Blogs from La Plaine , Geneva, South-West, Switzerland, Europe - page 3

Well, December 19th and 20th were filled with a lot of hope of having a white Christmas. It was beautiful to see all of that heavenly snow on the ground. The students came to school in their snowsuits and they were so excited for the snow. It reminded me of being back in St. Albert. However, by the weekend, the snow was all gone. What it left was beautiful greenary. So, we ended up with a green Christmas. We had a great Christmas. It was nice to have my parents and my sister here for Christmas. For Christmas day, we went to church and then we went to the place where mom and dad are staying to have a chicken dinner. A turkey would have been too big, so we decided to have 2 small chickens ... read more

Well, on Saturday, I had the chance to participate in the Course de l'Escalade. It is a famous race in Geneva that celebrates Escalade. This happened December 12, 1602 when the Duc de Savoie and his cohorts tried to take Geneva by night. The citizens of Geneva would not be had. They came out to fight in their pyjamas and fought off the Savoyards. So, the race is a 7.2 km race through the old town of Geneva. It was fun. I got to run at night and the atmosphere was neat. There were a lot of people that lined the course and that were cheering for the racers. This was the first run that I had done since the death race in August, so I was hoping to arrive at the 45 minute mark. However, ... read more

Well, it is the second last week of November. I do not know where the time goes. It just always seems to fly by. These days, I am feeling quite busy. I have my report cards to finish up, marking to finish, parent/teacher interviews are forthcoming, I will be going to a camp for one week with my class in mid-December and I have to get my class ready for story-telling evening that we are having December 20th. I have to say that I have found some solace in the theme song of Fraggle Rock. Part of it goes as follows, "Dance your cares away, worries for another day . . ." I will let tomorrow worry about itself, each day has enough worries of its own. Anyways, this past week was a good one. One ... read more

Well, I enjoyed my first week back after our vacation to Paris. I can't believe that it is already November and that I have been teaching for nine weeks. Time flies when you're having fun. We celebrated Halloween with Myles and Isabelle last Monday night. We dressed them up and then had then go outside of the apartment. We then told them to knock on our door and say trick or treat. We opened our door and gave them a treat. They loved doing that. We did this because we didn't think that they celebrated Halloween in Avully/Chancy. However, I learned from my students that some of them were actually going out, dressed up, to collect some candy. I told them that the deal was that they had to share half of their candy with their ... read more

This weekend was a busy, yet enjoyable weekend. Both of my parents flew in on Friday. My dad came from home and my mom came from her travels in Estonia and Latvia. It was good to see them and now I don't have to walk around with one eye closed. I got my contacts for my left eye! Anyways, my dad flew in Friday morning at 10:10 am and my mom flew in Friday night around 6:00 pm. We had some good catching up time and then Denis came over around 9:45 pm. It was good to spend some more time with him. He left around midnight. Now, I am not normally a night person, so I have to admit that we went to bed early Saturday night. Saturday, we decided that we would go with ... read more