the end, kind of

Today is my last day in beautiful Switzerland, and I'm sad I don't have time to write this thoroughly enough, but I have to get the kids up and ready for school and then finish getting the last few things packed. Then I'm off to the airport! I can't believe it's really the end. My life has been wonderful! Yesterday was a crazy snow storm and all flights got cancelled from Geneva airport, but today is supposed to be partly sunny with no snow, so I should be ok with my flight (fingers crossed!) although I bet it's going to be completely mad with people trying to recover the lost day of traveling. Anyways, that's all the time I have for now, but when I get home I'll update again about my last days here and post pictures of my Rome trip (it was really crazy!) Wish me luck!

Gratitude

Monday was a bit of a sad day because my vocal class ended and I had to say good bye to everyone in it, probably for good. Departures are a very sad part of life, and I don't see how anyone can get used to them. Saying goodbye is a natural, common thing that one has to do, but I think what makes them so tragic is the fact that you are saying farewell to a bit of yourself as well. I shared something very important with those women in that class, almost a bit of my heart and soul, and I feel like it will remain there with them. Not necessarily a bad thing, but a parting non the less. I think Emily Dickenson says it best: "Parting is all we know of heaven and all we need to know of hell."

On a brighter note, seeing as how Thanksgiving is tomorrow, I am going to express gratitude for everything that I can think of for the next 20 minutes. I am grateful for so very many things, but I think that the top of the list is reserved for my dearest friends and my wonderful family. I am so grateful for their support and the comfort they have provided and will forever provide for me. I am grateful for wonderful literature, music, art, and nature. All of those things are so important to me because they provide beauty in a world that needs it, otherwise there would be precious little to appreciate about this earth. I am thankful for kind strangers. I am thankful for different cultures and languages because they fill me with a sense of direction and yearning. I am grateul for flowers and for the internet. I am especially grateful for money that allows me to buy things that I love, even if I don't need to have them. I love shopping! I am grateful for laughter (that almost sounds a bit arbitrary, but it's something I really am grateful for). I am grateful that I have a mind capable of pondering, especially about difficult, wonderful things like religion and divinity. Last night I couldn't go to bed until 1 or 2am because I was thinking about God and stuff. I am grateful for knowledge and wisdom, for education and experience. And lastly, I am grateful for fruit.

Busy Busy

It is incredible how I have really nothing to update when these past few weeks have been absolutely, insanely, incredibly crazy. I'm glad I'm writing kind of in retrospect, for had I updated in the middle of the mayhem, I would not have been able to write peaceably about it. In fact, I probably would have been crying. Today I am in a relatively good mood, so here's the skinny on what's been happening: I have been working almost non stop, getting very little sleep, and hardly any time off. During this, the father was away on a business trip, Tyler was waking up screaming his head off almost every night which made me resort to wearing ear plugs as part of my pajama ensemble, and Anna caught the flu and was up-chucking and complaining non stop (and very loudly) about how her stomach hurt. Before yesterday, I was sleep deprived, over worked, and grumpy. Thankfully I took Monday off and went to Rachel's to unwind and catch up on the ZZZs. For the past 3 Mondays Rachel and I have been attending a beginning vocal class and it has been AMAZING! It is the one thing I look forward to at the beginning of the week. There are all these older British ladies who can't really sing, and they're loud and have no inhibitions. Everyone loves the class, but I think especially me and Rachel. We always leave in such a good mood:) A while ago the kids and I went to a zoo for rescued animals and it was pretty fun. I took some pictures of it, which are posted below:) Still, one of my favorite things about my stay here is being able to take pretty walks. The girls had never heard of a Christmas  countdown chain, so I helped them make one each and on December 1st they can start taking a link off for each day it gets closer to Christmas. Since I am leaving on the 2nd of December and it would have been hard to transport my chain home, I made it a Homecoming countdown, so every day I take off a chain that leads me one day closer to my arrival home. I have loved and am loving being here in Switzerland, but there are so many exciting things happening in the near future that I am very excited to be going home too!

Here is Anna at the Zoo next to the huge lizard.

Some pretty parrots. They reminded me of the really loud flock of wild parrots in Santa Ana where I went to High School, except they are slightly more colorful:)

Hedwig.

Hedwig's sister.

I thought this was funny. It's a whole bunch of wild doves eating breakfast. Cool picture, no?

