Back to school...

Isaac just had his first day today in his school -- he is in a small class with about 10 other international students who don't know German. The focus of the class is to learn German, along with math, so that's how he'll spend the next six+ months. They also have a few other fun subjects, like swimming every Monday, gymnastics every Thursday and shop (i.e., woodworking and other stuff) twice a week. Once he becomes proficient in German, then he'll get integrated into a "regular" class. It was a pretty tough day for him and will probably be for the next few weeks as he adjusts -- for example figuring out the unfamiliar games they play at recess was frustrating for him today. The students in his class are from all over -- Columbia, Tibet, Portugal, South Korea, Guatamala. There is one other American -- a boy Isaac's age whose stepmom is Swiss and dad is American.

Elliot will have his first day of kindergarten tomorrow -- he'll be in a regular kindergarten (which is equivalent to our preschool basically) and will probably mostly learn swiss german. We went by today and he played with the largest set of legos I've ever seen; after about 15 minutes he declared it to be very fun. His teacher Frau Frischknecht is very nice. At first he only wanted to hide in my lap; by the end of our visit, though, he was playing on his own and let his teacher take him by the hand and show him around. He gets to wear a big organge badge (sortof what the school safety patrols used to wear and maybe still do) on his walk to and from school everyday and they encourage us to let him walk on his own once he gets used to everything and knows his way around. He is very proud of it. Tomorrow probably won't be an easy day for him, but having fun things to play with will certainly help.

The weather is just bizarre here -- cold for the most part except when it's not, which is to say that it is very changeable! I've worn shorts maybe three times since we've been here. We have had several multi-day bouts of cold and rain. Last week there was apparently so much rain that some places were having record flooding and trains were being rerouted. The week before mom and I unwittingly ventured out into a record downpour in a valiant effort to attend an organ concert at the Grossmunster Kirche. Instead of hearing organ music, however, we took the tram in the wrong direction and by the time we waded through the Altstadt to the church we were too late (disappointing, but a nice glass of red wine at a nearby Italian cafe gave us solace). I'd love a stretch of hot and humid (it should be noted that Brian thinks the temperature is just perfect).