The kids are enjoying summer camp

As of this Monday, Peter and Kenny are going to a summer camp run by the local community center, or Maison de Quartier.  They'll be going there the next 3 weeks.  It's convenient, I can walk them there in about 10 minutes, and from the community center they take a bus to the camp in Jussy, about 20 minutes away. They were a little apprehensive about going there, especially Kenny.  But now they both say they love it, and can't wait to go in the morning.

Every day we need to put together their kit, which includes the obvious (sun hat, towel, bathing suit), but also a plastic plate, cup, spoon, and fork for lunch.  Lunch is provided, but they need to bring the dishes, and also wash the dishes by themselves.  So far the lunch has been spaghetti with bread and salad, ham with rice and green beans, and today shrimp kebab with rice.  And dessert has been fruit salad, cookies (but only if you can find a piece of trash to pick up), and today ice cream, in the cups that they drink water from, so they needed to finish all their water. They definitely avoid all disposables.

So far I've been quite happy with the staff.  They're all very friendly, engaging with the kids, and patient with my broken French.  Today one of them explained to me that Peter started crying for some reason while they were off on a little hike in the woods, and they absolutely couldn't figure out what the problem was.  She was speaking to me a little too quickly, so I had to ask her to slow down, but mostly I understand things.  I finally got from Peter what the problem was, hours later, after bribing him with the promise of a lollipop.  It turns out that during their hike in the woods, an insect had been flying around his eyes, and he tried to brush it away and either accidentally brushed it into his eye or touched his eye with his finger.  

We saw some of the staff at the park next to our apartment, they were all puffing away with cigarettes.  But smoking is just so much more common here that it's not seen as the big negative it would in the US.  As long as they don't puff directly onto the kids, I'm fine.

Kenny really has been enjoying some of the games that they play involving tagging, and multiple teams.  Today they played a game with two teams, where each player could be either a troll, a leprechaun, or some other character he couldn't translate.  It involved a lot of running, bases, tagging people out and rescuing them again, which he really likes, so he was happy.  He's still not talking at all, but they say that it's apparent he understands everything.  I was also told that this morning, before Peter's incident with the insect in the eye, he had started talking quite a bit.  So hopefully Kenny will start too.  

Kenny told me that Peter is always being told by other kids, especially the older girls, how cute he is.  He doesn't seem jealous, just amused.  In any case, Kenny doesn't aspire to be cute, he wants to be cool.

Wednesdays is the field trip day.  This week, they went on a field trip to a really huge pool in Lausanne, with tons of slides, and also the Museum of the Hand.

EDIT:
Today was the last day of summer camp.  After pick-up, I went to get Kenny for dinner and found him sobbing on his bed. It turns out he was just so sad about summer camp ending!  He talked about how much fun he had there, how nice all the counselors were, how fun the games were, how much fun it was to build the cabins (they let the kids build some cabins in the woods).  And today, when they had a parade to the park with a paper mache dragon, he got to walk in front of the dragon, holding an orange cardboard flame.
I guess he did start talking to people, even though at one point he wasn't talking much, because he said that many of the counselors told him how well he spoke French.

Well, I'm glad it turned out so well.  And the kids are both going to the Wednesday program (there's no school on Wednesday, so you have to figure out some other kind of childcare arrangement), which is also at the Maison de Quartier.  I think they'll really enjoy it.

One more note - when I pick the kids up on Fridays, the counselors were all sitting around drinking beers.  This doesn't bother me, but it's something that would really not happen in the US.  Or only furtively.

New flash - green hills in the Swiss Alps mean lots of rain

We're spending the week in a campground rental cabin close to Brienz, in the Berner Oberland area of Switzerland - pretty much the heart of the alps.  All good and well, and I love the space efficiency of this cute little cabin.

But...dang!  We've had some miserable weather.  Today's been pretty much the worst, we've had solid rain pouring down for the past 5 hours or so.  The rain right now is briskly drumming down on the roof here in our cabin.

We did have a reasonably good day yesterday, Kenny and I went on a hike on the KristalWeg in the Grimsel area.  It's an old mule path, and is build up with some neat old bridges, and steps cut into steep stone paths.  In one area there was a path - quite a wide one, probably about 8 feet or so, but on the other side was a very steep slope down to a churning river. I grabbed Kenny's hand and didn't let go until we got to an area where a misstep wouldn't have been fatal.

Fête des écoles

The Fête des écoles, is the end of school festival.  I had no idea what a big deal this is, but it's huge.  There's two of them - one for younger kids (Peter's age up till about 8) and another for older kids.  This past Wednesday, which is normally a day off school, the school festival for the younger kids took place at the Parc de Bastion, close to the old town.  Peter got dropped off at the school, then he marched with his class to the park, where there were all kinds of rides, exhibitions, and shows.  There were many shows focusing on Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the famous Genevan philosopher of the 18th century - anyway, as much as you can focus on a philosopher when your audience is between 5 and 8.  Peter was there all afternoon, and then I took the tram to pick him up at 5:30.  As I got closer in the tram, I saw just how jam-packed it was.  It seemed like thousands of parents were there, waiting for the gates of the park to be opened so they could pick up their little kid.  I searched for Peter about 20 minutes.  The organization was a little bit lacking in terms finding your kids again.  Then after I found Peter, getting out again was pretty tricky.  But overall Peter liked it.