This was a disaster waiting to happen. So Roberta and I had all the kids with us, and we came to the Vulture cage and there were all these beautiful bunnies running around inside, and after a few minutes of pondering we finally figured out the reason. They were breakfast! Once we surmised this, we decided to hurry quickly on to the next cage so as not to expose the children to the Circle of Life that early in the morning. I don't think I could have taken it, haha. Luckily the birds didn't seem that hungry!

Ah, turtles. The one in the back reminded me of my baby. He had the same red markings on his head as my dear Arnelda.

Halloween! Anna and I decorated this pumpkin, and the rest of the family decorated the one below:)

Mariah practicing being a monster. Or maybe a Jack-O-Lantern:)

Halloween at the Church:) They look really cute!

Here's me with the whole family. I dressed up as a Sunbeam:)

Tyler is way more interested in his candy than strutting his stuff on the catwalk.

This is random, but I was laughing so hard I couldn't breathe after I saw it, so I deemed it photo worthy. It reaffirms my aversion to cats.

Kids are the same no matter where you go. This masterpiece was drawn by some boys on my block, and it reminded me of all the Sunday school classes when I was young, and how the deacons would pass the time cultivating their drawing skills.

I love when I can make Natasha laugh!

I took Tyler to the park and we loved playing on the swings and on the merry-go-round. He also loves playing on this springy thing:)

This is a magical, ginormous tree at that same park and it's wonderful for climbing and playing hide-and-go-seek.

Ok, I think that's about it for now, but I'll try to be better about posting if anything exciting occurs:)

That thing that happens when your brain won't focus

I just really want to post a favorite poem right now. I am starved for good poetry! I came to understand someting very interesting about the Swiss the other day. Roberta, the mother of the family I'm staying with, was complaining about how the lady at the check out counter wouldn't ring up her groceries because it was the 10 items or less line, and she happened to have 11 things in her basket (she ended up replacing one of the items on the shelf rather than going to another line). The other day at the gas station another lady at the counter yelled at her for pumping gas the wrong way. She says that she has also been reprimanded for parking on the line instead of within it by Swiss passerbys. I think this is all hilarious, especially because I have not had anything like this happen to me yet, but it left an impression on me, and it is this: when was the last time you heard of a famous artist or piece of art from Switzerland? What about an award winning actor or director, or even a poem by a Swiss author? People go on and on about their amazing banking system and Switzerland has produced some incredible scientists and mathmaticians, but there is almost no flow of creativity ebbing from this country. Roberta said the reason for that is simply this: from almost their infancy, the Swiss people have never been taught to think outside the box (and of course I am speaking in generalities). There is only one way to do things, and it must be done that way, or else chaos is the only predictable outcome. I then began to think about the wonderful gift of questioning everything. Perhaps they just never learned to question things in the right way, or were never given the option to try. Working with kids has really made me appreciate this because they really do have a question for practcally everything. Why do I have to do that, what makes this, what does that mean? Rachel, who is also a nanny here now, told me a fantastic story about how one of the little boys she takes care of asked her what the word 'stupid' meant, and she responded that just kind of means different or it is when someone does something silly, etc. Then he responds: "Like eating someone?" Yes, indeed eating someone is stupid. And I think that is a perfect question. I think it is questions like that which stir creativity within us, which stir us to become creators and makers. Question everything. Create more. 

I am a mountain underneath the sea
I feel the roaring waves crash over me
I hear the wind, I smell the salty breeze
The Nile brought Cleopatra to her knees

Five hundred thousand leagues beneath the sea
Five hundred thousand more unanswered dreams
Ebbing away like water on the sand
That leave only questions and memories

The orchestra of water on the rocks
Beneath my feet have told me all they know
They whisper of a better day to come
The wind and leaves are telling me it's so

All day I looked into the wet abyss
And peace arose, could I ask more than this?

What do they eat in Sardinia?

They eat amazing pizza and gelato, that's what. I didn't see a single sardine during our stay, not even one:) Sardinia (or Sardegna, as the locals call it) is very beautiful and also very deserted this time of year, which wasn't completely a bad thing because we had our own private beach almost the whole week of our vacation. The only downside was that it was much harder to find open gelato shops than one would expect on an Italian island. Oh well, we all have our crosses to carry. Anyways, apart from it being a little bit chilly and windy, for the most part the weather was spectacular and the water was great. We were gone for a total of 9 days and in order to get there we took a 5 hour car ride to an Italian port and then an overnight ferry to Sardinia. I was lots of fun J I stared a room with Anna and Mariah on the boat and we had fun playing hide-and-go-seek in the dark and telling stories. Here are some pictures of it all!

On the second day of our visit, we decided to check out this little town up in the mountains called and on the drive we noticed this little park right off the side of the road, so we stopped and let the kids play around for a little bit.

