Having found the English language library today, life is a little more relaxed because Max is reading instead of rolling around on the floor moaning about how much he hates his parents, thus giving me time to write this note.
We're living in Geneva, about two miles from the city center, an easy bus ride away - buses go by about every five minutes. I really am always just baffled at how the Europeans manage it and the Americans don't - Geneva is this totally vibrant city, teeming with cafes, restaurants, stores, playgrounds, parks, and streetlife. Yet so so close to the city - a joggable, bikeable, busable distance, we are completely in the countryside with apple and pear orchards, donkeys, and woods all part of what I pass on my short runs - although I also can walk easily to a restaurant, grocery store, and some other shops. If I ran in the other direction, I could go past the World Health Organization and the International Labor Organization, but it's not as pretty. The kids are doing a lot of walking to the bus stop.
The bus we take drives us right past the United Nations Building (with its public art piece - an enormous wooden chair with one leg blown off - a monument to victims of landmines), the Red Cross museum and a bunch of Missions (the U.S. Mission, etc). There's public art all over the place - modern, old, pretty, weird - it's really great.
We arrived about a week and a half ago. Our apartment, known as "Le Petit Chalet", is in a little brown chalet, with balconies off of three sides. It's very cute - a large bedroom for us, a smallish living-room/dining room, a teeny office for Mark and me, a little room with a bunk bed for the kids, a bathroom, and a little galley kitchen with a cute small refrigerator and a little stove and sink. Katrina loves the kitchen because the appliances look a little like toys to someone used to massive American appliances. It's the upstairs apartment, although the downstairs seems to usually be vacant - Katrina has explored the inside of the downstairs somehow, unbeknownst to me, and is constantly reporting back little tidbits of information.
The apartment reminds me a lot of the place in which Mark and I lived in Berlin right after we got married. There's something I sort of like about being in a furnished apartment - partly just a realization that all the stuff we accumulate doesn't mean all that much - that you can move into someone else's space, and while you might have chosen the blue Ikea accent pillows and they chose the red, it doesn't really make a tremendous difference. You listen to someone else's music, read someone else's novels, eat off some other plates. It's kind of freeing. Plus, instead of being annoyed about not having something, it sort of seems like a bonus to find certain things - look, they have a big bowl for serving pasta - hey there's a volleyball net in this closet! It's kind of fun. The biggest source of conflict is the bunk bed, which Katrina is dying to sleep on the top bunk of, but since it has no railing and she gets up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, I'm a little reluctant.
We're sort of in the woods on a small campus setting - across a small field is the dorm where the students live, which has a cafeteria, a student lounge (an endless source of fascination to both kids actually because of the steady supply of coca cola that can be found there, and the evidence of teenage life) and where Mark teaches. Mark's responsibilities seem very minimal so far - teaches one class a week, deals when kids have to go to the emergency room (happened once), or lock themselves out (happened once), attends some meetings, listens to the complaints of the irascible chef, Jose, fields calls from worried parents. There's a French class every day which I think I'll start when the kids start school.
One would think that the setting would be heaven for kids - there's a basketball court, a wall to hit tennis balls against, a little volleyball net - and lots of little lizards, fun to try to catch. But one would be wrong, at least some of the time. I mean, they each are sometimes very happy, but they each are sometimes very unhappy at being somewhere without any English-speaking friends. Max spent one day in it's entirety moaning about it, although has been quite cheerful the last few days. The school doesn't start for another week, and I think they'll feel much better once that happens. We went to see the school, which is brand new - it's the Deutsche Schule Genf (the German school of Geneva), and has been around for a long time, but happens to be moving into a new building on which construction is not quite complete. The building is cool - looks like a modern art museum and I think is self-sustaining in terms of energy use - pumps geothermal energy up from below the foundation or something (I couldn't entirely follow the explanation in German), but without any kids or any art up yet, and with boxes and construction vehicles still all around, it felt cold and not very friendly to the kids I think. But today a very cute packet arrived in the mail from Katrina's teacher, Frau Larius. Max is very very concerned that letter grades begin in 4th grade and he'll be unable to read and write in German. Sigh. Both are a little worried about the French. But the principal assured us that some in the school will be beginners in German, others beginners in French, and that they'll do fine.
