Switzerland!

Nothing exciting has happened just basic everyday stuff. This weekend I am going to France, just a city an hour away, for a day so I should have some pictures from that. The next week I am planning on visiting my cousin on an American base in Germany, so that should be interesting as well. My first time to try to figure out the trains.

Here are random pictures from around Peseux, the small town I am in. These are from just up my street.

I love the parks here! Good thing I get to go there every afternoon with the children. The following are pictures of one park, or the view surrounding it and one other park. The first park is in St. Blaise, just north of Neuchatel. It is a dock, or port and has a beautiful path winding around the lake. I don't remember where the other park was, it had beautiful view of the Lake and surrounding vineyards.

It is fun everyday here because everything is new and unfamiliar, but sometimes I can't figure out really easy things like a can opener. I was supposed to feed the children green beans, but I could not figure out how use the can opener. At the time I thought it just wasn't the can opener, because I saw no similarities in it to ours. It was just a flat piece of metal, similar to the type you use to puncture evaporated milk cans. Still have to figure that one out.

Also this past week I went somewhere in town with all three children. The elevators are so small, we barely all fit with the stroller. Barely. They are like the elevators in Japan. Enjoy your huge American elevators for me. Do a cartwheel or something to celebrate all the room. Anyway it was a large building and they have 1/2 floors, and I got in and had no idea how to get down to the ground floor. There were about 20 buttons and all of them had some type of abbreviation on them. I couldn't just pick the bottom one because I didn't know if there was a basement or something. I just started pushing a few and finally figured out that it was REC. I don't know what that means in French, apparently ground floor or something.

Random other things I have noticed: things cost about double, wedding rings are small, very simple most don't even have a diamond, just a band. The one's I have seen with a diamond are tiny, I don't think I have ever seen a diamond that small in "The States", ever. Most buildings don't have carpet, just wood or tile. Even the whole church buildings. Our flat is heated through the floor, so that is very nice.

They recycle a lot, like in Japan. Japan was crazy how much you had to sort your trash. It was difficult to through things away. Here they do paper/cardboard, aluminum cans, and plastic bottles. In Japan they had a separate trash area for everything. For example in McDonald's, when you are finished with your meal there is a hole to pour your ice, one to put your straw and cup lid, and then one for the paper bag and cup. Wow. When I was there I wanted to throw away my shoes (they were trashed after hiking Mt. Fuji and I wanted more room in my small carry-on luggage) and there was no where to throw away odd items like that. I just ditched them at a hotel we stayed at.

I went to Lousanne this week, it is about 45 minutes away. It was for stake conference. It was nice, more industrialized and crowded. We passed some really nice towns on the way. There are a lot of vineyards around here. One is called Champagne, they produce wine and are petitioning to have the sole rights to that name. I tried to take pictures, but it was foggy, and the windows were covered with rain so most turned out poorly, but here are a few.

In Europe you state your phone number in two digit increments such as 469-371-3028 would be 46, 93, 71, 30, 28. Funny huh, and they write there ones much differently. They almost look like triangles without the bottom.

Food, good food. There are two weird/interesting things I have tried, the first of which was a little gray colored pudding looking thing. It was boiled egg, asparagus, gelatin, and mayonnaise all finely ground and then set into a mold in the refrigerator. It was pretty good actually, well at least not bad. The other thing was this brown paste spread on a piece of bread. It was at someone's home and it looked better than the bologna which I know I don't like. They were explaining to the missionaries what it was in French(after I had taken it), and I couldn't tell what they were saying but the missionaries avoided it. I knew it was some part of the duck, and I was afraid they were talking about brain or something, I saw people motioning at the head and saying it is taken from here. But it turned out to be the liver, but it still wasn't good, I choked down half.

I am getting better at the three kisses thing, it still feels weird. I don't worry about it too much because everyone knows that I am American and therefore completely awkward about it. Some people don't kiss me because of that, or they kiss me and apologize or they just give me a hug.

Here are what the Swiss francs look like, just in case you were wondering. I feel like American dollars are so monochromatic in comparison to other countries currency.

The rest are just a few other pictures from Neuchatel. I just go walk there for a couple hours every Tuesday morning with the baby because the children are at school and the housekeeper comes to clean the flat.

Okay here is your traffic lesson for the day, I am a traffic engineer, so we had to fit that in. I don't know if you know this but in the US there is an all red cycle, it is only for a second or two depending on the intersection (whatever the traffic engineer calculates it to be), and it is when all the traffic signals in an intersection are red to clear the intersection. Well here during that cycle the light appears both yellow and red, so you know that the green light is coming. I really like it because it eliminates or at least decreases the amount of the green cycle that is wasted on start up time. Also here they have a red, yellow and green light for pedestrians(peds). Also very useful. People are very courteous to peds. I also like that the red, yellow and green lights for cars have arrows indicting your option of direction. I figured I would put this at the beginning so you might actually read it. Maybe.

The above picture was taken while crossing the intersection, and pushing a stroller, more difficult than it looks. Slightly weird too.

This morning I actually remembered my camera as I walked around town. Here are all my pictures from just a small area of downtown Neuchatel. I did not realize how many I took! I just felt the need to fully convey all that is around me daily. I feel like I am already adjusting, and starting to forget how incredibly different it is here from America! I did feel weird taking pictures, I look like such a tourist, and this isn't really a tourist area. Oh well. Also, I am new to this whole blogging thing, so I just figured out that people had posted comments. Thanks, it was great to hear from you all! I will try to answer questions if you had any and respond to your comments.

I have no idea who the men are in any of these statues, but they look cool. There are little fountains all through out the city. There is a plaque, but it is in French.

All of the wires you see are for the tracts the buses go on, this is "The Center" where all the buses meet.

I might have stated in a previous blog my love of shutters and flower boxes. So cute and I just love that the shutters actually are opened and shut.

There are a few American stores here like H&M, Espirit, The Body shop, McDonalds. But that is about it, unlike Japan were there were a lot like Forever 21, Gap, Banana Republic, Coco's, Denny's and many more.

Just a picture of roof tops, and the huge town clock.

Here is the castle of Neuchatel. Cool huh, I live near a castle built in the 1600's! These pictures were uploaded in a somewhat random order, so there will be pictures of the castle off and on from here.

I don't know what the above picture means, someone should tell me I keep seeing it every where now. Is it a year?

I love fall! So beautiful! I am so glad I came at this time of year! For those who were wondering, it hasn't been too cold here, usually 50's, rainy this week. It seem like it will be similar to Utah, perhaps a little better. Less cold in the winter and less hot in the summer.