Mom was with us until Wednesday morning. We played some games together this week but that’s about it. Renee and I grabbed some lunch after grocery shopping. We decided to try a little pasta buffet where they throw a bunch of different things in a skillet and cook it all up. As I was choosing what to put in my concoction I saw something that looked like shredded cheese. I tried to ask about what it was but I didn’t understand the cook’s answer. She finally grabbed a heaping spoonful and motioned for me to do something with it. Again I didn’t know whether she wanted me to smell it or taste it. I eventually took a bunch in my fingers and put it in my mouth. The cook started to laugh so hard at me as I realized I had just put a ton of shredded garlic on my tongue. My tongue burned for the rest of the afternoon. I love garlic but that was too much. Needless to say I’ll be excited to start my German lessons this week. Mom said that on the way to the airport her train was running a little behind. She ended up missing the train connection that was going to take her to the airport. She wasn’t sure what to do so her reaction was to jump on a train at the nearest platform! She didn’t know which way it was going or when it would get there. 😕 [Correction: Mom clarified that she had gotten to the right platform.  The mistake was that she accidentally got on the train that happened to be on the platform at the time, even though her correct train was going to arrive afterwards.] Fortunately it was a train headed downtown, and from there it’s easier to find trains bound for the airport. I’m so glad she didn’t miss her flight.

(I don’t speak German)

We had a taste of Jason’s medicine this week. Our week was very long. You wouldn’t believe how hard it is to not understand what everyone is saying to you. 🙂 We are looking forward to the time when we can take part in regular life here.

Last week before we left we got to see Jeff and Sarah and Sophia. We went up to Anacortes to deliver some of Sarah’s things, and then we forgot to bring them. 🙂 MaryAnn and Scott were gone most of the time. We played a lot of games with Jeff and Sarah.

All day Wednesday we had to just wait around for our flight time. We tried to stay busy so we wouldn’t get stressed. Elisa saw the entire Pride and Prejudice movie, (the 6-hour one by the BBC). That morning Google finally wrote us to tell us where our temporary housing was. They didn’t write us; they called us at 2 am! Google has been dropping the ball with all our arrangements this month.

The flights over the Atlantic are long and uncomfortable, no matter how you look at it. Ours went about as well as it could have. There were huge winds in London and Zürich though. I’ve never seen a plane shake so much while it was still on the ground. Hundreds of flights got canceled that day. Our luggage got placed on the wrong flight! We had to go all Thursday night and Friday with just the clothes on our backs. We didn’t have a phone either, and there was Internet access in the room but our laptop was slowly running out of batteries. Our only plug adapters were in our lost luggage. We got everything back Friday night, thankfully. The Internet is the only way we have to communicate with people but lately it has only been working for about an hour each day. 🙁

On Friday afternoon we went to the local town hall to register as foreign residents. They told us that we were supposed to already have gotten visas. They kept asking us if we had certain documents and they were all in our luggage that was still lost. Mine was late and Elisa’s hadn’t even been applied for yet. We called Google to get them to start the paperwork. Sometime soon we need to travel to Stuttegart, Germany and back to pick up the visas.

Grocery shopping for the first time was eventful, mostly just because we were proud of ourselves for having done it at all. We walked around the store with our little pocket dictionary and still couldn’t find some of the things. We caused a hold-up at the cashier’s. We didn’t know that you were supposed to weigh the produce beforehand, or that you were supposed to bring your own bags, etc. Another minor victory was that we found some decent not-too-expensive places to eat in Zürich. We were worried that every single place we tried to go to would charge us an arm and a leg.

Jet lag is no fun. We thought we were on schedule when we slept during the night on Friday. We didn’t get up until almost noon though. Then on Saturday night we woke up at 1:30 am and just stayed awake until church in the morning. Our bodies are very confused. 😕

Church surprised me a little because I was expecting some of the meetings to be held in English. All of the meetings are actually in German, but members can do translations for us. Tons of people in the ward speak English really well. Elisa got the phone numbers for some families. A couple from Utah, Tony and Rachel, invited us over for dinner tonight and they were so nice–they let us ask them questions forever so that we would feel at ease.

Happy New Year’s. That’s the only thing that we did this week–we celebrated New Year’s. Or we slept through New Year’s, depending on how you want to look at it. Elisa was asleep at 10 pm. The fireworks woke her up just enough to say, “That is really loud.” I’m the life of the party.

I turned in my resignation at Microsoft on Tuesday and I didn’t get fired. Chad had really been laboring over what to do and say and when, so this came as a huge relief. The week was pretty uneventful. The few co-workers that I told where we’re going all got jealous. 🙂

Earlier this week we ran into some people I went to high school with. I ended up spending some time catching up with some others I was inspired to get in touch with. Some people are still the same “kids” from high school, others are doing really impressive things. It was fun to catch up.

This Thursday a surveyor came from our moving company. It was the first time this move really felt real. I felt like there were a million things to do all of a sudden, but really they are taking care of pretty much everything. So instead Chad and I are kind of pacing around feeling like we should be really busy when really we just have to wait a lot of things out. This week we found people to take our piano, a desk, Elisa’s phone, our spare bed and our old digital camera! It has been a blessing to have so many things taken off our hands by people that we are really excited are receiving them.