Laura

Taking a 16 year old girl away from her friends can be difficult, but Laura has seriously taken our move to Suisse pretty well. Besides keeping up with friends back home with Skype or Facebook, she is our adventurer, cheerleader, night owl, first one up the hill and our go to person for french vocabulary. Each day seems to start with her question of, "What are we going to do new today?" Yep, we are pretty lucky to have such a daughter along with us on our adventures. Love you, Sis!

Tour de France

This morning our family got up early to drive to Gernoble, France, with our friends Pat and Jim, to view the Tour De France. We found a great place to park, where riders would be passing us on an uphill climb. We joined the thousands of others along the route. First a huge parade passed us, special for the Tour. The people in the floats threw all sorts of freebies our way. Flags from many nations were waving and we were happily cheering each of the riders as they passed. We, of course, cried out USA, USA, USA, as the riders from the states passed, even getting a very tired smile and what seemed like an extra spurt of energy as they passed. The highlight was seeing the polka-dot shirted, the green shirted, the white shirted and the yellow shirted riders. A great day with friends and family. Viva la Tour De France!

Où est la gare???

Laura, and I, have been practicing our french. We have a few very useful phrases that we long to use, but have not had the chance as of yet.

Last week, Laura went to Young Women's camp, with our church. It was great, because she met some new friends. As a result she wanted to get together with them. Most of the girls either live in France, in a village by the name of Gex, or closer to Geneva. The rendezvous point was in downtown Geneve and I needed to get her there. We decided to take the train and bus. We have become pretty good at "training" it, besides, we have a yearly pass for the transportation in our zone. After her day with her friends, she would ride home on the train with Paul. Figuring out the closest bus stop to a location is always the trick, but we got her there on time. Now I had to get back to the Gare (train station) to get home. Wouldn't you know it, at that moment it started to POUR!!! I had an umbrella, but it was pouring at a rate that caused the water to hit the ground and attack from that direction. I looked like a drowned rat in minutes. I made it to and on the bus, but all of the windows were steamed up. You can not wipe them off because it is a center core that steams up when it rains here. I tend to get off at my stops when I see certain landmarks and not with the names of stops, because the french is spoken so fast that the names sound NOTHING like they are written. I was riding for the first few stops, when I realized that the last stop had been mine. Wouldn't you know it...the next stop took forever to get to.:( I got off the bus and needed to walk back toward the train station. We had gone through several round-abouts, so I was a little lost. Yep, it was still raining. It was rather comical, as I asked people one of our new phrases, "Ou est la Gare Cornavin?" People do not point here, but instead give very fast french explanations. :/
I walked the way I believe that I should go and came across a person with a suitcase being pulled behind her. YAY!!! I called out to her "Pardon, Madame, Où est la gare???" She motioned for me to follow her. We rounded a corner and the gare appeared. Within 20 minutes I was back in the quiet village walking to my home. Thank goodness I have learned some essential french sentences. "Ou est la gare?" Yep, I am adding that to my permanent repertoire.

Beautiful any way you say it!

I just don't know why we don't call places by their original names? Back in the states, I learned Venezia as Venice and Muchen as Munich. I do realize that some sounds are hard to make when you have not grown up with them, but some take no effort at all to call them their original name. Take Lake Geneva, for instance, it is a lake most people have heard of. It is in the French speaking portion of Switzerland and the city of Geneva is located at one tip. Most people living around this lake live outside Geneva and are deeply offended when the lake is called "Geneva," and BOY do they let you know it. This week I went to Nyon (10 min. from our home) to swim in the lake with Laura and three friends. It is a beautiful spot. While there, I spoke with a lovely woman who spoke English, to mention how lovely Lake Geneva was. On the spot she corrected me and said, the city is Geneva but the Lake is Leman! Yep, the real name is Lac (Lake) Leman. All of this renaming things can be confusing, but what ever way you say it...IT IS BEAUTIFUL.

Some facts: Lac Leman is biggest lake in Western Europe which touches its north side to Switzerland south side to France. The source of the water mainly comes from the Alps and Rhone River, flows in to the Mediterranean Sea is the only outflow. Along the shore of the lake, there are tourist cities such as Geneva, Lousanne, and Montreux, and vineyards stretch around them. On the French side there is also Evian: famous for its mineral water.

The 4 "C's" Cheese, Chateau, Chocolate...Charming

More pictures of Paul, Laura and I at Gruyere. We had lots of fun exploring the village and chateau. (castle) We could not have asked for nicer weather.

Cow Bells and Gruyere Cheese

Today, we had a fantastic day trip to Gruyere, Suisse. Gruyere is located about 1.5 hours from our home and lays in the foothills of the Alps. The village is most known for their cheese making. Everywhere that we walked we could hear cowbells. Laura wanted to get a little closer to the cows, so we did. The beautiful sounds of the bells carried down the mountains. It was a fantastic sound track to a perfect day with Paul and Laura.