WinterWonderLand

 

This is a weekend in mid-November -- sunny, clear skies, almost warm temperatures. We've nosedived quickly back into reality and have had a dusting of snow on all the trees and rooftops for almost the past week. Apparently even the newspapers are complaining about this unseasonably cold weather.

 

Last week I took the children to Kerzenziehen (candle making). They set up locations in almost every town/neighborhood around Zurich the week before the beginning of advent. Pay 2francs for the wick & then start dipping. We definitely needed our fair share of help considering the adult influence in the group had no idea what she was doing. I've never been instructed so much & often (in a language I didn't understand) by random 7-10 year old children. I found it fascinating. It felt great to mix more with the community, to share smiles of misunderstanding over a pot of hot wax. I believe the children found it boring. We'd probably already been dipping for about 25-30 minutes & you can see there is plenty more work to be done before those little guys make a decent candle.

 

And a horrible shot of our Thanksgiving celebration, that's our hazy friend Jonna who hosted the event and Joe carving the turkey with a bread knife which is, I guess, what happens when you attend a half Swiss/half American Thanksgiving in a 300 year old house. It was great fun & is always good for us to have an experience of actually mixing with a group of Swiss people (instead of our usual one token Swiss per event;)

 

And lastly here are the children yesterday on the ski rink in town. We spent a few hours out skating yesterday, thank goodness for the polar bears. (Does anyone know, do they exist in the US?, I don't recall every seeing one there.) I spent a lot of time also holding on to the polar bear to get the children moving a bit faster which worked out really well except for the backache I'm having this morning from all the bending over.
We'll have to attempt to get a good shot of the new Christmas lights on the Bahnhof. They are absolutely stunning this year & they were turned on Thanksgiving night, so after our pub dinner we strolled up the Bahnhofstrasse to take in the view. We had a fire again this past weekend when our friends Davide & Elena came over for lunch, we've played the same 9 Christmas carols we have downloaded on an endless loop & we head to Luxembourg this weekend to enjoy some serious Christmas markets. I'd say we're ready & definitely in the spirit, lucky for us it's only T-10 days until we are Merica bound!