August 15 hike

So I have been delaying in writing about our awesome hike on August 15th (yet another Swiss holiday) because we took our small camera along and have not figured out were the cord is to transfer the pictures to the computer. This is somewhat sad because this hike was pretty much awesome, scary at times with a newly healed broken arm , but awesome!  We went with two Swiss friends from church, Dai and Trini and we just told them to pick a route to get up to the Briesen mountain that we see every night from our balcony.  I didn't know that they were going to pick a route that at times was about a 12 inch path with steep STEEP drop-offs on both sides.
We ended up hiking to 4 peaks on our hike, and this was all within a 15 minute drive from our house!  The highest peak, Hoher Biesen which is just over 2400 m. It was over 8 hours of hiking and it is a good thing we had friends watch Hannah as it definitely was not a baby friendly trail! 
I am hopeful we will get the pictures someday but for now I will just leave you with a generic photo of the ridge we hiked along.

Deutsch....

Deutsch means German for those of you didn't already guess that! It has been awhile since I have updated on our language learning, or maybe I never have. German is not an easy language, for us at least, especially since the Swiss German we hear is nothing like the High German we are trying to learn!
It is definitely harder for John because he works all day around English and is understandably tired at the end of the day, and not wanting to study German. That is until he wants to talk to a few really nice people at church and simply can't... That is a very humbling experience (He didn't want me to type that so he picking up his German now :-) )
I too get frustrated often with German, but when I look back 7 months I can see the obvious improvement. I was pretty happy with my interactions which required German today, which is what prompted me to write this update. I can go days without needing to speak German besides hello, but today was exceptional! Part of me realizes I need to ask people to try and speak German with me instead of English ( that is swiss friends who are very good at English). But, then we are stuck at fairly surface level conversations because my friends/ acquaintances English is usually better than my German. Anyways, onto my German filled day....
Today I had a physio appointment my elbow which was all in German. Count that as 20 minutes of German. Then I had to return a part at the Thule dealer, where they speak no english, in which I was successful in making the return and even collecting more money than the receipt said I should. Maybe they were pity points/francs for stumbling through my explanation of why I needed to return my goods. Count that as 5 min German. I met with a physio that goes to the other evangelical church in town. A different friend introduced us through email. She has just opened her own clinic in Stans. We talked about physio things and what my goals are for working here. It was a nice conversation, slow, FULL of grammatical mistakes but nice.... Maybe in a year my German will be good enough to work and possibly for her. Count that as 45 min. Lastly I went running with a friend speaking mostly german and only a little english when clarification was needed. Count that as 70 min. That totals, 2 hours and 40 min listening and speaking German. It is tiring but I know my German would improve so much if I could have that much German interaction everyday.....oh well. It will come. And I should add that my german is full of grammatical errors! The language is structured quite a bit different than English.
So that is where we are with our german after being here for 7 months.

Swiss Day

View from the pass we hiked to

August 1st is the Swiss National Day, celebrating when Switzerland became a country.  John had the day off of work, I know another holiday off of work for John!, and we decided to escape the heat by going on a hike in higher elevation. The temperatures had been in the 90's for awhile, and we don't have AC here (most people don't) so it was nice to get out of the car to start our hike in 60 degree weather. Granted by the time we were done with our hike it was definitely 75-80 it was better than 90 down where we live.

lunch time

Family Picture

We drove up to the Gottard Pass and hike up past two lakes to reach another pass from there- I totally forget the names as we just followed the route markers. Bear was wearing his backpack for this hike, which was about 4 hours, and he definitely got the most comments. People would stop us to take his picture, John was a proud dad :)

 

 

 

 

 

After the hike we celebrated Swiss Day with some Swiss friends from church. The house we ate at was a farm house with cows and rabbits. Each cow here has a name and it's very own bell to wear- Hannah was asleep in the pack n play and missed the tour of the animals. We definitely have to go back when she is awake as she loves animals! It was a fun night that included some Alphorn playing... think Ricola commercials! 

 

 

Tomorrow is another holiday and another hike is planned!

 

 

 View from the farmhouse

 

 

 

 

Johns all day mountain bike ride

Last weekend John went on a 6 hour mountain bike ride and since he doesn't partake in the blogging I thought I could at least out up some photos. The following link also explains the ride. They were lucky they got done when they did, because just after the ride Hannah and I met them for pizza and a crazy monsoon storm rolled in!

http://www.swissalpineadventure.com/mountain-biking/central-switzerland/engelberg---lungern

Visit

Recently some friends, the Nelson's, came to stay for 12 days with us in Switzerland. They were our first long stay visitors, and with them and their two little boys we totaled 7 people in our apartment. There were times when we all were probably about to go crazy due to needing some peace and quiet, but it was really nice to have familiar friends here.

