Fall

It feels like winter here. The snow has laid its white coat onto the grassy fields, the trees have lost theirs to the icy wind, mornings are frosty and the kids slide on the road on the way to school, as if it was a big, downhill ice skating rink, Christmas decorations are everywhere, and yet, it's still Fall. Winter doesn't officially start until December 21st, which leaves me enough time to do a little entry on this beautiful season, which I didn't know I had missed so much.

Fall is when the trees change color, and dress themselves up with the most magnificent reds, oranges and yellows, as if trying to light themselves on fire before getting hit by the winter cold. Entire forests of warm rainbows, chestnuts on the ground, mushroom picking, rainy days, apple and pear picking, windy afternoons, are all things I relished in this fall.

With the falling of leaves, came the passing of my 94 years old grandfather. A page turned. Interestingly enough, the word leave and the word paper are the same in French: feuille. A leave that falls, a paper page that turns.

He marked the end of a generation, leaving a tribe of children, grandchildren and great grandchildren behind him, and his legacy of faith, gratitude, love of the earth and family. My grandfather was a farmer. He was a visionary. He was proud of his big family. He was adventurous. And he was always so grateful. He used to say, "I am a happy man". Loosing him was sad, but it was also sweet, to know that he went in peace, that he knew where he was going and to think of what he left behind. My cousins are some of my best friends. I have the greatest childhood memories spent with that side of the family. And I am overjoyed to have my children experience those family gatherings of 80. Celebrating his life was beautiful. I am so thankful that I could be there, that I got to see him the day before he left, and that I got to say good bye with my whole family. A very touching and moving time.

Fall was also vacation time. Both for the kids and M and I. The kids had two weeks off school, and M and I took four days off to go explore the Eastern part of Switzerland, which is so untouched, so beautiful, so majestic. We had gorgeous weather for four days, hiked, rock climbed, scootered and carted down the mountains, and went picture hunting in the beautiful Alps. We had a blast!

Fall was also a new adventure and experience for me professionally, as I got to teach for a week at a counseling school. I had been missing my practice very much, so this was very refreshing. I taught about family systems and couples' therapy, and had a total blast! M joined me for a night and he was awesome. We loved doing this together and felt inspired to lead a workshop for couples in the Spring. We both got invited back to speak again in late Spring.

Fall also means lots of amazing sunsets. It is the time of the year when the sun sets straight on the lake, over the mountains, and is bright pink or orange, coloring the vineyards with lovely pink and orange hues. We have taken many pictures around 4:30 or 5 pm lately!

And finally, Fall is when snow first appears, at the kids' great delight! It's the first snowman, the first snowball fights, hot chestnuts on the fire, the first fire in the chimney, hot cocoa, first ski experience and sledding, pinky and frozen cheeks, cracked lips from the cold, but happy, happy memories. The ice rink just opened down by the lake and it's free. The kids have fallen on their behinds so many times, but with huge smiles of delight each time, at the exhilaration of this new experience.

We celebrated Thanskgiving with my family and a few friends, right before entering this Advent season, and we have much to be thankful for…

Grape Harvest Festival and a little update

Time flies… I think my last post was over a month ago, and the next thing I wanted to blog about happened at the end of September. Next week is Thanksgiving, the snow has arrived here, and blogging about the grape harvest festival doesn't seem very apropos. But for the sake of sharing the experience, I think I'm going to lump a few events in this one and give an update on how we are doing here.

The kids started school at the end of August, and at the end of September, they participated, to my greatest delight, in a tradition that I was a part of as a kid, and that generations before me have participated in: the grape harvest festival parade.

It happens in my hometown of Lutry, by beautiful Lake Leman (or Lake Geneva) and it is a three day festival, celebrating the harvest of the grapes, which will be made into wine. The highlight of the festival is the children's parade, in which all the school age children (up until 10 years old I believe), walk through the village in class groups, dressed up according to the theme of the year. For a little history, I am just going to copy and paste from this website:

The history of the Lutry Wine Harvest Festival is closely linked to that of the Lutry holiday camp. During the summer of 1946 Jacqueline Jaccotet, known in all of Lutry as “Aunt Gygy” and who was the camp’s very soul, had put together a little show in which all the children wore fancy dress costumes for the occasion. The children asked Aunt Gygy if they could walk around Lutry dressed up. Welcomed by the brass band on the train platform, Aunt Gygy and the children thus established the first parade, never for a moment suspecting that they had just created the lovely celebration that would come to be known as the Wine Harvest Festival. 

Today, in its 63rd vintage year, the Wine Harvest Festival has grown. In a nutshell, it is the last Wine Harvest Festival of the Canton of Vaud that welcomes some 20,000 people for festivities over 3 days. The profits are entirely handed over to the Lutry holiday camp so that the children who go there can be offered the lowest prices possible.

