Day trips and packages- love them :)

Alright, so I've had a tough time motivating myself to blog but here it goes!

So, the week before last was crazy.  One day I went to a seminar for most of the day for work by myself and I actually enjoyed it- this made me realize I am still somewhat of a nerd.  Then something happened with our alarm and I kept forcing myself to sleep thinking it wasnt time to get up (our room is very dark) and realized what was going on by almost 9am.  Not exactly the best way to start the day but I made it to work by 9:40.  Not too bad.  And then that Friday I had an interview with a English-speaking company who builds engines for ships.  Pretty cool but I found out yesterday they hired someone with more experience.  :(  But that Friday we hung out with Paul's people and Saturday cleaned the entire apartment (thanks mostly to Paul because I was feeling SO gross) and invited our neighbors over for coffee/tea/cake (I still think it's bread).  We got some great advice on day cares and strollers and life and watch Lizzie find everything she could get her hands on in every nook and cranny!  It was cute.  Sunday we took a trip to Bern (the capital) with a couple people and climbed TONS of stairs to see some amazing views.  The pain I was feeling Monday was definitely worth it.  Here are the pictures:

Bern is named after bears.  So they have a few bears by the river for tourists.  They were adorable!

Oh, there's just water flowing down the middle of the road.  Definitely attracted little kids!

Einstein's house!  He lived a few places in Switzerland including Zurich.

We climbed tons of stairs to the top of this church to get these awesome pictures of the city.

We've been getting some packages lately and I love it.  My friend, Jayce, sent us an amazing package with tons of fun stuff AND homemade jam!  Heck yeah :)  Then my mom sent us (well mostly for me) one with clothes!!  She got me some cuuute Target maternity shirts and a dress and pants.  And they dont even look maternity so I can wear them now.  Yay!  Now if the 50's and rainy-ness will just go away and give us some summer!  But she put some Luna bars in there too.... I'm sad I never ate them before because they are delicious and now they're super hard to get.  A few people from Paul's group are in the states now and we are hoping a couple of them can bring me back some.  They are perfect for when Im hungry and dont want to eat anything AND they are super filling.  :)  But look at how my mom's box came.   Keep in mind that Jayce's package was in perfect condition...

The clothes were soaked and even the white shirts were semi-stained.  Paul bleached them and everything was clean in the end.  So no worries but it was crazy!  You never expect to pick up your package soaked and in a plastic bag.

Today we went over to the Bebecenter and IKEA and priced tons of stuff.  I thought I'd figure out what stroller I liked best until I saw them alllllll.  Who knows now.  I have some research to do.  It wouldnt be that big of a deal if we didnt live in a tiny place with lots of stairs and walked/used public transportation for everything.  So winter as new parents with a newborn will definitely be fun.  :)  But we did buy a picture for our place so now we have one picture hanging on the wall!  Go us!  Eventually we'll get more but we didnt want to carry it all in the rain.  Since tomorrow is Father's day Paul is wanting to celebrate...  I dont know what we'll end up doing but he wants to go to Bern again.  We will see!  Monday I have a checkup (11 weeks) and it's the one where they do tons of tests.  They scheduled me for a 2 hour checkup- holy cow.  So hopefully everything is great!

Sunday lazy day- YES PLEASE

I guess Sundays are turning into blog posting time.  :)

This week was a usual week except that I realized I must be eating more than I think because we had to go to the grocery an extra 2 times this week!  Friday we started our weekend by putting together a basil-mozarella-tomato appetizer and headed to an American friend's place for baked spagetti with Paul's group.  It was a nice relaxing night just chilling with friends and by 10pm I was exhausted.  I have officially become an old lady!

