Summary of our year in Geneva

Hello!!
It's our last normal Saturday in Geneva, and I (Rachel) am taking this opportunity to wrap up and summarize our year. We are going to go to Geneve Plage (a waterpark/ beach area) in a few hours with some friends, and I am going to a party tonight, but right now everyone else is packing away, and I'm writing this blog :) It's kind of sad to see our books and toys piled in corners because people have bought our furniture. We're really leaving, and I don't want to. Last weekend, all 5 of us went to Yvoire. It was lots of fun and absolutely beautiful. I remember over lunch we talked about the highlights of our year; what made it so great. For me at least, my three favorite things are:

1) Friends- I've made lots of amazing friends here, and there are three or four of them that I never want to lose touch with. I have my yearbook filled with signatures though, and of course, facebook to keep in touch :D
2) Public transportation- When I want to go somewhere, Mom or Dad doesn't have to drive me. The buses and trams run every street, the main ones to the small country roads.
3) School- I love my school. It provides so much independence and freedom. I love high school. But high school in the states will be different in the sense of internationality. My school has over 200 nationalities. Around 90% of the school is fluent in two or more languages. I'm going to miss that so much.

Another great thing about this year was the opportunity to travel all over. My mom was saying the other day that this year has seemed like a yearlong vacation. For me, it wasn't quite a vacation, but it was as fun as one. We've gone to Greece, the Dominican Republic, Holland, Paris, London, and both hiking and skiing in the Alps. A big part of our year was getting up painfully early on Saturday mornings, packing the 5 of us into our tiny little car along with 5 pairs of skis, helmets, boots, and extra clothing, and driving usually about an hour to a ski site. At the time, I didn't like it. We woke up around 6 constantly, we were squished in the car, and the temperatures, wind, and snow were sometimes miserable. But looking back, it was actually amazing, especially our weeklong skiing trip to Champery in February, and I'd do it again willingly.

Not only have each of the three kids made great friends, but our family has made some great friends: Sally and Nina and their adorable boys Milo and Cy, Tam and Garrett and their sons Luca and Kenji, who became Noah's lego buddies, Dale Huntington and his wife Thetis, and of course our loved and amazing babysitter/ musician/ math tutor: Daniel Prozesky. It was an amazing year, and although a part of us never wants to leave, a part of us cant wait to go back to Baltimore :)

Greece, with more to come

Hey guys its rachel

we've just come back from a nice trip to greece for spring break. to follow this post are blogs from everyone else in the family. anyway, we went to thessaloniki, veria, athens, and a nice little island called hydra. the picture i've attached is of me and molly and noah on top of the acropolis which we all climbed on my 14th birthday on april 6th. in veria we stayed in a nice hotel, and we were shown around and through veria by kalipso, her husband duncan, and her parents and grandparents. they are the nicest people you will ever meet in your life. we had a lot of fun with them. the hilight of our veria trip was going to see philip the second's actual tomb with ancient artifacts and everything. philip II is alexander the great's father. in athens we saw the colosseum, acropolis, and more. in hydra we rode donkeys and took a long walk. we bought souvenirs there too. it was a really fun family vacation. more to come from others.

snow day (from Molly)

Hi everyone

Today was the 7th grade snow day. That does not mean that there was no school. It means that the whole 7th grade went up into the mountains where we snowdshoed, sledded, made sculptures in the snow, and got covered in snow. It was really fun and I really enjoyed it. Here are some pictures from it. The third one shows a picture of my friends Lynn and Vitoria with a snow sculpture of a man we made. (His name is Frankenstien)

The first picture is of my whole class. (see if you can find me!)

The second picture is of me with a lot of my friends. (from left to right, it's Luna, Esin, Vitoria, Me!, Lynn, and Satya. sorry the pictures are out of order)

That's all

I hope you enjoyed the pictures!

(cheese is good!)

blog

Hi (from Rachel)

We didn't blog in a while so here is the stuff we did. we all went skating in carouge and the ice is bad there but still it was fun. it was a set up rink, and they will take it down once the season ends, which is hard to believe because the area is so nice. we also went to baltimore to see our friends and the dominican republic to help make a school better. this including painting, gardening, and constructing. we have been back in geneva for 2 weeks now but it took half that to get off jetlag.

More on DR (from Sean): We will try to be more consistent with these postings, but here are a few pictures from our time in the Dominican Republic, working with the Kass-Hecht gang, and a lot of local folks, to make some an improvements to an already lovely school that was about an hour outside of Santo Domingo (in a town called Cambita Garabitos). I think there was a lot more worked involved in making the arrangements that allowed all of us to spend our time doing something that felt worthwhile, than there was in actually doing it. But it was amazing to see how enthusiastic and durable all of the kids were with their paiting, clearing, digging, planting, etc.

Molly is also going to add a new post about the DR with some of her photos.

Skiing in Megeve

From Sean (with help from Noah, Molly and Rachel)

Yesterday we had our first Geneva ski outing, mostly to be sure that we had the right equipment, and could figure out how to get from our house, to the ski area, and onto the slopes. It was a lot of fun, and everyone made a lot of progress in their skiing skills. We had a 90 minute lesson from a very nice instructor with th Ecole du Ski Francais. He reminded us how to fall down, how to stand up, and how to turn around in circles. These were all very useful skills which we put to good use for the rest of the day.

