Elisa finished another week of German. Countdown: 8 days to go.

Elisa turned into a murderer this week. That’s what she told me when I got home from work. There is a really obnoxious guy in her German class that everybody is always complaining about. But the story turned out to be a lot less interesting than I was hoping for. A spider fell into the washing machine and Elisa didn’t want to save it. Because it was big and scary. So the spider died, and Elisa was a murderer, and German still has an obnoxious kid in class. (8 days to go.)

Elisa fixed up our garden this week. It turns out that it wasn’t looking sufficiently Swiss. It really does look fine (we should post pictures sometime) but Elisa made the mistake of comparing it to our neighbors’ gardens. I was mortified. She worked her tail off pulling weeds. I worked a lot to stake up a bunch of plants as well. On Tuesday and Wednesday this excellent thunderstorm rolled through and it dumped on us so heavily that we felt like the town was underwater. Tuesday night we went out to our balcony and watched as lightning struck all around our building. It was so fun to see and I LOVE the sound. It reminds me of when my mom would wake us up in the middle of the night when we were little to watch lightning storms. My teacher said it was a hurricane, because apparently the wind got up to 120 km/hr. I texted Elisa that it was time to start building our ark. I couldn’t concentrate during the first half of class because the clouds turned all green and it looked like night-time out and then a big sheet of water went over the building.

Jessi Neeley came and visited us. She is studying in Freiburg, Germany for a few weeks? She speaks better German than us. I’m kind of upset that she speaks better German than I do. I’ve been working so hard for so long! 🙂 She brought two of her classmates with her. They checked out the regular touristy sites in Zürich. We gave them an intro to Swiss food. There are three Swiss foods that taste good. There’s only three! The first is Raclette. It’s a mildly smelly cheese that you melt in individual pans and pour over potatoes. That was fun! Our Raclette grill is our new toy. And it’s a tasty one too. Everyone should come visit us just to try it. The second good food is Spätzli. It’s an egg noodle kind of thing. The third good food is Rösti, which is Swiss-style hash browns. They are all very hearty, home-cooked meals. And no meat. Meat is fine here, but it costs an arm and a leg. And you don’t even get that much. 🙂

On Thursday was Jason’s Hump Day–he’s been on his mission in Guadalajara for exactly 1 year. Congratulations, Jason!