Saturday morning we got some picnic stuff together and met our neighbors for a bike ride around the Greifensee (a huge lake not far from our apartment).  The day was so perfect and clear for it- 80 deg!- that you could see the snow capped Alps in the distance!  I knew it usually takes us 2-3 hours because I like to slow down Paul (he can do it in 1) but I had forgotten how little kids definitely make things take longer.  Little Lizzie did not like riding along in the beginning and just wanted to walk around.  So almost immediately after arriving at the Greifensee we stopped at a really nice swimming spot for our picnic.  We were amazed at the amount of food Robert and Kerstin brought.  We brought a light lunch- sandwiches with fruit and lemon poppy seed bread- and they brought 2 huge loafs of yummy bread, TONS of vegetables with a homemade dip that I have GOT to get the recipe for, hot dogs, orange juice, German coke, and more for Lizzie.  They were so awesome and shared it all with us.  Lizzie got to run around and chase a duck and then we were off for more bike riding.  We stopped later for ice cream and a handful of other times and had one last stop in the shade for Lizzie to run some more and have some snacks.  7 hours later we were back home.  It was a super nice ride and I talked to Kerstin A LOT about having a baby here and got a lot of great information.  She was just so open and it was great to chat with someone who could help me.  I'll even go over to their place sometime to learn the way they do their diapers (reusable) but Im not sure I'll do the same because some of the stuff they use they have to get specifically from Germany.

Anyways, we got home around 5 and relaxed for about 30 min before getting ready for the next outing- dinner with our new friends, Elena and Christian.  We cat sitted for them while they were in the states (Elena is from Atlanta).  We threw together some salsa and guacamole and showered and were off again!  *Side note: The shower hates me again and has been cutting off very randomly.  I got 2 min before it shut off for 10 and then I got 2 more min before it shut off again.  I was sooo pissed.  It is not fun freezing in the shower that is making you late just because the hot water wont stay on!  We're going to check the batteries (yes- batteries for our water heater in the shower right in with the water) and if that doesnt work someone is going to get an earfull.*  So we went over to give back the keys and have Mexican lasagna with them and talked for a few hours.  I was so shocked I stayed up so late but I no doubt slept hard as a rock last night- except for when I slept walked to the bathroom.  :)  But we had a lot of fun.  Elena is part Mexican and Christian is German so they are a fun couple.  They are our age and have been married 4 years and previously lived in Ireland.  So Christian has an Irish accent when he speaks English.  So crazy.  But they are our first friends that have no connection to ETH which I think is really cool!

Today has become our lazy day and I love it. I just wish it would last longer! Here's to another week of work! Wooohooo ;)

Via ferrata and SATC weekend :)

So nothing really too amazing about this past week.  Evenings tend to be my not-so-great-feeling times so poor Paul doesn't really get to see my good times during the week.  :(

Saturday, Paul went on a via ferrata (kinda like a cross between rock climbing and a ropes course in hiking gear) and left me for the day.  Luckily, Rachel (from Paul's group) wasn't going so she had an awesome idea of going to see Sex and the City 2!  The night before I woke up around 3am for a bathroom break and snack and when Paul left around 6:30 I had another snack which put me to sleep until 10!  I was so shocked I was able to sleep that late!  But anyways, I hurried and got ready, met Rachel at her place, we left and bought our tickets (19 bucks each!-omg), ate yummmmmmmmmmy burgers at an English Pub (I even got lemonade!!) and saw the movie.  We made sure to find a showing that spoke English but it still had German and French subtitles.  Movies here have intermissions so all of a sudden it shuts off and the lights come back on and most people go out and get a snack.  We got ice cream.  :)  I came home and skyped Amy which definitely needs to happen more often and by then Paul was home.  This is what he did:

They went to the town of Engelberg which part of the route involved taking the cogwheeled train (a train that rides like a train until it clamps on to a center track and pulls itself up a very inclined track). Then they took a Brunni cable car to Ristis and hiked from there to the via ferrata (or klettersteig in German).  The route was easy with an easy climb and 2 short bridges where you basically walked on a cable holding on to other cables.  They hiked down, had lunch, and then some of them attempted the difficult route but it started raining so they came down.  Then it was a beautiful scenic hike back down to Engelberg through cow pastures and tons of wildflowers- a very Swiss looking hike.  They hung out in the town while waiting for the train and made the 2 hour trip home.

