Nik and Rahel Baumann came over for dinner with their kids. We have to hang out with them more. They live in a town really close to here. Maybe I’ll be able to start going to soccer practices with Nik. This Saturday Elisa and I are both going to be in a soccer tournament! I’m more excited for Chad than I am for me. At least if I do terrible they won’t ask me to do it next year. ๐ Elisa made brownies for dinner that everyone talked about for the rest of the week.On Saturday Elisa and Rachel got to go to a baby shower. Tony and I went swimming with the kids. There is this swimming pool just down the block and it was so fun. There is a heated indoor-outdoor pool where we can sit even if it is cold outside. The kids had a fun time too.
After the baby shower, Elisa and Rachel met up with us in Dietlikon. We went to a town called Stein am Rhein. It’s billed as the best preserved medieval town. We liked it enough that we’ll probably go back there when we have visitors. It looked interesting, and old. ๐ It wasn’t a bad place to buy chocolate either.
This blog used to get written every single Sunday. We had to get it done in time to email our news to Jason in Guadalajara. Jason always checked email at the same time, so we had a strict deadline. Then we moved to Switzerland and the time zone difference gave us until Monday evening to write the blog. We got lazy. Then we switched to sending mail to Jason via DearElder.com, and their deadline was Thursday. We got really lazy. Now Jason is back home, so our deadline died. If our blog gets really unreliable from now on, it’s Jason’s fault. ๐
We’re still in California for my work. The Google campus has so many people talking about it (and writing articles about it) that I was expecting something larger than life. It turns out this is just a corporate campus. I guess I thought that people would be dancing through the hallways, singing and wearing bright colors. I was expecting to have lunch served by sushi chefs who put on a show like at Benni Hanna. ๐ The truth is that we get free pizza and pasta. That’s cool and all. Maybe someday I’ll learn why some coworkers think this is so earth shattering. One of my coworkers tried to convince me that it’s more important than being offered health care. Hopefully HR wasn’t listening to that, right? ๐ฎ
Elisa and I went to go enjoy the free food together on Wednesday night. Elisa felt really out of place, with the crowds and especially with all the employees around. She was a little worried about being kicked out. I just felt really out of place and like I was invading the Googler territory. Plus after hearing a number of employees brag about how great they are, I sort of feel a little insecure, well dumb. She didn’t eat and she didn’t enjoy it at all. That’s not the kind of behavior you’d expect from a social butterfly. Elisa can cast a spell on people with her charisma, but what she really wants is to be one of the little old ladies that shuts herself in at home.
While Chad was working I was doing some day trips with my parents who came to visit for a few days. We went to the Santa Cruz waterfront. I could imagine our grandparents when they were teenagers playing in the penny arcade, walking down the boardwalk and going on the old wooden roller coaster. We walked out on the pier and saw the light hit the water so it looked like it was thick with millions of silver fish. Then we realized it really was. We took a old steam train into the Redwoods and it made all the Trees Are Our Friends’ (a children’s tape I sang on when I was 8) songs run through my head the rest of the day. We went to the beaches up the coast and watched the surfers. We also had some adventures using my dad’s GPS to direct us home. Note that the “Shortest Route” will take you on just about any road! We had a lot of fun.
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 Zรยผrich 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 (Zรยผrich 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. ๐ 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.
