Welcome to Switzerland/Geneva!

---

I wrote the title for this blog because this is one of the lines that one of my colleagues says to me fairly frequently. Well, I guess that my hiding in Geneva is over. We all had to go the cantonal office of Geneva last Wednesday because we all needed resident cards. They finally figured out that I was in the country. Anyways, all foreigners need these resident cards. We got there when it opened at 7:30 am and went through the paperwork and got our pictures taken all pretty flawlessly. After this, I went to my school to get some work done. Olivier, the other half of the masculine team at our school, asked me how the morning went at the cantonal office. I told him that it was fine, except that the price was hard to swallow. I told him that it cost us 475 CHF (Swiss Francs) to get the resident cards. And what did he say to me - Welcome to Geneva!

Secondly, a little over 2 weeks ago, our whole school went on a little outing to a beautiful park called Signal de Bougy. We took coach type buses to this park. This is sure an upgrade compared to the yellow school buses that we take in St. Albert. Anyways, I was able to see the bill for the 3 buses that we took. Any guesses? The bill totalled 2 760 CHF. Again, I commented to Olivier about the expense of the buses and he replied, "Welcome to Geneva!"

The past week was a fairly busy one for us. It almost felt like we were back being busy in St. Albert. Avery started her French course last Monday night and that is where she is right now. Tuesday I had an annual general meeting at Isabelle's school in the evening. Wednesday I played hockey. Thursday the Mairie of Chancy took out the teachers, parascolaire and crocolions to a restaurant in Chancy called Café de Place. It was a delicious evening with a four-course meal. The meal started at 7:30 pm and in true swiss/french/european fashion, I didn't get home until 11:15 pm. Needless to say, we didn't do much over the weekend. It was nice to relax.

Today, I had a good day at school. I was finally able to meet Denis face to face, after so many times on Skype. It was neat to meet him. Although, it might have been a bit surreal for him (and for me - in some ways, an exchange is like you're living someone else's life) to see someone different teaching in his classroom and to have someone living in his apartment. He called on Sunday and said that it was weird to be calling his own house. Anyways, I was glad to meet him and the students were excited to see him as well. He shared his pictures and experiences with the students. The students liked learning about school in a different country.

---

Photos

Looking for rocks.
Isabelle, Myles and I went out into the rain looking for rocks for a craft from Isabelle's devotional book.

Courge/pumpkin.
I received this little pumpkin from one of my colleagues and Isabelle really wanted to carve a Jack-O-Lantern.

Sirop.
You will notice the sirop that is popular here.