Week 9

Not too much happened this week. I did go to the Swiss temple though! That was exciting. The temple is about half an hour away, in the Bern, the Swiss-German portion of Switzerland. It was interesting because our group was French speaking, but it seemed that most of the temple workers spoke German, but one woman in the baptistery spoke Italian. There is also this girl here named Nancy visiting from Mexico. She speaks English, but no French and she is an engineer, so we chatted. Below is the temple. It was a very cold, windy, day and it was lightly snowing.



We got a group picture of the Temple goers. This first picture is of some of us. The rest had not come out yet. Sister Hinman is on the right(alone, her husband is taking the picture), and next to her are our institute teachers. They just have one little baby. The rest is just people from the institute.


In this picture we had everyone, but I was blocked. Oh well.


I also got a calling in church this week. When they took me aside to give me a calling I was so curious to see what they came up with! What do you have a non-French speaker do? I was called as a primary teacher, in the Nursery. Exciting! There are only 3 children in there, 2 speak French and the third speaks Swiss-German. The Swiss-German boy is my friend Annie's son, so he knows me because I hang out at there house occasionally. It should be fun. There are 3 other women who work in there, so we can rotate and get to go to RS or Sunday school on occasion, and one is my friend Abby, the others I know, and they speak English pretty well.

It doesn't feel like Christmas yet, here. I don't know why. I think it might be because people and stores decorate less, and I don't hear any Christmas music. I have been trying to watch all of my Christmas movies, and any that have Christmas occur in them, like 'Little Women' and 'While You Were Sleeping'. I want to make cinnamon rolls, and I attempted to make a gingerbread house with the children. They just wanted to eat it, I don't think they have ever made one before.

That is about all that is going on. One thing that was exciting for me this week was I found this little used English book store. I bought a few books, and a few small children books, that I think I will give to them for Christmas.

We will be leaving for Christmas vacation on the 23rd. We are driving to Paris, it is about 7 hours away. So I will have much to write about that in the near future. Merry Christmas!

Weeks 7 & 8

For Thanksgiving I went on a little trip to Bamberg, Germany. It is about 45 minutes away from Nuremberg, where they had the famous Nazi war crime trials. I stayed for 2 1/2 days with my cousin Justin Brooke, his wife, and their 2 year old son. He is in the army and has been stationed there for about a year.

I had to switch trains 4 times, I was so nervous because the only time I have ridden on trains before was in Japan, and that is completely different. Luckily I was able to figure out how to look up the train platforms and find the second class cart and everything. Most of the journey (over 90%) was in Germany, which was great because more people speak English there, and more signs and announcements are in English. Also I am traveling so people don't necessarily expect me to know their language, where as here in Neuchatel people look at me like I am crazy when I say I don't speak French. Fortunately that has not occurred too frequently, most people have been very nice.

Here are some pictures from my 7 hour train ride. It was long, but interesting to see all of the different cities and villages along the way.
There houses looked very different to me, in comparison to France and Switzerland. I think it is just their shape, and lack of shutters, perhaps the colors of the roofs. I tried to take pictures, but often there are trees along the railway, and the window reflects the light even without flash and we were traveling fast. So here are some blurry pictures of Germany in late November.














I just thought the sign was funny, a guess it is a town name "Bad Kissingen".

Here is the train station in Frankfurt. It was huge, and fun to walk around and see. I tried to take a few pictures, but it was difficult to capture. I am planning a trip there in April, so that will be fun to see the actual city!The remainder of the pictures are from our walk around Bamberg.

In Bamberg we went into a little Christmas shop that is open year round. Here are some German ornaments.

Some cute nutcrackers.

And some really cool cuckoo clocks.

I love this pink house!

The front of the city hall.
The back, the brief story behind this building is that the town asked the king if they could build a city hall. He said yes, just not on my land, so they built it over the river.

There were a lot of statues of Christ around Bamberg. More than I have seen in any other city, ever.

I love the fresh produce markets here in the towns. They are just out along the streets.





Below are a few pictures from the Christmas shops they had just set up that day. I got to try a real brought-worst. It was delicious!



This concludes the Germany pictures.

The final pictures below are from this week, the alps across the lake looked amazing with the fresh snow and sunrise. I tried to capture it, but you can never quite fully capture such things. These are the best pictures taken.

Week Six

Sorry I haven't written in a while, there is so much to write, and I haven't had time to sit down and upload all of the photos and such. I always feel like I didn't take that many pictures, then I sit down and there are over a hundred I have to sort through.

I went to France for the first time! Not terribly different from Switzerland, we just went to a city about an hour and a half away, but it was fun to see something a bit different. We just went do a bit of shopping(both grocery and clothing, it is just so much cheaper any where outside of Switzerland, and the family I am with is French, so they prefer some brands and such). Here are pictures of the drive, and city. What I liked about this city was most all the buildings were constructed using a uniform pale blue stone. It was beautiful to see all of the buildings like that.

Below is the apron I bought in France. So cute.

The rest are just random pictures around the city. Enjoy!









I love the shops, they always have the food arranged so neat and orderly!
A sampling of shop titles.

I tried to get a close up of the beautiful stone, but it was in the shadows, but this is kind of what it looks like.
A beautiful chocolate shop. They have some of these in Neuchatel, but I feel like a tourist taking pictures, here I was a


All of the towns set up Christmas booths. Most have homemade things, and some sell sweets or food.





A bit foggy in the morning but it was a beautiful day, in the mid 50s. Wonderful for late November!












