Christmas Activities and Missionaries

First up, I thought I should mention that we found out our stuff won't arrive here until the end of January. :(  It isn't even leaving California until December 20th.  Oh well, we are going home (Texas) briefly for Christmas and for the birth of my new sister (!!), so we'll have to stock up on essentials while we are there.

This past week Darren and I were both sick and are just now recovering, so we didn't go on any grand adventures, but we did manage to fit in a few fun things.  On Monday (St. Nikolas Day) I found out that the Lindt Chocolate Factory store was having a sale, so I raced over to fill up on some yummy items.  While I was there, I ran into Samichlaus and Schmutzli.

Samichlaus on the left and Schmutzli on the right

Now Samichlaus sounds familiar, right?  This is St. Nikolas who comes on December 6th (St. Nikolas Day) and gives treats to good children.  They get things like mandarin oranges or gingerbread or candy from Samichlaus.  But who is Schmutzli?  He is Samichlaus's sidekick who takes care of the children who were naughty that year.  He is supposed to look scary so he wears dark clothes and his face is painted black.  He also carries a wooden broom or stick to hit the naughty children and he is supposed to drag the naughty children away into the woods.  Apparently Schmutzli is much scarier in other European countries, so I guess we should consider ourselves lucky!  

I wasn't very discreet trying to take this picture from my phone, so Samichlaus came over to talk to me and said something, but I had no idea what he said so I just smiled and said, "Ich spreche kein Deutsch, tut mir leid! (I don't speak German, sorry!)".  I was proud of myself for getting at least that out because if people talk to me unexpectedly in German, I just start answering in English because it's so automatic.  It definitely takes a lot of effort to become fluent in a language!

Most of the rest of the week I was in bed sick (Ich bin krank!), until I felt well enough on Friday to get out of the house.  I went with some other ladies from my church to go and serve lunch to about 30 LDS missionaries who are serving missions in the area.  They were having a conference at a nearby church building and had asked us if we could provide a meal for them.  I was sick during the week, so I didn't make any of the food, but was well enough by that day to go and help prepare and serve it.  We served them salad, rolls, lasagna, and pudding and cookies for dessert.

The lovely salads all ready to be served

The missionaries eating up

It is also very true that nineteen to twenty-one-year-old boys can eat!  We gave each of them two heaping servings of lasagna and most of them came back for seconds!  Good thing we had made so much.  But seeing as how expensive food is here, they might not be able to afford much on their little monthly food stipend from the church, so maybe they were really excited to have seconds.  It was also funny how surprised the missionaries were to have five American women show up who were from a local congregation.  I'm sure they were expecting some local Swiss people who didn't speak English, but little did they know our congregation is mostly Americans!  Most of the missionaries are also from the US, so everyone just spoke English like we could have been doing back in America.

Our lovely desserts, but we made sure to have healthy options, too, with the oranges 

The missionaries were very grateful for our service.  They sang us a song in German and presented us with some candy and a homemade card they all signed.

The lunch crew and our mascot, Charlie

We also had a mascot with us while we were preparing and serving lunch.  He was such a good dog and I got to take him for a walk!

Meet Charlie

I started feeling better on Friday and that's when Darren started to get sick.  So ended up just staying home for most of the day on Saturday.  Later on in the evening, Darren was feeling a little better so we decided to stop our church's Christmas party for a bit.  The theme was that all the church members had been summoned by Caesar Augustus to Bethlemen to be counted, as was done in the days when Jesus was born.  It was a very cute idea and lots of people had put a lot of effort into making a great party.  One lady had painted big murals of Bethlehem scenes.  Most everyone dressed up in Bethlehem attire.

Forgot the camera so these are taken with the phone, better than nothing though

 We all went to the Bethlehem "market" to have some fruit, meat, cheese, and bread from the stalls of the market.  The children under twelve then read and acted out the nativity story and sangs some songs.  They were really cute, though some had no idea what they were doing. :)  One little boy was dressed up as a sheep and he was adorable.

It was a really fun way to celebrate Christmas!

Pictures of Our Apartment

Someone reminded me that I haven't put pictures up of our apartment.  I had emailed some pictures to my immediate family when we first got the place, but now I realize more than just my parents and grandparents read this blog. :)  These are the pictures from the online ad, so no it's not this sunny and bright right now.  It's actually pouring down rain.


When you walk in the front door, to the right is the living room and the dining room.  The Swiss (maybe Europeans?) love parquet flooring, but I am not a big fan.  Not much you can do about it though since many apartments had this flooring.  You cans see in the picture that there is a little ledge inside the living room.  That is where the fireplace is.  The sliding glass door in the dining room leads out to a large balcony.

If you look straight ahead from the front door, this is hallway that leads to the bedroom.  See the closets on the right?  So amazing!

As you walk down the hallway, there is a bathroom on the left.