This is the view right across the way from the random road side park.

Me and Anna. She insisted we take some pictures:)

Here is a statue right outside the main church in the piazza (or town square) that I thought was beautiful.

The sign on the church.

This was a fun little shop we found, but we didn't go in because almost everything was closed. Unfortunately we arrived just in time for Siesta, but we still got to see a bunch!

Luck was on our side that day because we found an poen Pizzeria even though almost every other restaurant was closed. And what's more awesome, the pizza was absolutely FANTASTIC!

Another day we visited Palau on our way to the Island of La Maddalena, and while we were waiting for the ferry we found this amazing, and I mean amazing, park. I swear, had they built something like this in my neighborhood when I was young, all my childhood dreams would have come true. And yes, I did play on everything while using the excuse that I was looking after the kids. Don't judge me.

On the ferry. As you can see it was pretty ginormous because it also transported a ton of cars over as well.

A photo of La Maddalena from the ferry. While we were there we were able to get some amazing gelato. I got Pistachio, which is my favorite. Dad, you would be proud of me!

We also decided to go on a hike up to Capo d'Orso (Bear Peak) and it was amazing! It's the rock formation kind of in the back that looks like a bear.

Here is a better view of it.

Another close by random rock formation. I don't know why I took this.

Here is inside the bear's head. It was really cool because we got there and because it had been really windy the day  before, we couldn't immediately go and see the bear up close, only 1/2 way because they were working on some electrical problem (the pathway has lights so you can hike it at night). Just as we were about to leave the tour guide came and he let us go see it!

Here is a view from the Bear.

And here is a better view of the head.

Oh! This was incredible! There were tons of lizards all around and one of the girls saw this one scamper across the path and hide in one of the bushes. If oyu can't tell, that's a dragonfly in it's mouth. I mean, that's cool! National Geographic should hire me as a photographer.

Ok, so the tour guide was absloutely adorable and italian and precious, so I covertly took a picture of him to show my sisters, haha. Hopefully he didn't notice.

This is a picture of the sign of our Villa we stayed in.

A picture of the Villa. It was beautiful and seriously the beach was 1 minute away. We went multiple times a day! 

Pretty pretty.

The yard. The sign says "Don't climb on the rocks" in italian.

This was the view from my balcony. Yes, I had my own balcony. Could I get any luckier? :)

Me and Mariah at the beach. She wanted us to pretend we were dead princesses. She was obviously better at it than I was:) I am wearing a sweater because it was cold that day at the beach.  It was great because I got to go to the beach every day and their parents loved it when I took the kids by myself so they could go on bike rides. I love the beach!!!

Here is a sandcastle we made. It was so fun because I got to teach them how to find sea glass and sea shells and how to build things in the sand that will stay up and how to swim in the sea. Thank goodness I was born in Southern California!

Me and Tyler. He loved playing in the sand almost as much as I did. Poor kid, he got sand rash because of his diaper. It's a hard knock life.

Also, Italians are incredibly nice and I love them. I have never previously wanted to learn Italian, but after staying in Sardinia and interacting with Italian people, I want to learn that language just to be able to talk with them! And my favorite thing about the whole vacation was walking with the kids and being stopped by random strangers wanting to touch and look at the baby and children. They absolutely kids! It was so wonderful to hear them exclaim "Oh bella bambina! Bambini! Que bella, que bella!" I loved it. It was like they had never seen kids before:) The national treasure of Italy is not silver or gold, but children, and I think that says so much about the people.

Fam-Bam

So today I got to speak to my family and I realized that I miss them:) Even though we are big and loud and occasionally grumpy and dysfunctional,  I wouldn't have it any other way. I don't get home sick, but I guess this is the closest I'm going to get to that sentiment. Being with another family has really made me appreciate my own. I get to notice things that they do differently and things that are similar, which remind me of home. I love it! My Family:

Some of my family:)

Sarah! this is not a very cute picture of either of us. oh well.

My sister. but seriously.



FHE family. I miss them too!



I don't think enough people have seen this picture. Mike, an FHE bro, on a mission now, trying on my shoes. Not the best idea.

My real brother Mike.

My brother Josh:)

My dad blowdrying Sarah's hair because he was afraid she was getting sick. She was real mad.

2 small pictures of my whole family:) I hate computers, I can't figure out how to make them bigger.

Vincent Arnold Rusesabagina Baird, whose name recently changed to Arnelda seeing as how we discovered He is actually a She.  I love my baby.