Elisa finished her full four months of German lessons! She’s pretty handy with German. I’m impressed that she made it all the way through the long hours of classes. Now hopefully I will not forget too much of it without the daily practice of being in classes.

On Thursday we went to a BBQ with our American friends. The kids did sparklers in honor of Independence Day. Then everyone started to sing the national anthem, which I thought was kind of kooky–but it was actually such a wonderful thing to hear. The rest of the city did a ton of fireworks over the weekend because of a totally unrelated Zürich festival. It only happens once every three years. We just barely missed it because we left town Friday morning! I haven’t been wanting to travel back to the U.S., but I let Google talk me into going back to get some training. Elisa and I both sort of changed our mind about it lately. We started to get really excited about being able to see our families.

At 4 am (Zürich time) the night before our flight, Tara called us. She was waiting for us at the Seattle airport to give us a ride home. Oops! Wrong day. 🙂 Elisa and I had an experience with that same mistake when Mom visited us in February.

We traveled across the Atlantic using American Airlines. I have to say, it was pretty ghetto. The headphones didn’t work, and the TVs were old and starting to distort the picture, and the overhead compartment wouldn’t latch shut unless it was slammed over and over. I was getting motion sick and got a migraine and they didn’t have any pain relievers at all! It was miserable until Chad used HIS German skills to ask some people if they had any Tablets. They have a 60% on-time rate. After we waited an hour for them to let us start boarding, they made an announcement that the entire plane had to be boarded within 19 minutes or we would miss our take-off window. We missed it. Elisa and I didn’t make our connection in Dallas, so that held us up too. We got to Tara’s house about 24 hours after leaving our apartment, and it had been daylight for us the entire time.

We’re back in Sammamish now, staying with Larry and Tara. Miraculously we have been able to sleep through the night ever since we arrived. Today a lot of the family came to visit. We played Bocce ball, which we had been looking forward to (but Elisa and I lost). We’ll be here until Thursday afternoon.