Winter Wonderland

We had very unusual weather last week in Morges. Typically – I say ‘typically’ but it means based on the past two winters we’ve been here – we get an occasional dusting of snow. Nothing more than a few inches. Our winters tend to be more on the rainy side because we’re next to Lake Geneva. If we want snow, we have to go find it, which means a short drive into the mountains. This was not the case last week! On Wednesday it snowed all day. We had more than a foot by the end of the day. Here’s a picture courtesy of our neighbor, Christina. It’s from their bedroom window, which would be the same view as ours. As beautiful as the snow was, it quickly turned into a big ol’ mess. The Swiss are very efficient about a lot of things but snow removal, at least in our town, is not one of them. Snow and ice still cover most of the sidewalks. It’s like a skating rink out there. The temperature is warming back up and it’s raining outside today, so I think our snow will soon be gone.

Can’t Fool This Girl

I ventured out on Friday to do some Christmas shopping in Lausanne. I was happy to find that one of my favorite shops had a woman painting beautiful designs onto glass ornaments that day. She would also individualize the text for each customer. I can never seem to find anything written in French, so I thought this would be perfect. I ordered an ornament similar to another one she had already done. On it I wanted it to say, ‘Noël en Suisse 2010.’ She told me it would be ready in an hour. Our conversation was a mix of French and English. She was clearly a native French speaker and she clearly knew that I was not. After shopping for another hour, I came back for my ornament. Just before I got to the cashier I realized that the woman had misspelled ‘Suisse.’ What the heck! She misspelled the country’s name. That would be like me misspelling ‘America.’ Then I wondered if she did it on purpose because she knew I wasn’t Swiss and wanted to pull one over on the foreigner. I brought the error to her attention and she turned bright red. She was obviously embarrassed by her mistake and quickly fixed it. I wonder if she was spelling it wrong all day?! Two years ago I would have walked out of that store with my misspelled ornament, all pleased with myself because I successfully got what I wanted. I probably would have hung it on my tree and still not realized the error until someone pointed it out to me. This was a proud moment for me. I no longer feel like a complete dumb-dumb. I know a few things.

Thanksgiving 2010

The actual day was rather uneventful. Matt and I worked a regular day. Our turkey meatloaf dinner is as close to Thanksgiving as we got on Thursday. Matt watched an NFL football game that evening as well, so that made it seem a bit like home, too. We had to wait a few days and then we got all the fixings. Matt’s co-worker, Rob, invited us to his home to celebrate Thanksgiving with his family on that Saturday. We enjoyed a wonderful meal together. It was a special treat, especially since Rob’s wife, Sevie, is Belgian and had to research how to make many of the traditional dishes. She put a lot of time and effort into that meal. Her stuffing was the best I’ve ever had. I brought the pumpkin pie. I had a rough time making a crust from scratch this year. After multiple tries I gave up and went to the store to get a premade one. I was pretty disgusted with myself and it just didn’t taste the same. I think this may have been the first year that Grandma Thoma’s rolling pin did not turn out a successful pie crust for Thanksgiving.