Week Six

Week Six
Sunday, March 30, 2008

OK. Another excellent week has passed already. I am thoroughly enjoying these Easter holidays. We got this passed week of and all next week too! It’s awesome!

Last Sunday night I had my first dream in French (finally). Actually, it started with my mom (Canadian mom) speaking to me in German! And after, I dreamt that I was on a provincial or national basketball team and we were playing the French team. In my dream, they all spoke French. So in one night, I went from dreaming in one language to three! And I am continuing to dream in either just French or French and English. I hope when I get home I can still have dreams in French, its sort of fun.

On both Monday and Friday, we spent the day at the local ski hill. Both days were so beautiful and great days for skiing. On Monday, we ate our lunch in a tunnel (right). It wasn’t quite as sheltered from the wind as we had though, but it was fun. Also on Monday, Jana and I were going up the T-bar lift and were so close the top when our bar broke. It was hilarious, we went flying down the hill backwards, and they had to stop the lift and we ended up meeting the rest of the Kausches at the bottom of the hill. On Friday, a similar thing happened when my ski caught an edge going up the lift and I fell off the bar, and in turn, so did Jana. We were only half way on the hill, so the lift didn’t stop and poor Verena, Maren and Timon had to wait at the top of the hill for us to go all the way up again.

Tuesday and Thursday were “repose” days, where we took it easy and did things around the house. I like these days, because we play their new Top 40 Swiss Hits CD. Timon entertains us by singing along and dancing. It’s so funny. They’ve tried to teach me how to sing in Swiss German, but I can seem to manage. I can only remember “Grüezi wohl Frau Stirnimaa” which means “Hello Mr. Stirnimaa” and then the rest of the song is only, “tell me, how are you and how is your husband?” I’ve noticed that in these Top 40 Swiss Hits, they think of one sentence per song and repeat it until they think “ca suffit.” On Tuesday afternoon, I got to go grocery shopping with the ladies. I found that here there are many more bread, yogurt, chocolate, and biscuit choices than in the grocery stores in Canada, and of course, Nutella, but maybe that is not a surprise to anyone.

On Wednesday, Willi left for Italy to pick up Lorenz and a couple other people who have been down south for the past few days for sailing competitions. Lorenz ended up being 90 some odd out of 150, which is not bad because it was an international competition with very strong competitors, I think. The rest of us went to Bern for the day. We climbed the bell tower of the big cathedral, visited the beloved bears of Bern (they have bears in the middle of the city because they have bears on their flag), and did some shopping. It was a very enjoyable day.

On Thursday, I was on Skype (an internet service that allows you to talk and watch people all over the world) first with my grandparents and then with my family. The Kausche trio (Jana, Maren, and Timon) gave them a little concert, Timon on the cello, Maren on the violin, and Jana on the piano. It was very cute. They played a classical piece and a polka.

Yesterday, Maren, Timon and I went on a bike ride west of Cressier, through a few villages and along the side of the lake. We finished the tour of the neighbourhood today by biking east of Cressier (this time with Jana).

This morning, we went to the morning service in St. Blaise. It was great to go to church again. It was different from what I’m used to at Bethany, but I also liked the way they did things.

A few nights during the week, we watched a few movies (in French, of course). They were all pretty good, and I was able to understand a lot. We watched Vitus, which is about a child prodigy pianist, (originally in Swiss-German), and the Girl with the Pearl Earring, about the famous painting, La jeune fille a la perle. I really enjoyed Vitus, and the Girl with the Pearl Earring was just something we watched because my art teacher lent it to me for les vacances.

Well I guess that pretty much sums up week six.