Say What?

I'm taking German classes now and pronunciation is the hardest thing for me. Reading aloud in class brings back that feeling of being in reading group in early elementary school and not knowing how to pronounce a word. Right now, I stumble a lot over new words, sounds, and phrases. Here is an example from earlier this week when we were learning about sport and fitness: Ernährungswissenschaftler haben nun ein Programm entwickelt: PowerKids. (Dieticians have developed a program: Powerkids.) Of course, when reading in class you feel really silly pausing for a long time to figure out all the words that make up this compound word and then you hope you don't horribly botch it anyway!!

Never Thought I'd See This in Zurich

Some folks here in Switzerland hang flags on their balconies or in their gardens. Of course, they tend to be the Swiss national or Zürich cantonal flags, or less often a German, Spanish, or Italian flag. However, every day on our way to the bus we pass this flag hanging from an apartment balcony.

Zürich: Close and Far Away

We went on a walk in the woods behind our apartment yesterday. When we came out we had a great view of Lake Zürich and downtown. The two large steeples belong to the Fraumünster and St. Peter's.

Downtown from a distance:



Zoomed in:

I Thought I Was in Oklahoma ...

For a little while yesterday, Zürich felt like Tulsa! How? Well, we had an impressive thunderstorm and I had a great vantage point for watching it in my German class. Our class is on the 10th floor of an office building. We are up higher than everything else in the area and have a great view. We watched black clouds role in over the Utliberg and saw the street lamps turn on because it got so dark. The wind was quite strong and so the street lamps and trees were shaking, but the ones outside our building weathered the storm. Other parts of the country weren't so lucky and experienced some severe flooding and wind damage.

Hydrangeas Galore!

Throughout our neighborhood there are beautiful hydrangeas. I recently got a little camera happy taking photos of them.

Our New "Neighbors"

Doc and I often eat on our balcony. We recently started hearing bells at dinner time. To our surprise we found out we have new "neighbors" up the hill from our apartment--sheep. Yesterday we walked up the hill to see them grazing, but they were trying to stay out of the mid-day sun.



There are also lots of wild raspberries on the hill. They sure could be tempting in a few weeks!

Aareschlucht

My first weekend in Switzerland was a holiday weekend because of Pentecost. Doc and I took a day trip to Meiringen in central Switzerland to see Aareschlucht. Here the Aare River has carved a gorge through rock formations. The gorge grew very narrow in some spots and the wind was quite strong. The river is still clearly carving away at the mountain.




On our way walking back to town we saw the ruins of an old tower on a hill and had to check it out.


Here we are at the top of the tower!