Thanksgiving in Zurich

Happy Thanksgiving! Even though we're across the Atlantic, we couldn't let this holiday go without a proper celebration and well deserved meal.

Barb and Scott Dicken kindly opened their home to us and 6 other Americans for a huge feast. None of us had Thanksgiving off, so we celebrated on Saturday.

Although some ingredients were tough to find, we still managed to have all the good stuff on the menu: Turkey, stuffing, gravy, cranberries, corn, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes and homemade apple pie and pumpkin pie.


First things first. Scott Dicken had to turn on American football while we celebrated our Thanksgiving away from home. However, he had to record the games through their Sky TV on Thursday to replay it for us all this weekend.

We were so happy to have Thanksgiving in Switzerland. You can tell by the smiles on our faces just how excited we were.

All of us gravitated towards the kitchen as usual. Barb and I are waiting to get pieces of the Turkey.

Kelsey is due in April, so she brought along non-alcoholic champagne for her celebration.

Later, we all suited up for a game of good ol' American football. Barb and Scott were supporting their teams in the process.


Naty, Andy and I were studying the playbook before we went out. (We actually used it a few times!)

Let the games begin!

We were so thankful for our friends here in Switzerland to be "stand ins" for our family back home. They will never take your place, but it was wonderful and enjoyable to have a "family" away from the U.S.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Love,

Scott and Brooke

The Mountains Again!! - Illanz, Switzerland

This weekend 7 of us headed up to Nadia's house in the mountians. We hiked both Saturday and Sunday, and spent the evenings roasting marshmallows, (that we bought in the states b/c Switzerland's marshmallows are very different) playing Catch Phrase, and enjoying the views.

Nadia, Bridget and Joslyn trudging through the snow on the hiking trail.

This is right outside the house. We ended up doing a hike on the path behind us.

Bridget found out that Ryan is not only bilingual, he's multilingual because he speaks "moo" to the cows. =)



Here is a short clip of Ryan 'communicating' with our hairy, harmless friends. They don't seem very interested in food at this point!

This is the crew trying to decide if we should cross the stream that the cows were standing in at the moment. It looked pretty gross, but we all made it across in one piece.

The cows decided to come at us on our hike. We knew they wouldn't do anything, but it was kind of scary watching them move towards us.

A short video of the hike on Sunday. This is after we crossed the stream where all the cows were standing. All the cows followed us everywhere for the next 15 minutes out of curiosity!

Here is Scott having some fun with his new friends.

Family fun time in the morning. The sunlight was pouring into the room. Just beautiful. We had so much fun just hanging out with friends.

If you would like to see more pictures, click on the link below.

http://www1.snapfish.com/share/p=43691226253501603/l=435598976/g=7389791/otsc=SYE/otsi=SALB

The Mountains - Illanz, Switzerland

During our week holiday in October, me and 2 teacher friends went to the mountains of Switzerland. Nadia's family owns a house near Illanz, Switzerland pretty much in the heart of the country. We spent an entire week hiking everyday and sitting by the fire at night. It was lovely!





This is an early morning view from the living room. You can see so far!

Beryl, Nadia and I stopped to take a quick picture on one 4 hour hike. This day we were afraid of rain so we hoofed it back home.

Of course we had to bring lunch as every good hiker should. You never know when you might get lost. Plus, I love food.

Later in the week, Scott came for one night. We took him hiking too. Of course! He's in a field with goats right now. We realized that we had veered off the path and only had two choices. Either go down over a cliff, or climb up on our hands and knees. We ended up climbing through goat poo to get to the top of the hillside.



A short video of us beginning the climb UP the mountainside. Man! That was one heck of a climb - especially in tennis shoes for Scott.

This is the view once we reached the top. All of us were pretty exhausted by that point. Yet, we still had 2 hours of hiking left.

The sheep definitely thought we were crazy to come through their field. They all stood on the ridge looking down at us. Very Lion King don't you think?

Along the fun hike, we ran across a goat farmer and his goats. Apparently, they were trying to find some fresh pastures where they could graze. As the approached us, the only place to go was straight up the mountainside.

We felt that we needed a "professional" picture taken while standing in goat poo.

On our journey back from the hike we stumbled upon a church in the small village of Vrin. These skulls are said to be those of victims of the plague. Pretty creepy.




A short clip of the cemetery outside of the Church in Vrin.