I was actually pretty disappointed that I couldn't go.  Before we left the states, we both bought harnesses (mine is even purple!) because this sounded fun and not too much for me to handle.  But we realized that me wearing a harness with the possibility of being jerked around if I fell would not be a good idea at this point.  :(  Anyways, Paul took the only pictures for the weekend.  So here they are:

Schwangerschaft indeed

Work has been work and I think I get my first paycheck soon!  And to 'celebrate' the paycheck Paul had planned on buying his via ferrata gear in time for summer.  So Saturday we decided to go to the farmers market, grab some fruit, run some errands, and shop for his stuff.  We went to a really nice outdoors store and he found his stuff almost 200 bucks later and as we were leaving we noticed the 'outlet' store downstairs... not exactly something we should have found.  It was basically a smaller version of the store with older models of things for a much cheaper price.  And since I don't own a sleeping bag for trips/camping we had been talking about getting one and that of course meant that Paul needed to upgrade too.  I did agree with him on that though since his is super old.  For 300 bucks we bought 2 Mountain Hardwear awesome sleeping bags and are so proud of our finds.  Now who knows if we'll use them before our road trip in August but I hope so.

And other than that and work, we skyped our parents with some pretty big news- Schwangerschaft.

Ich bin Schwanger.  English version:  I am pregnant.

We are very happy to announce that after one test and one doctors appointment we will officially be parents sometime around January 9, 2011.  The test took all of 3 seconds to tell us the news and showed the clearest lines I didn't expect to see.  Now the shock has finally wore off and we are getting excited.  Well, I am as excited as I can be feeling so nauseous all the time.  On our anniversary we went to the doctor and they did an ultrasound- never expected that for our 2 year anniversary.  So that was great/shocking/exciting/just-plain-crazy and then our anniversary dinner was definitely not what we had hoped for.  We thought we'd go out to dinner at our favorite Thai restaurant but instead I was feeling so terrible that we took it to go and I could barely eat half of mine even though it was SO good!  But he/she will be born in Zurich but no, they will not be a Swiss citizen.  Switzerland does not give citizenship that easily.  This will definitely be a- maybe once in a lifetime- experience and we are ready to take it all on.  Maternity care in Switzerland is spoken very highly of so Im sure it will be a great experience besides maybe a little difficulty on language barriers.  Whatever happens, we are very ready to become a family.  :)  I am 7 weeks along, very hungry all the time- including the middle of the night, but I have no interest in food... this will be a fun month or 2 (hopefully only one!).  I'm just so thankful Paul is such an amazing husband.  I seriously couldnt ask for someone better suited for me and my quirks.  :)

Bellinzona and Lugano

What a week!  I'll try to spare you the details to make this not as long as it definitely could be!  :)

Thankfully, I only worked 3 days last week.  Very much needed and I am very thankful for Swiss holidays.  Paul planned a short trip for our 2 year anniversary.  The italian side of Switzerland is spoken very highly of so we decided to check it out.  Lugano, our destination, is about a 3 hour train ride from Zurich.  So Thursday we gave our apartment a very good cleaning and did the laundry and packed up.  Friday morning we left around 7:30 and hopped on a train towards Lugano.  But before we arrived we stopped in Bellinzona for some castle site-seeing.  3 castles total with our packs and walking mountains before we even arrived in Lugano around 5 made for a very long day.  But I did it and Paul was proud and surprised!  Few pics of Bellinzona:

We decided to try out a hostel in Lugano for a couple nights since it was cheap and it looked pretty nice.  Everything was great until 3am when 4 of our fellow hostel mates decided to come back drunk and yell inside the room for an hour.  They finally saw me staring directly at them and the less drunk girl came over and quickly realized I didnt speak Swiss German but she didnt speak much English.  So she told the one girl to quiet down which did nothing except make her more insane and then look me in the face to realize YES I was awake!  Ridiculous especially since one of the hostel manager guys came and told them to be quiet since they have hotel guests too and that did nothing.  We were debating staying another night (even though we paid for it) and when we realized they were staying we packed up our bags.  The people still gave us half the nights payment back and Im sure they went back and talked to them because they had just been in the room and saw that they were taking up the extra beds which were trying to be shown to the newcomers... Anyways, Lugano was beautiful.

