On Saturday we went to the Bern temple. The Locher’s gave us a ride back to Zürich with them, and a chance to practice our German. I’ll just pat myself on the back and say that I told an entire story. 🙂 Later Elisa told me that I was talking with English filler words:

Sie hat für, like, dreissig Jahren Kaffe getrunken, y’know?

Pretty confusing. It’s mostly wrong even if you take out the English. 🙂 Anyway, it’s a milestone. I have been so proud. On Sunday I put my practice to good use, and taught a Sunday school class in German. Elisa’s primary class went great, as usual. She sat the kids in an office chair and spun them around like a game show wheel. Then the group sang whatever song the kid’s feet were pointed at when he stopped. Chad thinks that maybe someday soon he’ll be able to claim that he can speak German. I think he’s already there. For those of you who remember the time he was so proud of me when I was able to exchange a pair of shoes of his–he is definitely there. I am just a little jealous that he has come so far without the crazy intense German lessons I had to take.

I also spent some time over the long weekend trying to get our air conditioner to work more efficiently:
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There is a fun swimming and water slide area that we tried out last week, along with some of our friends and lots of kids. Other than Elisa getting bonked on the head at the bottom of the waterslide it was a perfect day. I guess it also wasn’t perfect that the steam room was super crowded and only for naked people. (We passed this time). What’s nice is it’s all indoor, and since it was raining it was great!

We threw together a BBQ afterwards at the Cooks. They were really nice and figured out how to feed everybody last minute. It finally felt like we got to have a 4th of July BBQ (on the 12th of July).

We’re trying to catch up on our social lives since we’ve been gone for so long. Tony and Rachel had us over for games. We invited two of my coworkers over to our apartment for dinner and games too.

On Wednesday we trekked to Bern to visit the Russian consulate again. They had our visas ready and waiting for us this time. We just had to hand our payment through the fence. The consulate looks pretty intimidating with all the armed guards strolling outside, but they are all nice. I’m glad we weren’t trying to apply for our visa this time. There was a huge line, in the sun, and we got there hours before we did last time.

Here are the results from us playing with the camera this week:

• Walks outside our apartment
• Pictures of Elisa at 32 weeks

The newest member of our family is now a very happy, portable air conditioner. We keep it running from our bedroom nonstop on hot days. It came just in time.

It’s been really nice to find new places to walk around the area. Chad and I found some great paths that go through the woods and along a stream. It’s so relaxing. During our walks we’ve been scheming about how to make our long-distance family relationships work the way we want. I wish we could predict where all our siblings are going to end up making their homes.

Most of the morning we shopped at the farmers’ market in Oerlikon. We picked up strawberries and homemades like olive ravioli. I love just walking down the rows and seeing all the fresh fruits and vegetables and flowers. It made me wish our garden is nicer. When we started getting sweaty we walked down to the community pool. It was too hot for us to hang out in the heated pool, but still too cold to hang out in the Olympic-sized pool. We read and sunbathed to kill time.

We finally enrolled at a local video rental store. They tried to rent The Guardian to us for 8 CHF. But I pointed out that they had it for sale in a bin out front for only 7.50 CHF. The lady gave me a sheepish look like she wasn’t sure why it was so expensive to rent either. So we bought a new DVD for our collection and saved half a Franc on the ridiculous rental price. It’s sort of what we expected. It still seems dumb though.

Elisa has made some killer guac. It feels like summer. It’s really nice to just spend some weekends around the house.