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
?
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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