I will finally answer some of the questions regarding my nannying, if you would like to know, if not just skip this next paragraph or two. I work from about 7am to 6pm, and I have Wednesdays, weekends and every other Friday off. I also have 3 or 4 weeks of paid vacation time. The two older children attend school half day twice a week. A typical day I fed them breakfast (usually consisting of hot chocolate, and some Kelloggs cereal, without milk), then taking them to school or not, then preparing lunch. The lunch usually consists of some meat like chicken nuggets, fish sticks, deli ham, hot dogs(but better), and then some vegetable or starch. Usually we have sliced tomatoes or cucumbers with a bit of olive oil as a starter then we will have potatoes of some variety or lentils, couscous or wheat. They love cucumbers I find that funny, I don't know of any American children that will eat an entire cucumber, and the cucumbers here are about twice as long, but a bit thinner. Anyway, then in the afternoon they have a nap, then we go out to the park if it is nice weather, which it has been up until this week. They have many lovely parks here, I love going. They have amazing toys too. I don't make dinner, and the only cleaning I do is breakfast and lunch dishes. We have a house cleaner come every Tuesday and deep clean everything, and do all of the ironing. I kind of feel like I am on vacation. They just put my laundry in with theirs, I don't do any grocery shopping, dinner is prepared for me and I never have to clean my room or bathroom. They cover my room/board and my French lessons (about 4 hours/week), so I have no expenses.

I am taking care of 3 children, ages 4, almost 3 and 4 months. Their names are Thais (a girl, the name sounds like dice, kind of, difficult to explain how to pronounce), Armel (a boy), and Sixtine (girl, her name is just like the Sistine chapel in Italy). So at first it was very difficult. They only speak French, and there mother was going back to working so they were adjusting to that and me being there. Thais knew a very little English from school, but she was excited about learning and enjoyed me reading to her in English. I brought 3 books with me, "Green Eggs and Ham", "The Best Nest" and "Are you my Mother?". I pretty much have them memorized because they are the only things I can read thus far. She has picked up a lot already. Some is slightly incorrect but close. When she wants me to fill her water glass she says "Could you in the water." She picked up the "would you, could you" from "Green Eggs and Ham". But yeah, she now can say most of our daily routine like "Lunch time, Snack time, dressed, clean-up, wash your hands" and she knows the basic "please, thank you, yes, no, open, close, on, off". Armel is the somewhat difficult child. He at first hated when I would read in English. I think it was just frustrating and confusing. But now he is where Thais was at, he will ask his parents how to say things "en Anglais"(in English) and has picked up some words. Thais has been pretty helpful to help me understand Armel or vise verse. At first they would not take naps, even for their mother, and they need them! But now we have a pretty good system, and they both take naps everyday, except for last Friday, long day. Sixtine is pretty good, just eats and sleeps mostly. She is starting to get fussy, I think her teeth are beginning to move around. I know many have asked for pictures of the children, but I haven't posted any because I know most people are sensitive about pictures of their children on the internet, and this is an open blog. Maybe I will ask permission one day, but I didn't really want to tell them I have a blog, about living with them, so that I could write what I felt and not feel bad if I write that dinner tasted horribly or something. Anyway that is in essence my life. I am enjoying it, the children can be very fun especially now that we understand each other better. I have learned some French, very little, but I can say "we go, would you like, bed, kitchen, bedroom, house/home, cut, paint, school, to eat, to sleep" and a few other. At church every one always tells me to speak French, that is how you learn, but I have just begun to figure out the pronouciation and I have no vocabulary, and don't have down how to conjugate yet. Please let me know if you have any other questions, I love reading your posts!

Okay, the pictures. Below is Sister Hinman, the sister of the senior couple over the institute. I love them, they are so fun to talk with, and they are also struggling to learn some French. Here they made us a Thanksgiving dinner! It was so exciting, they couldn't find a whole turkey, so we had pieces, but they live in Geneva(hour and a half away) and there is a store there that carries some American food, so we did have pumpkin pie made with real canned pumpkin(not available here), and cranberry sauce, green beans, mashed potatoes, rolls, jell-o(the weirdest thing for Europeans, they don't have anything like it and they don't really like it) and yams with brown sugar(very dry here). It was delicious. Everyone kept asking me what we put the cranberry sauce on.


Kind of blurry, but this is my friend Abby, the American studying French at the university. She is from SLC, and is 20. I like her, we do things together on occasion, and talk in English about America and stuff.Below are just random pictures from around town. When the children are at school I often just walk around with Sixtine.
Above is the movie theater, there are like five in Neuchatel but all very small with only 3 movies at a time. This is were I saw New Moon, in French, with Abby, so I don't really know what happened but she gave me the important points. Just drama, drama, drama, right David. I just thought is had a unique sign.


The housing near the university.

Random sculpture around town.



Below are from my beautiful Sunday afternoon walk around my neighborhood. A bit bleak, but it was the end of November. I love how the grass is still green, and it has only snowed in the mountains. The alps look so beautiful now. I will try to put a picture in the next post.
I love how the vines grow on the walls and houses!
Finally here are some pictures of the Flat we live in. It is about 130 square meters.
Here is my bathroom.


The children's bedroom.The living room.

Another angle of the living room.
The kitchen.

Another angle of the kitchen.

And finally my room. It is a bit small(the flat overall) but it is fine for what we need, and I feel it is huge for Europe! I didn't take pictures of the upstairs, but up there there is a bathroom, a master bedroom, a small toy play area, and a room with the guest bed/couch, the TV, computer and Sixtine's crib and changing table.