Then Friday evening was the Fête des écoles for Kenny's age and up - around 8 or 9 to 12 or so.  The festival was in Parc La Grange, very close to our apartment building.  They had huge bouncy houses set up, climbing walls, a concert stage that played pop music at a surprisingly reasonable volume, and all kinds of other things to tickle the fancy of kids that age.  Lots of kids were running around in groups, and Kenny found some kids from his class to hang out with, which was nice.

Peter fell in love with the climbing wall, and waited in line to go up it 4 times!  The last time he was on his own, without any friends.  He managed to get to the front okay, and got himself strapped into the harness.  But then he stood around so long, without going up to do the climbing, that one of the people working there assumed that he'd already gone up, and unstrapped him from the harness!  A kid from Kenny's class who knew Peter ran up to me, and told me Peter was crying, and after Peter had calmed down I got the story from him.  We managed to get him in the harness again, and he climbed up to his heart's content.  It really struck me that in the US, they would NEVER have allowed 5 year olds (or any kids or adults, for that matter) to go up on a climbing wall without lengthy signed permission slips, etc.  Here they had a semi-automated system where the kids could go up without anyone manning the ropes - somehow the ropes stayed taut while they were climbing, and then let them down when they reached the top.  And hundreds if not thousands of kids had fun on the climbing wall without a lot of bureaucracy .

Kenny's been bringing home all the projects that he's worked on throughout the year.  He sewed up a pillow, made a hand-sawed jigsaw puzzle - a lot of projects that, in the US, would not have been done because they would have taken away time from subjects that are evaluated on standardized tests - math, reading, etc.  I think doing that kind of handicraft has been a really good experience for him.

My new workout routine

I blogged previously about how I've been getting on in terms of setting up an exercise routine - Getting started on an exercise routine again.  After slacking on the home exercise routine quite a bit, I joined a gym really close to work (mostly paid for by my work).  And went...maybe 4 times in about a month.  I think it's a combination of not getting it done in the morning, the need to take an extra shower during the day, having to change clothes at work, etc - it's just a hassle unless you're exceptionally motivated, which I'm not.

On the positive site, what I have started now is doing a stair-climbing workout right here in my apartment building.  Basically, I go up and down the stairs 3 times - that's 8 flights times three, so 24 flights.  It takes me less than 15 minutes.  Then I do a few squats and other exercises at the top, and call it good.  My goal is to do it every day, but I'm probably actually doing it once every other day.  I can tell a big difference when I climb the stairs now, in that I get winded a lot less.  I think I'll aim to do 4 sets in about the same amount of time, so speed it up a bit, and then I'll be good.

It's hot!

We're had a stretch of very hot weather here in Geneva - a high yesterday of 33 degrees Celcius (91 Fahrenheit).  The air conditioning situation is this - almost no buildings have air conditioning, including our apartment.  There's lots of blinds and shutters to block out the sun, which is very handy - critical, really, when the sun is streaming in.

The office building where I work has air conditioning...kind of.  In reality, it never works.  Really.  It's not standard air conditioning, which is apparently forbidden in Switzerland on the grounds of high energy consumption.  It's these weird ceiling mounted pipes, that have cold water flowing through them.  They worked one morning, a lot of condensation formed on the ceiling (it's designed for that, made of metal), and it was pleasantly cool.  That was nice, but it was just for one morning.  The rest of the time, during this stretch of really hot weather, it's just been really warm at the office.  People are wearing shorts, and some little USB fans have been distributed, they help a lot.  Also yesterday I brought a frozen water bottle from home and sipped on it throughout the day, that cooled me down tremendously. I wasn't even warm while everyone else was complaining about the heat.

At home, we keep the blinds down, turn on the fans at night, and we manage to beat the heat.  Occasionally when I come in from walking around outside, and am really hot, I fill the bathroom sink with cold tap water and soak my arms for a while, that cools me down quite well.

EDIT: The air conditioning at work is fixed now, and it's actually quite cool there!  I need to wear a fleece in the office to feel comfortable.

Football (soccer) is REALLY big here!

Just now it's the middle of the Euro 2012 cup, England vs Italy.  I have the windows open because it's still quite warm out, but it's LOUD out there, even though it's 11:30 at night!  The noise is coming from people yelling and screaming while watching the football game.  We live in an apartment complex, and you hear it from so many of the open windows, shouting, exultation at goals scored, etc.  


I'll have to show Kenny the highlights on YouTube tomorrow morning just so he's not completely out of the loop at school.

I eat Peter's popsicle

It's been a stressful few weeks, but I wanted to share this funny story.  Kenny, Peter and I (Eric is on a business trip to the US) walked to the park next door yesterday evening, with popsicles, for a little stroll before bedtime.  Peter was walking behind me, Kenny was ahead of me, and then I heard Peter crying from behind me.  I tried asking what's wrong, why he was crying, etc.  This goes on for a while, but he can't tell me what happened.  I keep on asking, "Don't you want to eat your popsicle?"   He kept on shaking his head.  So I end up eating much of his popsicle as well as mine (they're pretty small).  At one point there was a hard bit that I spit out.

Later on Peter had calmed down, and I asked him again why he was crying before.  He said, "I dropped my popsicle on the sidewalk".  Yech!  And I ate that thing.  To realize the depths of my disgust, you need to know what the sidewalks are like here - they're truly disgusting, with dog poop everywhere.