In other words, part II

My day was quiet--I scarcely left the house, except to get the kids to school--so I thought today I'd leave the letter-writing to someone who had a little more to say. So here's Ella. She and I curled up at bedtime, and she dictated this to you:


I think Switzerland is going pretty well. My favorite part of the whole week is Friday because there is a big spinney thing tips over when you step on it and my class is only allowed to us it on Fridays.

Much to Ella's dismay. They have a very small playground at Ella's school, although the kids get three recesses. They must have had trouble with scuffles over the two pieces of play equipment, a monkey bar set and a merry-go-round, or, spinney-thing, as it were. The equipment is assigned to a single grade level each day. Ella found this out the hard way on the first day of school.

And also I have handicrafts where we saw and glue and everyone else is making things like hooks and crowns but I'm making a real toy car that moves and I sawed out all the pieces! And after school or on the weekends I come home and work on a big board game called Robot Alley that's taking up more than half of my room space now. I can't wait to play it with Alex--it's almost finished! It's a huge game that starts out with your two robots who are in a race, but that's only a quarter of it. The rest of it is just...a huge adventure! The robot who loses the race blows up and attacks the other robot and it's a little like chess.

Robot Alley

And it takes up much more than half of her room. Ella's room here is much larger than it is in Seattle, but I do believe she could expand and take up any amount of floor space we gave her.

One of my favorite things is ice skating. I'm getting really good at it, but I need something to hold onto always. But luckily they have these things that you can hold onto while you skate. And one of the best pieces of news is that the ice skating rink is really, really close to my house.


Also, one time my mom pulled me all the way down a mountain! And it was a really tall mountain, about a mile! Sometimes we went really, really fast, and we almost crashed into the side!


I really, really, really, really REALLY like the chocolate here.

Really?

I have some friends already. I seem to be fitting in more. More kids speak English than you would expect.


I get really, really tired from having to walk to and from school, and sometimes my homework gets wet! I hope I never get blamed for that. I haven't been blamed so far. Sometimes, actually, a lot of times, I forget my homework or my coat or to change my shoes into my outside shoes or I forget my folder or even my backpack or I forget to put my homework in my folder when I come home from school and I have to walk all the way back to school to get them. I don't know how I'm going to remember. I guess I'll just try to remember, and maybe some day I'll learn.

This is true. More days than not, Ella forgets something, usually her coat or her math book. Heartlessly, I send her right back to school to get it. Surely she'll learn one of these days? Luckily, she takes it stride. I think that she's seen me laugh at myself enough times for losing things or forgetting things (she comes by her scatterbrained ways honestly) that she's got my patented forehead slap down.

Also sometimes we have swimming or PE or music. We have a lot of specialists. One time we even went ice skating! It was really fun.


I feel good about Switzerland. I feel like I've always lived here, except for not knowing their language and them not knowing mine.

Sometimes Dennis and I feel the same way. It's incredible how quickly you can grow accustomed to something new.

I do worry about all of the homework. I have much more than I did at home. I have to do, like, two or three pages of homework each day!

Also true, especially because she has additional German homework each day. She's learning multiplication now in school, and she brings her little hard-bound textbook home each day and copies out problem sets. It's quaint and sweet. Lately she's gotten into the habit of getting her homework out of the way as soon as she gets home, thank goodness. I do worry, though about how much time my seven-year-old spends working. Sometimes it takes over an hour.

All in all, I feel adventurous! And also like I want to read my comic book now.

Right. These are the Geels girls, signing off!