As a kid, I paraded in different costumes, half of which I can't remember. But I do remember often being cold, sometimes getting rained on, always looking for my parents in the crowd, and feeling very proud of my costume. The one costume I remember the most was when we were dressed up as in the nutcracker. I remember my brother was once a penguin and my neighbor a bumble bee. To see my kids walk with their classmates in the parade was very emotional and happy for me. This year, the theme was comic strips. Some of those are French comic strips, so you won't recognize them, but among the chosen books were the Smurfs, Lucky Luke, Asterix and Obelix and Superman. The whole parade is accompanied by different traditional orchestras and drums, and they all go through the village twice.

Traditional dances

Leonard and his assistant, aka K1 :)

The Smurfs

My little smurf, K2 :)

 

 

Asterix and Obelix

Titi and Gros Minet

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My nephew as Popeye

 Petzi and his friends

 Titeuf and Nadia

The kids loved being a part of this! Thankfully, they didn't get wet, but about 20 minutes after the end of the parade, a huge storm hit and we all got completely drenched by the rain and the strong winds. Thankfully, home wasn't far and we celebrated K1's birthday that night, with both sets of grandparents, which had never happened before! 

The following weekend, K1 had a birthday party with 17 kids, and he has been the popular kid ever since. He is doing amazing at school, speaking great French, reading every day in French and making lots of friends. I can barely keep up with all the playdates and lunch invitations he gets from his classmates. Kids come home for lunch here, so it is a common thing to invite a friend to your house for lunch, and that has happened a few times to K1 already. He is soaking up every minute of his time here, enjoying it to the max and loving nature, the seasons, the food, family and everything there is to enjoy. Today, he spent the WHOLE day outside with his brother, in pretty cold weather, learning how to ski in the garden! Of all of us, he is the one who has adjusted the best, and I'm thinking he may never want to come back to LA!

K2 has had a bit more trouble adjusting initially, as he didn't speak any French at all. But over the fall break (yes, the kids had two weeks off in October already), Michael and I went away for 4 days and he was left with his grandparents and cousins and made a lot of progress. He is now conversationally fluent and can connect with his little friends. I have also organized an afternoon tea at our house for his class so that the parents could meet, and it was a wonderful success. K2 was so happy to have all his friends at his house, and he gave me a big hug and a kiss at bedtime to thank me for organizing this. After that, we've had a few playdates and he's had two friends come to our house for half a day, and gone to one friend's house. He seems more and more adjusted and is loving the snow as well.

Michael and I were lucky to go away for 4 days in the Grisons, which is the Eastern part of Switzerland, where nothing is short of beautiful. That deserves a post to itself, because we took lots of beautiful pictures.

Fall has come and gone, with its luxuriant dance of colored leaves, and we are now hitting winter with the first snow falling this past week. I am looking forward to more snow, as November has been a bit of a sad month for me. The grey, wet and cold weather is not very exciting…

I have had several opportunities to teach about Marriage and Family Therapy and EFT, and about nutrition. They were both in YWAM, Youth With A Mission, and were amazing experiences. I taught on Therapy for a week at a counseling school, and then participated in a workshop on Nutrition. I am teaching a workshop next weekend on how to make kombucha, and I have made lots of connections with different interesting people. I have set up a little practice in my house where I see one couple at the moment, and since my title is not recognized, I practice as a "marriage counselor", which forces me to charge less, because I am not reimbursed by health insurances, but gives me more freedom as well. I am hoping to do some EFT supervision in the near future and have had some great connections with EFT therapists in the area. I am crossing my fingers to be able to participate in their next training in January. I am also studying at the Institute for Integrative Nutrition to become a health coach, and the pace has picked up, which is why I haven't been on this blog much. Thankfully, there are two other women in Geneva studying the same program, so we can motivate each other and be each other's peer coaches. I am learning a lot on different dietary theories, as well as holistic ways of achieving health. In a few months, I will be able to take on my first clients, and this week, I have just started conducting health histories. Those are complimentary, so if you are interested, holler up :)

Michael is still working for my dad, in the cold, but he is doing a lot of art and meeting a lot of artists as well. He co-taught with me one of the nights I had to teach, and we had a blast. We are planning on doing a Couple's Workshop together in the new year, and we were both invited to teach again in YWAM in the spring. We are finding our rhythm, trying to enjoy the moment, even though the future is still very blurry and we miss our friends from LA terribly. There are rough days of homesickness for California, and moments where we (I) freak out about our financial future, but overall, we are doing well and enjoying a slower pace and a simpler life. 

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