Elisa finished another week of German. Countdown: 8 days to go.

Elisa turned into a murderer this week. That’s what she told me when I got home from work. There is a really obnoxious guy in her German class that everybody is always complaining about. But the story turned out to be a lot less interesting than I was hoping for. A spider fell into the washing machine and Elisa didn’t want to save it. Because it was big and scary. So the spider died, and Elisa was a murderer, and German still has an obnoxious kid in class. (8 days to go.)

Elisa fixed up our garden this week. It turns out that it wasn’t looking sufficiently Swiss. It really does look fine (we should post pictures sometime) but Elisa made the mistake of comparing it to our neighbors’ gardens. I was mortified. She worked her tail off pulling weeds. I worked a lot to stake up a bunch of plants as well. On Tuesday and Wednesday this excellent thunderstorm rolled through and it dumped on us so heavily that we felt like the town was underwater. Tuesday night we went out to our balcony and watched as lightning struck all around our building. It was so fun to see and I LOVE the sound. It reminds me of when my mom would wake us up in the middle of the night when we were little to watch lightning storms. My teacher said it was a hurricane, because apparently the wind got up to 120 km/hr. I texted Elisa that it was time to start building our ark. I couldn’t concentrate during the first half of class because the clouds turned all green and it looked like night-time out and then a big sheet of water went over the building.

Jessi Neeley came and visited us. She is studying in Freiburg, Germany for a few weeks? She speaks better German than us. I’m kind of upset that she speaks better German than I do. I’ve been working so hard for so long! 🙂 She brought two of her classmates with her. They checked out the regular touristy sites in Zürich. We gave them an intro to Swiss food. There are three Swiss foods that taste good. There’s only three! The first is Raclette. It’s a mildly smelly cheese that you melt in individual pans and pour over potatoes. That was fun! Our Raclette grill is our new toy. And it’s a tasty one too. Everyone should come visit us just to try it. The second good food is Spätzli. It’s an egg noodle kind of thing. The third good food is Rösti, which is Swiss-style hash browns. They are all very hearty, home-cooked meals. And no meat. Meat is fine here, but it costs an arm and a leg. And you don’t even get that much. 🙂

On Thursday was Jason’s Hump Day–he’s been on his mission in Guadalajara for exactly 1 year. Congratulations, Jason!

I have new friends that speak German. Yeah! On Tuesday and Thursday afternoons after German I was able to visit with some of the ladies in the ward. It is so nice to have people speak nice slow High German with me that can switch over to English when my brain starts to melt away. Last night Elisa said in her sleep, “It’s so hard to learn when people aren’t speaking it around you all the time. It’s like the words just don’t come very easily, you know?” She was very animated except her eyes were closed.

These next few weeks of German are going to be a real challenge. I catch onto the grammar pretty quickly but since I still think too fast in English nothing seems to come out quite right. A new course also means new people and it will be an adjustment working with some of the new people in our class.

Yesterday we enjoyed a nice relaxing Saturday. The weather was so beautiful. We went to a fair in a neighboring town. In the little narrow streets they had rides and food stands and a really fun game for kids put on by the fire department. The kids had to stack plastic apple crates one on top of another, to see who could get the highest. They were roped up and had a fireman belaying them. Some of the kids were perched up on top of a 30-foot tower before the crates fell out from under them. We went with the Mascaros. It is so much fun watching kids experience new things and be so excited about life.

Elisa got to be a hero this week. (That gets a song stuck in our heads every time one of us says it.) I was just waiting for the train and then I turned around and a bunch of people were gathered around a man who had fallen flat on his face and was having a seizure. I could not believe that no one was doing anything! They just stared at him blankly–and I certainly didn’t want to turn him over and take the lead when I can barely speak the language. Plus I don’t know the customs here. In the US it’s practically discouraged to do any sort of first aid if you do not want to get yourself into a lot of trouble. Well anyway, I finally asked if anyone spoke English. By then the poor guy’s seizure had stopped and he said, “I do.” So I told him I was going to treat him for shock. I asked him questions about his condition and basically let him tell me what to do to help him. It was certainly out of the ordinary, but everything turned out okay.

We had a very normal, insignificant week. The only highlights are going to sound like reruns of old Chad and Elisa episodes. We played games with Tony and Rachel. We went to a wedding reception on Friday night, and believe it or not Mormons actually dance at receptions in Switzerland. We got to sit in on a mission lesson for a Portuguese speaker. We did a bunch of stuff around the house and went for a nice walk around the beautiful neighborhoods. And we discovered that the Green Lantern super hero is pretty lame.

Some noteworthy completions occurred this week. I finished my third month of German classes, unfortunately I have also decided to torture myself for the next four weeks as well. Chad has been working on a finance program for the last year +. He was able to run stock info through the program and it suggested the best financial track for our savings. So, by the way, we also spent all our savings this week to buy little pieces of paper that may or may not be worth anything in the future. Let’s hope Chad’s program is a winner!

The only other exciting thing that comes to mind is Chad and I have learned enough German to create a seemingly harmless German sentence that sounds like profanity in English. I still can not say some words in German without flushing a bit.