Merry Christmas

My present is bigger than me!

It has been fun experiencing the holiday season here in Switzerland. There are lots of traditional parades in all the small villages, to welcome in St. Nicklaus, and of course Christmas Markets.

Beckenried Christmas Market

The bell ringers (each man walks and rings a big cowbell to a constant beat while they walk)  are in white, that we think scare away the evil spirits, then St. Nicklaus (Sami Claus) walks in behind them.

We went to a few of the Christmas markets close to us, and hope to explore some new ones in surrounding towns and countries in the next few years.

Sami Claus is in red

Hannah enjoying the baby animals at the Stans Christmas Market.

We are looking forward to seeing family and friends in America in the next few weeks. We are also looking forward to celebrating Christmas in a few days, to celebrate the life of Jesus, the Savior of the World.

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas from the Pattons

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Above the clouds

The little bumps are the tops of mountains sticking out over the fog/clouds

This time of year in Central Switzerland there is often a thick layer of "high fog" or some days it actually isn't that high. In fact some days if you go up 100-200 meters you are above this fog/cloud and in the beautiful blue sky.                                                                       

Once the fog settles in it usually takes about 4 days for it to finally burn off. It can be a little sad to live in the fog, but we are thankful that it takes 10 minutes to usually get above the fog into the blue skies.

This past Friday Hannah had her first trial day at daycare (here they have you trial 2 half days and a full day to make sure the child will adjust ok) and I took advantage by going snowshoe hiking above the clouds.

Happy in the sun!

 It was a glorious 2 hours in the sun! John just ordered a pair of snowshoes for Christmas so we are looking forward to many more hikes this winter when we get back from America (yes we fly in 1.5 weeks...eeek). I hope everyone is enjoying this Christmas season.

Work, work, work.

These last few weeks have been busy with appointments, mostly relating to two different job opportunities to work here as a physical therapist.

 The first one is at a really nice neurological rehabilitation clinic that was just remodeled this year. Most of the patients are inpatient and the clinic is situated in a hotel on the lake... super beautiful setting. They were wanting German and English speaking physiotherapists to join their staff to work with patients and to work on research projects alongside the University in Zurich. They were going to let me work 60%, even though they really wanted 100%, and seemed like a great group of people to work with, and I would have been able to speak some English. The major problem is that it is 45 min + depending on traffic away, now if only I had a boat it would be about 25 to 30 minutes as it is exactly on the other side of the lake. Literally from a town not too far away you can see the Hotel/clinic! 

The other opportunity I sought after a bit. I had met with the head physical therapist at the Hospital in Stans when we first arrived. Then, he was actually my physical therapist after my arm surgery. So, after driving home from the interview in Vitznau (where the neurological clinic was) and realizing how far it was I decided to contact the Stans hospital. Sure enough, they needed a physiotherapist for 3 months due to an operation and a 3 month vacation (that doesn't happen in America). They said that I would be guaranteed 40% up to 60%.  Also, I would just be working with the outpatient patients. 

It was a hard decision, but I am content with the fact that I chose to work in Stans, even though there is the risk that I would have work again after 3 months. The fact that I will be forced to use/learn German and that it is 3 minutes away on my bike, and that the group of therapists there seem really nice helped me make my decision. Things were left very open ended with the clinic in Vitznau, so maybe I will end up working there in April... then it is warm enough I could really boat to work :)

With finding a job comes the task of finding daycare. The demand here isn't like in the States! There are only two day-cares and then a handful of Tagesmutter (nanny) to choose. It is expensive either route you decide, but we have a daycare (Kinderkrippe) really close to us that we got to view tonight. It seems like a great fit, especially since we can sign just a 3 month contract and then extend it if needed. 

So with the reality sinking in that we are flying to America with a toddler in a few weeks and that I am going to be working in GERMAN (scary) when we return has my anxiety levels a little higher than normal.....
 

Thanksgiving in Switzerland

As Thanksgiving was creeping up on us this year we thought about hosting a full blown American Thanksgiving feast at our apartment.

Master baker

But as we continued to think about it we realized a) it would cost a small fortune b) we probably don't have enough space for more than a few families to come c) the time to get fully prepared was going too fast to actually pull a Real Thanksgiving off. So, instead we decided to invite our home group from church over for apple pie... dessert is the best part of the meal anyways, right?!?

Apple pie

Spielen...Playing

So this year, our first Thanksgiving in Switzerland was happily spent eating pie with friends from England, France, and South Africa, and with kiddos running around screaming!

It wasn't the typical American Thanksgiving, but it was fun and we are blessed to have people in our lives here to call friends!

The snow has arrived

In the last few weeks we have been watching the snow creep down the mountains towards the valley. Well it finally got just cold enough for us to keep some snow on the ground down here, in the valley! It is great to use the mountains as your temperature guide, knowing where it is and isn't below zero by how far down the snow comes on the mountains. After the snow fall yesterday, the sun peaked out through the clouds a bit this morning and it was SO gorgeous! The first two pictures aren't great because of the buildings around us blocking some if the mountains. The third picture is from a hike on Sunday where we go above the clouds into the sunshine!

