Other fall activities

 I have a backlog of photos to post, so here it goes:

At a park in Neuchatel

We went with some friends to La Chaux-de-Fonds to visit the Zoo-Vivarium du Bois Petit Chateau. It is a free zoo and it was awesome!

 It was a beautiful fall day.

 Lots of leaves everywhere

 Jack only wanted to wear one mitten for some reason

 The "fake" whine. It's worse than a real whine

Jack walking with our friends

Baby Maria

Friendly goat

 "Did you see what's over there?"

 Another friendly goat

 Goats everywhere

One day each weekend Jack gets to drink "coffee" with dad. It's basically a hot chocolate drink that we make in our Nespresso machine. Jack LOVES it!

Luke is working hard to finish his last class for his Masters degree. This means that most weekends he is studying and doing homework so Jack and I usually try to go out for the day so we don't bug him. One weekend we drove 2 hours to this place called Trampolino which is near Zurich. It is the largest indoor play area in Switzerland.

Jack trying to make it to the top of the volcano. It is much harder than it looks. It took me a few tries to make it to the top.

An innocent looking bouncy area. Jack climbed up in the the fishes mouth, but then the mouth started to close. Poor guy freaked out and was screaming and crying. It turns out that once the mouth closes, there is a slide down the backside of the fish. Jack made it out, but never wanted to try it again.

We took Jack bowling for his first time. It was the longest game ever as each ball Jack pushed took several minutes to roll all the way down the lane.

 But he seemed to have a good time

Last weekend when Luke was studying, Jack and I drove all the way to the French border to the Vallorbe caves

There were several small lakes and rivers in these caves. And at one point the river Orbe rushes through the cave

At the end of it all, you walk through several rooms of gems "fairy treasures." Jack was mesmerized by all the treasure, so we went by the gift shop to and I bought him a small stone as a souvenir from the caves. When we got home he was so excited to show Luke his treasure and here is how the conversation went:
Luke: "where did you get this?"
Jack: "From a man"
Luke: "Where did the man get it?"
Jack: "From a window (i.e. the display case)"
So I'm not even sure if he realized that his stone was from the caves, but oh well... it was fun.

A tour around our village

During the one day of awesome weather last week Jack and I decided to take a walk around our village so I could take you on a photo tour of where we live. 

Our village is tiny. According to wikipedia it is only 1 square mile, most of which is farm land. We have a population of just over 200, but in the few months I've lived here I have seen less than 50 people. We live right at the end of the village next to acres and acres of farm land. Here is the road to our house:

Jack threw a fit when he realized that he didn't have a camera. So I had to run back and get him one. Thankfully this road is seldom used:

Ready for our photo tour!

A view of the village and Lake Morat in the distance

One of several farms

Jack found a piece of trash he wanted to photograph

There are several signs warning of kids playing...but I've never seen these kids. They must keep them locked up all day

More signs of warning of the kids I've never seen:

Neighbors driveway

Where we pick up fresh apple juice

Only one box of apple juice left

Our town thrift store.

The guy who runs the thrift store also runs our town dump. We think that he just picks stuff out that villagers throw away and attempts to resell them at exorbitant prices. The white table shown here is $500!

Just as a side note, our village has no trash service. Every saturday we have to cart all our smelly, stinky trash down to the dump. 

 Here you sort all of your recyclable by paper, cans, bottles, glass, yard waste, etc.

Then anything that you can't recycle you have to put in this big bin and you pay per pound of trash. I think it is around $6/pound of trash. Kind of forces you to recycle to keep your trash costs low.

Now back to the tour: Here are some random concrete blocks. Not sure what these are, but they are all over the village and in the forest

Jack is getting tired of walking

Most of the homes here have a date of when they were built

This one is 1848

Here is a house built in 1818

Another view of the lake

Here is our village center.

We have a restaurant

And a winery

And a fountain

Walking back home

Done with walking!

Back inside, here is our living room where Jack likes to spread his toys out from wall to wall

The other side of the living room

Our view of the farms from the living room

Dining room

Our kitchen. Notice the wires hanging from the ceilings. Here the previous tenants take everything. Even the light fixtures. We haven't gotten around to putting up all the lights yet, and at this point we'll probably just leave it like this until we move (yep, I'm still voting to move out of this place once our 1 year lease is up)

Our stash of wines and liquor

Our tiny fridge which is actually huge by European standards.

Sirop is a popular kids drink here. You mix a little bit of sirop (comes in many flavors such as strawberry, grenadine, orange, iced tea, etc) with some water and voila you have a tasty drink

Jacks has learned that if he stands on a chair he can reach almost anything.

Amazing view of the alps from our window

But alas, most days here are so foggy we can't even see the neighbors across the street.

Sure enough, Friday morning the fog rolled back in.

And this was our view

And there you have it. Our little village.