If you keep walking down the hallway, there is a door to the kitchen on the right.  You can also enter the kitchen from the dining room.  The kitchen is very large for Swiss standards, so I am excited about that.  We have a lot of kitchen things, so there is plenty of cabinets for all of our things.  You can also see a nice, little attached table there.  This has been a been a huge benefit to us since we don't have any kind of desk/table for another month.  We just bought two black Ikea folding chairs and use this space as a desk and kitchen table.

When you walk down the hall to the bedroom, inside the bedroom door is another bathroom.  Again, this is so huge compared to normal Swiss bathrooms.  You can't see it, but it has double sinks, which we really enjoy.

Then this is our bedroom, which is really big.  That is good for us though since we have a large bedroom furniture set.  We are excited we will be able to ship all of our furniture because we have space for all of it.  The open door leads out onto another large balcony.

So that's our place!  There is one picture of the apartment currently that I will share with you:

We have an advent calendar!  They are huge here in Europe and lots of stores sell them.  Even LEGO makes one where you get certain pieces every day to build parts of a larger thing.  It's pretty awesome!  I just got this cheap one at the grocery store, though.  We also ordered a tree from Amazon Germany!  Hopefully it gets here some time this week and then I can decorate!

Our Apartment and Fantastic Weekend

We moved into our permanent apartment this week, so things have been pretty busy and tiring here.  We are happy to have our apartment and still think it's nice, but the relocation agent failed to mention that the underground trains travel right underneath us.  There is a rumble every now and then, which we didn't expect, but that we are getting used to.  The apartment has other great things though like location, a big kitchen, and closets.  Yes, we have a coat closet and three hallway closets.  This is very unusual in Switzerland.  Closets are never part of the apartment, even in the bedrooms.  People typically buy a wardrobe to hang up their clothes, so we are lucky to have these storage spaces especially since we don't have our furniture.  Also, we live on the first floor!  This is fantastic.  I had to haul all the suitcases down five flights of stairs on Tuesday and so I am very thankful for a first-floor apartment right now.

It's been difficult getting the apartment set up without a car, but fortunately we have had a lot of help from our new friends at church.  One lady picked me and all of our things up Tuesday morning and drove me over to our new apartment so I didn't have to haul everything over there myself.  Then another lady met us at Ikea yesterday morning with her mini-van so that we could get a futon and some other things to hold us over until our stuff arrives.  Everyone is so nice!  Part of the reason this past weekend was so fantastic was because of another nice couple, but I'll start with Friday first.

Friday night we made another trip to Ikea.  We have now been there three times and we will probably go again tonight.  It really is fantastic that Ikea is here because their prices are about half of what they are at other places.  Even though they are a great deal, they still aren't as cheap as they are in the US.  The same exact futon that we bought is available in the US, but it's $100 less.  Even so, we would be broke if we had to buy everything at other furniture stores here.  Also, getting to Ikea is pretty simple without a car, which we are grateful for.  We take a 20-minute train and a short 5-minute bus ride and we are there.

I really am in love with public transportation here.  But one thing I did forget about not having a car is that your errands won't be accomplished unless you get up off your butt and walk to wherever you need to go.  Even if you are tired from hauling five overweight suitcases down five flights of stairs, the keys from your temporary apartment will not be turned in unless you go walk over there yourself.  This can take a lot of mental willpower, but the reward is that I can pretty much can eat Nutella every day with all this exercise. :)

The fantastic weekend continued with a fun outing Saturday night!  We went to a performance of Handel's Messiah at Grossmünster.  That's the 800-year-old church I keep mentioning.  It is the most famous church in Zürich.  The performance was by a local semi-professional group, like the kind of choirs Darren used to sing with.  It was a small group, probably about 20 to 30 people in the choir and a small orchestra.  The group was decent and the soloists were good, so it was an enjoyable performance.  It was also funny to hear how the Swiss sing English.  But really, it was just amazing that we were at a performance at such an unforgettable venue!

Darren snapped a quick picture from his cell phone during the performance

The church was freezing though, so everyone kept their coats on

When the performance ended, we walked along the Münsterbrücke (Cathedral bridge) to our tram stop near Sprüngli and it was snowing big fluffy flakes so the scenery was just gorgeous!  Life is fantastic!

Darren tried to take a picture of the snow from his cell phone

Finally, on Sunday night, we were invited over to have Thanksgiving dinner with a couple from church and their three little children.  They had had a busy Thursday, so they had decided to have Thanksgiving on Sunday and invite some people over to join them and we were the lucky ones.  I have never appreciated a home-cooked meal and good company more.  We also had some of those Luxemburgerli from Sprüngli and I thought they were good so everyone should try them when they are here.  We were told they are very different from macaroons, so those people who do not like macaroons (Luke) should try these.

That was our fantastic weekend!  Life is pretty much a fairy tale.