.)

After we'd seen enough of the fish and the jugglers, we headed up Montjuic to see Montjuic Castle and to take in the views of the city.

Sometimes, the signs here can be a little confusing.

Here's the view of Barcelona from Montjuic. The big structure you can see in the upper right is the Sagrada Familia, about which I'll say more tomorrow.

I have no idea why this woman with the funny nose is about to beat someone over the head with a chair, but I figured she was worth a picture.

We ended our day with a show at the Magic Fountain.

Off to Barcelona

We're off to Barcelona for a few days. We were there a couple of years ago for a cruise, but we didn't actually see much of the city. This time we'll get to experience it.

While we're there, Tanner will turn 13. We'll officially have a teenager. We're going to be raising teenagers for the next twelve and a half years. Yikes!

And we may have crossed another line

I mentioned recently that Lindsey was quite enthusiastic about her study of the digestive system (even if she can't spell it). That enthusiasm was evident today on the way home from church. She was eating a Tic Tac and spontaneously made up a song about how Tic Tacs go into your mouth and then come out as "feces" later on. She wasn't doing it for shock value; that's just how she learned it, and she thought it was interesting.

As we all know, Stace is usually pretty stoic about things like that, and her reaction this time was pretty much what you'd expect.

We've crossed a line

I suppose it was inevitable the way things have been going. Lindsey may have finally officially surpassed me in her mastery of German.

We went to the store today. There was a sign there with one word I couldn't understand. I asked her if she knew what it meant. She did. That was a bit embarrassing. It's not like she's fluent or anything, but I think she's now better than me.

Dang it, Egypt!

Just when I've convinced myself that things have settled down enough in Egypt for Tanner and me to go there in February, things start getting crazy in Cairo again with riots and deaths and things like that. I still think most of the country is fine, but I'd feel a little better if Cairo would calm down a bit.

Life is uncertain

Sometimes, it takes a little while to wrap one's head around an unexpected death. That happened to me yesterday.

A couple of times in the past, we've worked with a mortgage broker who's about our age, named Alec. He really helped to bail us out when we hit some snags with the sale of our townhouse in Burnsville and the purchase of our house in Lakeville back in 2001. I had last traded messages with him about mortgages about a year and a half ago, I think.

I wanted to refer someone to him while I was home yesterday, but the contact information was at my office. I decided to just Google his name so that I could get his contact information that way. I was shocked when the first thing that popped up in my search was Alec's obituary. He was diagnosed with lymphoma in June of 2010. In December, he was deemed to be in remission, but just a month later, he died of a rare complication caused by the treatment. He had four kids, ages 14 and under.

It's not like Alec and I were great friends or anything. Other than time we spent on mortgages, I didn't really keep in touch with him. Still, it caught me a bit off guard. I had this mental picture of us working with Alec as we arranged things for getting a house when we move back to Minnesota. My mental picture got jarred.

I don't have any profound observations other than the obvious: life is uncertain.

The dujestuv system

The other night, Lindsey gave our family a presentation about what she's learned in school lately about the digestive system. As part of her presentation, she put together a little game where she had written words on papers around the house and we had to find them based on her clues. One of the words was "osfgis." Can you guess what that word is supposed to be? You're both probably faster than I am.

On that same theme . . .

My mind kept going in some weird directions based on yesterday's post. As one of my examples from yesterday shows, English has appropriated "do" not only for negatives, but also for questions. By that I mean that rather than asking, "Do you see him?" you could ask, "See you him?" That's how they'd do it in German (Sehen Sie ihn?).

This has all kinds of possibilities for shortening up the titles and lyrics of some of our classic songs by eliminating the unnecessary use of the word "do." Let me try a few out on you. Depending on your era, some of you might not know the name of the original to which I'm referring.

"Feel You Like We Do?"--Peter Frampton
"Believe You In Love?"--Huey Lewis
"Want You Really to Hurt Me?"--Culture Club
"See You What I See?"--Christmas Carol

See? Isn't that fun? I'm sure you can think of others. Give it a try. I still haven't been able to figure out how to get rid of the "do" in "Da Do Ron Ron," though. Maybe it would be "Ron Da Ron."

One more literal translation

I heard something in a song yesterday that made me think of one of my favorite literal translation quirks. It has to do with the abuse of the word "do" in English when one wants to indicate a negative.

Let's take an example. In English, we'd say, "I see him." German is the same: Ich sehe ihn. But what if you don't see him? Using a good dose of common sense, German just requires one word to make the negative: Ich sehe ihn nicht, which literally translates to, "I see him not." Now, you could say that in English, but you'd sound like you're about 400 years old and quoting either Shakespeare or the King James Bible. Instead, we commonly say, "I do not see him." (I'll ignore "don't" for now.) Why? Why did English co-opt the verb "do," which means something along the lines of taking an action, and turn it into a helping verb required to connote a negative? I know not.

Let's consider a really perverse sentence in English: "Do you do that?" When you think about it, it's really weird that we use "do" twice in that sentence and that it means something totally different in both places. This is one of the few instances where German comes out shorter than English: Tun Sie das?