View from Melchsee

We also have another friend from Iowa here (who also knows the Nelsons, but did not stay with us), Ben who married a Swiss gal and they are in Switzerland right now for a few months.  Since we were all here at the same time we had a "reunion" planned. We decided to drive up to a place called Melchsee Frutt (it is also where John and I did our crazy sledding at) and take a cable car up a bit higher and then go on a relatively short hike. The views up in Melchsee area are incredible and only 25 minutes from here!

The day was great, none of us would have ever guessed we would be meeting up in Switzerland after they all left Iowa City 2-3 years ago. We were lucky enough to have a second reunion day while everyone was still here.  The second one was a rainy day which led to a lot of chatting and coffee drinking!

 

One of the days when the Nelsons were here we also decided to go on an excursion. We decided to drive through Interlaken, stop for a coffee, and then drive to the capital city of Bern to explore. Actually, we wanted to go to an old Chocolate Factory as well, but it ended up being a bit out of the way. 
From Interlaken you can see the big Alps, the one in my picture was of Jungfrau. We enjoyed some coffee on some rooftop terrace of a tall hotel while gazing at the mountains and watching lots of sky divers land (but they usually jump off of the cliff). It is a beautiful place, and it is full of hikes that we hope to go on some day.

You can see Jungfrau

 

After Interlaken we drove about 40 more minutes to Bern. We didn't know much about the city except that a river runs through it, a lot of the buildings had historical architecture, and there was a brewery on one end of town. It was a very HOT day, like it has been for 2 weeks now (75-80 this weekend though!!!), so walking around the city wore us all out. I was thankful that one of our stops to sit in the shade was right next to a Starbucks. I haven't splurged on a cool drink from there since being here, but it just sounded too good that day.  Next time we visit Bern I definitely want to join in on the fun of floating/rafting down the river, it looked lovely on the hot day.

 

 Floating down the river sounded really nice

Hannah is 1 year old!

Peek a boo

It has been two weeks since I have written a post, yes I can type post surgery. Actually, we had visitors for 12 days and life was just busy, there will be a few posts of their visit coming.

Fast asleep from the walk home after 2 hours at the pool

It is crazy to think that Little Miss Hannah is already 1 year old! We celebrated with some friends at the beach, which was so nice as it has been close to 90 degrees for quite a while now! Unfortunately Hannah had a bit of a fever on the day of her birthday party so she looks only half excited in the pictures.


Park at the beach where we had her party

 

It is fun to think back on all the changes that happen in the first year. One big milestone we are still waiting for, is for her to take her first steps.  I think it will be awhile as her balance isn't great yet.
Highlights of Hannah at the age of 1:



*She prefers to eat all food with her own hands, but I still feed her yogurt with the spoon. I haven't felt like the mess that comes with trying have her use a spoon herself! Now that she eats almost all finger foods her preferences are definitely coming out. She loves fruit, sweet potatoes, peas, hummus, yogurt, crackers, bread, peanut butter, spaghetti, pizza, sometimes beans. She doesn't like meat or cheese.


Happy Birthday!

* She is still nursing 3-4 times a day. I wanted to promptly switch her to cows milk when she was 1, but her tummy did not like it, even with just 4 oz. We are awaiting the results of a blood test to see if she might have an allergy. They have formula for 12+ months here as well, but her stomach did not accept that either. Yesterday I gave her some lactose free milk and it seemed to be ok, and she simply refused the taste of soy milk!
*She is crawling everywhere, pulling up to stand but still keeps at least one hand firmly fixed to the surface she is standing at, cruises side to side on furniture.
*Still really enjoys the outdoors: hikes, runs, swimming (if the water isn't freezing), going down slides with mom or dad, swinging, and loves seeing other dogs when we are outside.
*Talker: I am not good at knowing what she is saying but man she loves to babble. She definitely says mama, dada, ba ba (bear), but I have not deciphered much else. Every once and a while I try to show her a few easy signs for more or milk but I don't think she has it figured out at all.
*Growth: she is 8.85 kg or 19.5 lbs, and the length and head circumference were told to me very quickly in German so I forgot it. I do remember that she is in the 75% for both.

I am sure there is much more I could say but that is the highlights!