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.