And there's no way I'm going to revisit the warped English construction "I'm going to go."

Literal translation of the day, part 5

I'm already feeling like I'm wearing out this theme, so this will probably be the last post on this topic for a while. This one is relevant to our church's General Conference, a satellite broadcast that takes the place of our regular meetings twice a year.

Many of the Church leaders will start their remarks by addressing them to "my dear brothers and sisters" or "my beloved brothers and sisters." In German, the word for "siblings" is Geschwister, and they use the term much more liberally than we do. A speaker will often being his or her remarks with Liebe Geschwister, which literally means "dear siblings" or "beloved siblings." That would sound really strange in English but is perfectly acceptable in German.

Don't be surprised if my first talk in church upon our return to Minnesota begins with "My beloved siblings . . . ."

Literal translation of the day, part 4

The days of the week work about the same in German and English for six of the days. They all end in the suffix Tag, meaning "day," and they have similar names. They have Sonntag and Freitag, for example.

However, German really went off the rails when it came to Wednesday. The German name for Wednesday is Mittwoch, literally meaning "midweek." Next time you're getting together with someone for lunch, tell them that you'd like to meet them next Midweek at noon.

Literal translation of the day, part 3

Today, we get to have some fun with two facts: first, the fact that for the past tense, spoken German rarely uses the simple past ("I saw him") and instead generally uses the present perfect ("I have seen him"); second, the fact that German shoves all verbs but one to the end of each sentence. (This is one thing that makes it tricky to translate between German and English. You have to wait for the entire sentence in German because there are likely one or two extra verbs lurking at the end of the sentence just waiting to jump out and ambush you.)

In English, you'd say "I went to New York last week." This is simple past. If you wanted to use present perfect, you could say "I have gone to New York last week." That's awkward in English, but that's how they do it in German. You also have to switch around the word order, starting with the time and ending with one of the verbs. So, we now have, "Last week have I to New York gone."

Except we're still not done. Rather than "to have," German uses the appropriate form of the verb "to be" to convey motion with the past tense. This results in, "Last week am I to New York gone." (If you want to see it in German, it's Letzte Woche bin ich nach New York gegangen.)

Next time you want to impress someone at a party, walk up to him or her and say, "Last week am I to New York gone." They'll think you're either crazy or Swiss.

Literal translation of the day

The German word for "glove" is Handschuh. If you pronounce this word correctly, it's easy to translate into English. It's pronounced something close to "hand-shoe" (except that the "a" has more of an "ah" sound--there's no German equivalent to our short "a" sound), and that's literally what it means. So next time you head out to go skiing, remember to take your hand shoes.

Fun with German

As the mood strikes me, I'm going to occasionally list some German words that would be quite interesting if we literally translated them into English and used them when we move back to Minnesota. I thought of this today when Lindsey was watching a cartoon about Caillou visiting the dentist.

In German, the word for dentist is Zahnartzt, which literally translated means "tooth doctor." So, if you want to impress your friends, tell them that you're going to have your teeth cleaned by the "tooth doctor."

Clear as a bell

We're back from Zermatt, and we had a great time. This time, the Matterhorn cooperated. It was clear the whole time we were there. We rode a cogwheel train up into the mountains above Zermatt. We were at about 10,000 feet. Keep in mind that the Matterhorn is at about 15,000, so as hard as it is to imagine, the Matterhorn was still almost a mile above us. We were lucky enough to be there right around sunset. Here's a little time-lapse photography showing how the Matterhorn looks at sunset with just a few wisps of cloud to add some nice color.

And then, just for good measure, I was able to catch it right at sunrise this morning, too. This only lasted for a couple of minutes, and then it was gone.

And here are some other random pictures from our adventures. I think the glaciers are especially cool.

There goes our baby

We sent Tanner off to Paris this morning for his week-long field trip. ("But I've already been to the Louvre!") Those of you who know Tanner can probably imagine how distraught he was at the thought of leaving his parents for a week and hanging out with his friends in Paris. He could hardly contain his emotions at our parting; in fact, he was so overcome with sorrow that he didn't even want me to hug him good-bye in front of his friends. I did anyway. (What's the fun in having a pre-teen if you can't embarrass the heck out of him once in a while?) He'll probably cry himself to sleep for the first couple of nights, but I imagine he'll be fine after that.

In the meantime, since we only have one child for the week, Stace and I are going to leave Lindsey with some friends overnight and take off for a couple of days later this week. We're going to take the Glacier Express trip from Zermatt to St. Moritz that I took a few weeks ago. We're going back to the same "Romantic" hotel that I stayed at in Zermatt as a single, but this time, I might feel like I actually belong there. The weather looks good, so hopefully, the Matterhorn will put in another appearance.

In English, we call this "a disaster in the making"

(Mormon alert)

So, picture the scene: An American young men's president and an American young women's president are given the responsibility of organizing a stake dance for a bunch of Swiss teenagers. Does this sound like a recipe for success to you? Me neither. But that's what's going to happen next Saturday. I've spent the afternoon playing around with our DJ software, trying to figure out how to play music for the dance. (We've recruited a Swiss DJ from the ward, but his wife is supposed to go into labor at any moment. I'm hoping that she's in labor right now so that Nik can be around when we need him next week. Otherwise, I'm turning the DJ responsibilities over to Tanner.)