Our first ski destination was in Megeve, a few miles from Chamonix in the French Alps. The area had a moderate amount of snow, and had just opened 4 days before we were there. The scenery was wonderful, and the temperature right around freezing. Here are a few comments from the participants:

Sean: I was glad to have an excuse to stay on he beginner hills, which is best suited to my actual level of skiiing ability.

Noah: "It was hard. Dad made me walk through very high snow. Boo dad! I liked skiing down the hill. I liked the food!!!!!!! We had lemon sugar crepes! Very good crepes!"

Molly: "I really liked going down the hill because you get to go fast. Going up the hill was not as fun. I liked walking around the town after skiing. There were pretty shopes and horses that wee pulling wagons."

Rachel: "At first I was scared to go down the small hills but by the end I liked going as fast as I could. I liked my crepe. Everyone was wearing moon boots in town."

Nancy: "I am sorry I was not there".

Some pictures attached....

Lausanne Half-Marathan by Nancy

This is Nancy writing. So we got back from our great week in Amsterdam on Friday night close to 1am. At 9am on Saturday, my friend Nina called and said she was going to do the Montreux to Lausanne half marathon the next day. "You're kidding," said I. Then at 2pm Nina called back and said, "I just signed you up for the half marathon." So on Sunday, Nina and Sally and their two cute little boys, and Heather and Dave (Sean's sister/brother in law, who are visiting) and Molly and Noah drove up to near Montreux (Rachel had to stay home to do homework:(). It was a bit chilly and drizzling (perfect running weather) and, after leaving the gang in an Italian restaurant for lunch, Nina and I started the race (at the bizarre race time of 2pm). The key was to pace ourselves, particularly because I had not run more than 6 miles in at least six months, probably longer. The run was beautiful, it went along Lake Geneva for much of the time, wound through a few old villages with cobblestone streets. There was a different live band every 2 km. There was one particularly entertaining band, dressed in turquoise and lime green outfits and looking significantly like Dr. Seuss characters. I loved that many of the spectators had set up their little tables with glasses of wine to watch people run by. So French. It also was funny that one of the ways I amused myself along the run was to do the math to figure out how many kilometers a half marathon was. I computed correctly, but there were enough differently numbered race distance signs along the road for people doing the half, the marathon, or the 10K, that I actually was quite unsure of how far we had gone (didn't want to get my hopes up) and we were not sure until about 1/4 mile from the end that we were actually approaching the finish line. Anyway, we finished, and we were ecstatic. We indeed ran the whole time, we did it in 2 hours and 13 minutes (basically a 10 minute mile) and then started to look for our family. Nina, whose French is a bit better than mine, was the one to approach strangers to ask to borrow their cell phone. We couldn't find Sally or Heather and also couldn't reach them on these borrowed cell phones. After about an hour, we started to get cold (grateful for the plastic garbage bags they gave us to wear), but fortunately I had put 135 francs (more than $100!) in my shoe pocket (Nina had said we might need it for a cab if we couldn't run). We bought capuccinos and crepes at roadside places and, like mac and cheese when you're backpacking, nothing had ever tasted so good. We finally connected with our family, who had been gloriously sightseeing at the 1000 year old Chillon Castle, and they made their way to us 1.5 hours after the race ended. All around a spectacular day!

Amsterdam vacation by Nancy

We are spending our half-term break in Amsterdam. Yesterday, we did a day excursion to the Zaanse Schans village. It’s a place where original buildings from other parts of Holland have been assembled so visitors can see some of “Oud Holland”. We took a train and then walked about 15 minutes to get there. We did a tour of a biscuit and chocolate factory (so far, a chocolate factory in every European city we visit…) and also looked through the wooden shoe making shop, the cheese making shop, and the old grocery store. There are many sheep, goats, and cows, with whom Molly visited. Probably the highlight was going into one of the six old windmills. The one we visited was a sawmill, and the power from the windmill was used in the pretty huge space underneath to cut logs into planks, with both straight and circular saws. We climbed up to the top (reminded us of climbing the Gay Head Lighthouse) and the very nice, older, Dutch volunteer gave us a lot of information about windmills. He had apparently recently retired and just been certified as a “miller” after much studying. He stopped the blades and we touched them and learned what to do when the wind is too high. Then he let Noah pull the rope to start the blades spinning again saying, “You can now tell your friends that you set a Dutch windmill in motion”.
We have gone to the Anne Frank house, which was remarkable. Even more exhibits and sections than I remember from when I came here with Nancy Showen in college. It’s been very cold here, so when we rented bikes to go through the large Voldenpark, we had to stop at the Blue House coffee house for large mugs of hot chocolate before resuming our biking. Afterwards, we found a cheap spot to buy hats and mittens. Fortunately, we also found a place where, according to Noah, “there are the best french fries I’ve ever tasted.” I think the exact quote was something like, “They are really big, and when it’s really cold, they are crispy on the outside and warm on the inside and so good.”