Hiking near Bellinzona Switzerland

Bellinzona is in the Italian part of Switzerland and a little less than 1.5 hours away from where we live in Stans. Two weeks ago John had Friday off for All Saints Day and we wanted to go on a hike a little farther away from home.  This was an excellent destination.

Across the valley on the hill is one of the castles

We did a 3 hour hike, going up 1400 m, covering about 8 km and then brought a gondola back down into the town, and then had to walk 2 km back to the car.

Our guideposts that are on all of our hikes

The landscape seemed to be quite a bit different, at least we thought so, to the mountains by us. We were in the trees the whole time and the path was more dirt than rock, which my feet were happy about :)

lunch time

little cutie

The town of Bellinzona has three large and fairly famous castles in the town or right on the hillside by the town plus a river that runs through it. And obviously the mountains. All of these things make it a very lovely town.

coffee time at the top

We are hoping to return to this location in the winter (which has started now I guess) to snowshoe as there is a 90 min loop up on the mountain that you reach with the gondola!

little cutie again

 I am excited to cross country ski and snowshoe.... just have to find people to watch Hannah :) as the winter sports isn't quite as toddler friendly as the summer hiking!

taking the gondola down, bear was nervous

Farmhouses on the ride down

Swiss City Halbmarathon

Almost two weekends ago I completed my 4th race here in Switzerland, the Luzern Swiss City HalbMarathon.  Unfortunately it rained for the first half, but the race itself was a perfectly run event (exactly what you would expect from the Swiss!).  It is getting easier to show up for a race and try to figure out all the details/rules/what is happening when you hear no English and usually no High German either, only Swiss German which still mostly sounds like gibberish to me :)

Storm clouds rollling out, sun coming in.

I met one of John's co workers at the train station who had done the race about 6 times so he helped me navigate the crowds. With your registration you get a free round trip train ride, then a round trip ship pass to transport you to the start area/back to the trains instead of walking an extra 2 or so miles each way.

The mountain in the background on the right is Mt. Pilatus

Just past halfway in the village of Horw

The other thing that I still have not gotten used to is every race I have done here has a Damen and Herren Garderoben area.  This is usually in two different schools and is a big gym or something with access to showers and then a place to put your bag while you run. I have never changed clothes before and after a race in the states but everyone here changes right before the race and then right after the race they shower and change back into the clothes they arrived in. It is such a great idea! I think it works because stealing is not really an issue here so everyone leaves their stuff, not locked in lockers, and they trust it will be there when they return. Unfortunately I am still used to showing up in my running clothes and then just being sweaty and such after that I didn't have warm dry clothes for after the race :(

Warming up with so coffee, Hannah choose milk :) with our friend Trini

John, Hannah, and our friend Trini (who was supposed to run but is injured) rode their bikes into town to cheer me on! It was fun to have them there even if they got a bit wet from the rain as well.

Proud of my mommy!

 We all enjoyed the sunshine that came out after the race and the warm coffee afterwards!

If you are wanting to do a half marathon abroad I would definitely recommend this one, the marathon is just two loops of the marathon so I don't think that is quite as appealing.

Das Erntedankfest

The Swiss Celebrate their Thanksgiving day, Erntedankfest (harvest thank festival) in October, this year it was the 3rd Sunday of the month. The church that we go to had a Thanksgiving brunch and short service. It was a powerful time to reflect upon things that you are thankful for, especially in the last year. John and I were really blessed by this time, as we have so many things to be thankful for over the last year.
Things we are thankful for:

The cows started the Thanksgiving parade off

* That all of the preparations for moving to Switzerland went smoothly and we were able to move here in 3 months time from when John accepted the job.... selling the house, 2 cars, most of our possessions, work visa, getting bear approved.

Traditional Swiss clothing

* That John enjoys his job, there is a whole set of frustrations as well, but he really does enjoy working on making this new airplane fly someday.

Baby sheep

*For a church and the Friends that have come along with it. We have been SO blessed to find a church family to call home. They are a Swiss church of about 100 people (at the most). With Pilatus being in the town there are lots of foreigners and so they have a translator (volunteer each week from the church) to translate from German to English. Most all of our close Swiss and Auslander friends have come from this church.

Lamas!

* For recently finding a place that you can drop your children off on Tuesday and Friday mornings for 2 hours for $9.... this is great because Hannah can hear Swiss German and I can go running or something by myself!

The crazy float... too much coffee schnapps for them!

* For having a real job interview with a Physical therapist the other week, I didn't get the job, but at least they were willing to talk with me!

Over sized Schwingers (like wrestling... Swiss style)

* Lastly, we are thankful for the hard days of being homesick, or wanting things to be easy (aka learning German... why must it be so hard!) because the hard days make the good days even better!! Yes, we do have hard days, but we really try to focus on the positives and so that is what I usually choose to write about!

Little boy schwingers