Since it is the italian part, everyone speaks Italian and the stores are all in Italian unlike Zurich where everything is German.  Pretty weird but we got by with English.  We got a few snacks, ate at a pizzeria Friday night and sat by the huge lake but it had been rainy all day and we were very tired so we went to bed early.  Sat morning we made our way over to the lake to the tourist office and decided to take a funiculor up Mt. Bre, hike down to Gandria, eat lunch, and take a boat back to Lugano.  It was so beautiful and we enjoyed it so much.  We ate lunch at a small restaraunt off an alley and had a table outside surrounded by the lake and mountains.  Gorgeous.  We decided that if we come again, we will definitely stay in a hotel around there.  By the time we got back we had enough time to ride the bus around, see a couple more things and eat a huge gelato before we decided to pack up our stuff and go home.  We had seen everything that we had wanted to anyway.  So running low on time, we just had to eat dinner at McDonalds... ha.  I didnt enjoy my Big Mac as much as I had anticipated but the chicken nuggets definitely tasted more like real chicken.  Needless to say I passed out on the train home and we got in around midnight and slept like babies.  Here are some pics of Lugano:

I uploaded more pictures and if you'd like, you can take a look here- scroll down past the Boog pics for pics of this trip.  Coming back to Zurich being on the other side of the Alps was not pretty.  Back to the rain.  :(

Back to pics :)

I actually have pictures this time!!  To start will be the 'salsa' Paul bought to go with our tiny bag of chips for Cinco de Mayo.  It probably should have been called 'Meatloaf Ketchup with a few green peppers'.  It did not taste good especially on chips.  So we threw some things together and made a very very oniony salsa with no cilantro but better than nothing!  :)

My 2 days of work were work.  The work they have me doing is not hard and just a matter of figuring things out.  So I think it should be fine and maybe even fun.  It is a little isolating since they all speak German unless they want me to join in.  But they are nice old men and it is definitely an experience.

Friday night we did our grocery shopping and had our pizza night.  yummy  And went to bed really early.  I had to run my 4.4 km leg of the Sola Race at 7:30am.  Not cool.  We got up at 6 and made our way over there but I was still not fully awake with my food digested by the time the gun went off and there was a massive amount of women (about 400) speeding down the hill in the woods... craziness. So I did my section- not well but finished with minimal walking- and passed off the e-baton to Katherine.  My section was the very first and the race went til about 6 when everyone finished.  A very long day. 

I wanted to nap when I got home but had other things to do.  Once Paul got back, we were going to use our day travel pass for all of Switzerland and go somewhere by boat but by the time we were ready we didnt have enough time to go far.  So we rode the boat for a little bit (which was super busy and we were lucky they had enough seats for us), walked along areas we had never seen, and stopped by the huge market at the lake.  I guess you could call it antiques but Im not too sure...

Not the boat we rode (you pay extra for it) but maybe one day!

This is the one we road- very interesting

We got some ice cream and headed to the finish line to cheer on our teams.  That night we had a huge potluck gathering for our 2 Sola teams but we were all exhausted.  I met a few new people and had fun just hanging out.  Paul was in charge of the grill and had to grill all 25 people's meats.  A lot of pressure!  But it was fun and we slept goooooooooood last night.

Today Paul really wanted to go see the Monet/Van Gogh exhibit at the art museum since it is leaving next week.  More walking and my legs were exhausted but he enjoyed the 3 hours we spent there.  It was huge.  This week I only have to work 3 days and am super excited about it!  Thursday is Ascention and Rheinmetall just gave Friday off too.  :)  We might go to a bed and breakfast this weekend for our anniversary.  Paul's good at planning trips so I'll leave it up to him!

Oh, and a side/ending note... I can officially take SHORT showers!  I can do most everything within 10 min with time to spare to just sit there and I am so proud.  Go me.  :)