We’re going to make this wildly interesting. (Or your money back). (Or at least we’ll keep it short).

Elisa and I read this story from Mom in an old Parry Post from the spring of 1989:

I have started a Spanish course, and the children are working on the language also. (Even Jason is picking it up!) They were very impressed with Spencer at Christmas because he could say the Keebler’s commercial in Spanish. They’ve been telling their friends their cousin speaks Spanish “excellent”!

We were excited to see that even back then Jason had a knack for español. We hope the early exposure is paying off.

Elisa finished her month of German lessons. She has a certificate that says she speaks German now. Sort of. It really just shows what we went over in the course. But I’m sure I’ll be able to use it for some… exciting… something. I’m happy to have a break. Although I promised Chad I’ll get him up to speed. I’m planning to take the next class since this one went so well and will start right after our honeymoon.

We are going to have a really good break. Tomorrow we fly to Greece! Woohoo! We will be away until after Easter, 9 days away. We’ll be excited to tell you more in our next blog.

Elisa and I had lots of gospel discussions this week and I came up with a rule of thumb that I like. If there are two competing doctrines or interpretations, then the one that is true is probably the one that is the happier one. Sometimes it is hard to remember that this is a Plan of Happiness so I like Chad’s rule of thumb. It reminds me why we’re here and what’s in store for us even if I don’t understand it all.

Zürich is covered in snow this week and it has been freezing. All the spring flowers got buried. Yesterday we spent the day with Tony and Rachel and we got to make a 7-foot tall snowman. It was a lot of fun sledding with their kids too. Chad and I totally wiped out on the last run.

We’re figuring out how to cook all over again. Cheddar cheese is really expensive if you can find it. In Seattle that was always our staple. We had cheese sandwiches and cheese quesadillas and Mexican. We use fennel a lot right now. (If you don’t know what that is it’s OK because I didn’t either. Elisa claims she knew what it was before.) It’s one of my favorite foods now. We’re really trying to cook like the people here and use the ingredients that are easier to find and cheaper.

Google gave us a really nice surprise this week. The company is trying to encourage everyone to use alternative transportation. So someone left bicycle helmets on everyone’s desk one night as a gift. When we arrived at work we got an email saying that they are giving us a bike and we just have to choose which style we want! 🙂

This has been a really fun night. Elisa and I just got to play games with Mike and Christina, who we know through Google. We even got to entertain them in our new apartment. On Friday we played games with Tony and Rachel from our ward and with Matt and Erin from another ward. We still love our social life here.

Elisa has been studying lots of new things in German class. She is speaking more and more to people. The month-long class is already half done. It’s gone faster for me than Elisa though. The first week was really exciting, now I am hoping more and more that I can just keep up. I am learning a lot and understanding much more. German sure is a crazy difficult language though.

Yesterday we went to the Swiss capital of Bern. The temple is on the north side of town. We got so spoiled in Washington when the temple was only 15 minutes away. It was really only 11 minutes door to door. It’s two hours away from our home now (and luckily not further). I was surprised by how small the temple was. It took about half the session just to get used to hearing all the languages being presented at once. It will take some getting used to. After attending a session we did a walking tour in the Bern old-town. We saw Einstein’s home and the bear pits Bern was named after. The deeper you walked into the city the more quaint it seemed. You could easily imagine life buzzing around the streets hundreds of years ago. I had another run in with an unknown ingredient. I apparently ordered beet juice the other day. It wasn’t so bad. 🙂

Elisa got a calling in the ward today. Chad and I had just been laughing about how we were going to make disguises so we could hide as soon as a bishopric member came around. We were too slow. I was called to be the Primary Chorister again. I guess I am not getting out of doing the Primary Program this year after all. I am excited for the opportunity but terrified. I was so stressed with the calling in English–engaging and teaching children the songs in German is a completely different challenge. But I suppose we are promised that the Lord will fit our backs to the burden, right?