My motto right now is: "That which doesn't kill me makes me stronger." If I survive this experience, I'm going to be the strongest man alive.

We're not in Kansas anymore

Okay, I avoided using that cliché as a headline for three years, but I decided it was finally time.

From our local newspaper (the English is a little stilted because it's translated from German):

"In the recent hot weather it was only natural for people to cool off in the waters of Lake Zug. Indeed, city councillor Richard Rüegg decided to do the same but was unexpectedly reprimanded by two over-zealous police officers on patrol by the lake shore. 'If you want to bathe here you must remove your trunks,' said one policeman. Indeed, unknowingly, the CVP councillor had entered an area for nudists only.

"Rüegg was also informed that he was in a nature reserve and that bathers in swimming costumes should go to the Brüggli area as the Choller area was reserved for nudists by special regulation."

This just isn't an issue at Minnesota's lakes.

I've talked before about how much more relaxed Europeans are about this kind of thing than Americans. In addition to the lack of concern about the gender of the person who cleans your restroom while you're in it, we recently learned that kids in Lindsey's second-grade class often end up changing together as they get ready for their weekly swimming session. We're monitoring her closely for long-term signs of psychological damage, but so far, she seems to be her usual self (that is to say, she's manipulative, conniving, devious, and utterly indifferent to the fact that she has parents). I think she'll be fine.

I'm rich!!!!--briefly

The good news is that my company is going to deposit $53,252 into my checking account in a couple of days. Woo-hoo! The bad news is that I then have to turn around and write out checks for $57,076 to the IRS and the state of Minnesota. But I'm at least going to take a screen shot of that deposit just to remind myself of how it felt to have tens of thousands of dollars in my checking account, however briefly.

It's all a result of the crazy tax rules that apply to expatriates. Everything the company pays on our behalf counts as income as far as the IRS is concerned, so the company has to pay a huge tax bill for us on that income. The company pays me what they owe in taxes for me, and then I turn around and pay the taxes. Oh, well. Easy come, easy go, right?

In other news, here's how we think the Wood family travel schedule is shaping up before our move back to Minnesota next summer: October break, Barcelona; Christmas break, Utah; February break, Egypt; April break, Ireland or Germany; end of school in June, Stockholm and St. Petersburg; August, Lakeville. That's a pretty good list, but there's so much more that I want to see. I guess that will have to do for now.

Okay, let me get this confession out of the way right now: Remember how I said that we absolutely, positively weren't going on any more cruises after our cruise last October, and then we ended up going on a cruise in April, but then I said we for sure absolutely, positively weren't going on any more cruises after that, and I really, really, really meant it? Ahem. Well, we might do one more cruise. I've wanted to visit St. Petersburg but figured it wouldn't work out. As I was looking at a trip to Stockholm next June, though, I discovered that the timing works out perfectly for us to head to Stockholm as soon as school is out, spend four days running around Sweden, then take a five-day cruise that goes to St. Petersburg and back. That would be a convenient way for us to visit St. Petersburg, and the kids would be absolutely thrilled to do one more cruise, even if it is only a five-day cruise. We'll see what happens. Don't mention it to Tanner and Lindsey for now.

London, day 3

Everyone else was pretty beat by the start of day 3, so I headed out on my own while everyone else slept in a little. I first went to St. Paul's Cathedral and hung out there for a while (remember my love of old churches). I then went to the National Gallery and stared at paintings for a couple of hours. I don't know much about art, but I do love looking at paintings.

Stace and the kids finally caught up with me at the British National Museum. Stace wanted to see more of the Tower of London, so she went back there while the kids and I hung out at the museum. It deserves an entire day all its own. We spent most of our time looking at the mummies, but there's lots of other stuff to see there.

And then, Tanner and I decided to take our chances at Wimbledon. They have very orderly procedures for getting in there. Most of the tickets for Centre Court and the other show courts are sold well in advance, but if you want to camp out, they make a few available each day. Keep in mind that this picture is taken on a Saturday night and that there's no play on the first Sunday, so these people are camping here to get to Centre Court a day and a half later.

The queue becomes its own little city with temporary food stands and restrooms brought in.

The Wimbledon queue is a cultural experience all its own. We knew there was a good chance we wouldn't make it onto the grounds that night, but we decided it was worth sticking around anyway.

Against all odds, we made it in. We didn't see anyone famous, but it was fun for me to be there since I grew up watching Wimbledon with my parents.

This is probably the closest I'll ever get to Centre Court--the outside.

Faithful readers, you are now up to date with all of the Wood family's travels over the past few months. Whew! We're now starting to think about where to go for the October break. I think we've narrowed it down to Stockholm or Barcelona. (Everyone back in Minnesota thinks we're in Sweden anyway, so we might as well visit there, right?)