It seems to us like everyone in Geneva speaks at least three languages fluently, including the kids, although the kids we meet in the playgrounds only seem to speak French. Plus European parents are so different in certain ways - take it for granted that kids should be shipped off to a camp in Spain to learn Spanish, roll their eyes at the notion that it might be traumatic. Although there are all these internal differences too - French school is very intensive, several hours longer that American school, very rigid, centralized curriculum. German school starts a year later than U.S. schools, is a much shorter school day, kids don't learn to read until they're six, and it's very focused on art and is very developmental. Germans, Swedes and others all begin learning English right away and seem often to be fluent in a third language as well - the French really don't like English and don't tend to speak it nearly as well as other Europeans. It's hard for me to tell about the Swiss and I think it differs a lot locally - the governmental system here is very localized, but in Geneva at least, everyone seems to speak pretty good English, from the waiters in restaurants to the ticket agents at the bus station, and nobody seems the slightest bit annoyed with my French. Allegedly 40% of Genevans aren't Swiss.
The best thing about Europe is the many opportunities for really fun physical things that would never be allowed in the U.S. Every playground is full of see-saws with unsupervised 3 year olds on one end and 10 year olds on the other, sending the three year olds flying gleefully into the air. Also lots of metal rides that spin wildly. Yesterday we went to a playground that featured a pole, about 30-feet high, with four long metal chains with wooden bars at the end. Kids grab the bars, then run in circles, then lift their feet off the ground and careen around for a few spins before all landing on top of each other with the metal chains and wooden bars hitting everyone in the head. The kids loved it.
We also went to a playground in France (France is ten minutes away by car) that had ziplines where the kids were harnessed in and did this kind of ropes course, many feet above the ground - they have to strap themselves in and climb and swing high up in the trees - literally 30 feet off the ground, flying through the air, with these little safety harnesses, then when they get to the next little station up in the tree, they have to switch the harness to the new clamps themselves. The kind of thing that you'd get sued in the U.S. if you even mentioned wanting to put up. The very nice French woman who ran it had an adorable little 4-year-old boy who ran around doing the stuff too - she said in this French accent "he has no sense - last year he fell and broke ze jaw and needed nine stitches - I said, Remy, your head is in ze clouds, but still does he listen? Non! But your leetle girl, she is very sensible". Katrina was floored and asked on the way home if I would still let her do the course unsupervised if she had broken her jaw and needed stitches and was four. But in a way, it's like this kid has the perfect life - if he survives it of course - running around outside, near a lake, catching lizards and riding ropes above the trees. Later we saw him unsupervised in the kitchen, gleefully cutting up dozens of paper napkins with a large pair of scissors, undoubtedly intended for dismembering a chicken or something.
It's been variable weather, but definitely not as hot as the U.S. in summer. Still, we've gone swimming a few times. Geneva has two big beaches - one is more of a pier, with huge diving boards (10 meter, 20 meter) and a zipline above the water (kids just hang on, and after falling in have to swim in thru the nude female beach - all the beaches have topless women, but the fully nude one is a little more alarming for the American kids, tho Max didn't comment). There's a huge slide which Katrina did by herself, sandwiched between groups of big French-speaking kids. Max met a little German speaking kid and played with him all day, trying to push teenagers into the lake. Katrina and I noticed one little boy doing a typical European activity - playing with the little metal pots, attached to heavy, metal poles with sharp points which you stick into the ground around the pool/beach, so that people can put their cigarettes in them before going into the water I guess (tho if they COULD smoke in the water, they would). The boy was picking up the pots and the poles, then dropping them alarmingly near his feet, while his mother, in bikini, stood about forty feet away, chatting with another woman and ignoring him.
Our first week here was a little stressful because I still had to finish several things for work - I release a report every year on Labor Day, and this isn't the first August that's been marred by the need to finish it. I'm thinking Labor Day should be moved to March so it doesn't screw up summer so much next year. There were also a few funding deadlines that needed to be dealt with. But the big report is now done and out to reporters, and another release that I'm doing in October is more than three-quarters done as well. I'm able to call into conference calls pretty easily and will do two today and e-mail keeps me in pretty good touch with what's going on at work, at least so far. Once the kids start school I think I'll be able to manage the work pretty easily, I hope.
Today the kids played at the house of Mark's colleague - she's German, her husband is Spanish, they live in France and work in Switzerland - they have kids the exact ages of our kids, cared for by the French nanny, who is now watching our kids too, at the mother's insistence. Hers is the son who is at a Spanish camp, so Max is playing with the girls. So that gives you a sense of our lives here....
