The One Where We Actually Move!

Hi all! This will be a bit of a brain dump because I'm so off my rocker that I'm barely able to form sentences.

We arrived yesterday morning around 11am, Zurich time. The flight was pretty uneventful. The first few minutes were abso-freaking-lutely terrifying because we had pretty horrible turbulence in the first 15 minutes of the flight. Like I was white-knuckling it as the boys were giggling and Caroline was going, "Whoa! Whooooaaaaa!" At one point, Tobi told Caroline to put her hands up like on a rollercoaster, so she did. And everyone was laughing but me. I was trying to put on a brave face, but I didn't take any Xanax for the flight because I thought I would need to be "on" for the kids. Grant immediately settled in for the movies (Jack Black in Gulliver's Travels? According to Grant, it was "awesome") and Charlie was enthralled with the snack mix and orange juice he ordered "for free!" Caroline & Tobi did about an hour of Elmo sticker book before she got a little cranky. She finally fell asleep and the boys sat together and watched movies and then both fell asleep. Tobi fell asleep and I sat there trying to just breathe. I may have slept a tiny bit but I got up a lot and walked and stretched. About an hour before the flight was over, they turned on the cabin lights & opened the shades to daylight, trying to trick our weary bodies into thinking we'd had enough nighttime. Charlie loudly proclaimed, "Hey! It's daytime now!!"

Our relocation person met us at the airport and took most of our 9 bags of luggage with her in her car. The 5 of us took two taxis to our apartment, where the movers were waiting on us to arrive to look over all the goods they'd just unloaded. They didn't just unload things, but set up nearly my entire kitchen, our living room, and the kids' rooms. They assembled the boys' new Ikea bunk beds and Caroline's new toddler bed. Tobi was very grateful to be spared these tasks.

We did a bit of exploring and the kids imediately took off for the playground. Tobi lamented our lack of view (we cannot see the lake from our apartment, even though we are very close to the shore) but our view is directly in front of the playground so I can watch the kids from the kitchen/dining room window. This is really ideal. While the kids played outside, Tobi went to the bank to get us a real live Swiss bank account. He was very happy to finally open it, as in January we were told they do not give Americans Swiss bank accounts without proof of residency.

We took a walk last evening and found a pizza place about 8 minutes from our apartment. Tobi had gnocchi (his favorite) and I had a really great pizza with proscuitto and mushrooms. Grant got buttered noodles and proclaimed them "the best ever" and Charlie got chicken fingers, which the Swiss call, "schnipple" so thank God for small favors. Caroline ate some of the noodles and a lot of french fries (with Heinz ketchup. Again, thank God - it's the little things, ya know??). Then we found a small grocery store a few minutes further away. We bought some essentials and called it a night.

Because the Swiss tradition is to buy one's lighting for one's apartment (yeah, this is WEIRD), we didn't have any lights in the apartment, save the bathrooms and stove overhead light. Thank goodness Tobi thought to pack a couple of flashlights so we made do. Today we got up and went to a store called Jumbo, which is similar to a Home Depot and bought lighting fixtures out the ying-yang. I will do a separate post on the Dragon light the boys picked for their room. Suffice it to say it's not the prettiest thing I've ever seen. Our relocation person has hired an electrician to come on Monday to install all the lighting.

Well, this is all the update I can give because it is after 11pm here and I'm beat. Tomorrow? Tiffany's first Swiss driving. So if you're in Zurich and happen to be reading this, you've been warned. We're going to try to find the school in preparation for Monday.

To be continued...

Cheers!

Tiffany