Joyeux Noël et bonne année!

Happy New Year to all of our friends and family!  We didn’t get around to doing Christmas cards this year, and even if we had, it would have cost us a fortune to send them all from Switzerland so we’ll consider this our e-holiday-greeting to our loved ones.    

Pilgrims

This holiday season started for us with a “Friendsgiving” celebration with a few of the friends we’ve gotten to know during our time here.  It included friends from the UK, Washington D.C., China and Egypt by way of the UK – appropriately, all of us pilgrims of one sort or another.  Aside from our DC friends, it was the first Thanksgiving most of our guests had celebrated, so although neither Jim nor I would typically go out of our way to have traditional American Thanksgiving fare, we figured there was no time like the present to expose our friends to the insipid Thanksgiving culinary traditions.  In all seriousness, the food was good as was the company – although next year I think we’ll opt for Thai.

Skiing for Dummies

We also had our first ski (mis)adventure.  Let’s face it, you probably couldn’t contrive two landscapes more diametrically opposed than Central Indiana and the Swiss Alps.  Jimmy and I had only been skiing a couple of times previously – both times in the Michigan/Wisconsin area, and I’ll now formally go on record as saying that a Blue hill in Switzerland would be considered a double black diamond, minus the moguls, in the Midwest.  For Jimmy and I, the few ski runs we had in between hanging with the kids on the bunny hills would have made the highlight reels, but not in a good way. 

I could just show our photos of everyone smiling(ish) and put the typical social media shine on the whole ordeal: “A great time was had by all!”  At least as it relates to the first day, that would be far from the truth.  The first day was a DIS-AS-TER.  Abe spent the whole lesson comically falling down on purpose, and then 20 minutes in had to go to the bathroom, which is 3-year-old code for: “I’m not so into this, but if you force me to keep doing it I will pee my pants to spite you.”  This meant I spent 30 minutes of our two hour lesson trying to drag him up the icy hill a half a mile to the bathroom, and in so doing ripped the hood of his new ski jacket while he played dead fish legs the whole way.  Claire spent most of the day lashing out at anyone with the last name Haney whenever she fell or didn’t quite complete the run as she’d hoped.  Anderson just laid down in the snow after an hour and cried because he didn’t think he’d ever get to be good at skiing.  And Jimmy and I kept asking ourselves how early was too early to just call it a day and head to the snow teepee for an adult beverage. 

Day 2 was much better and by the end all three kids were getting the hang of it.  Me – not so much, but I’m nothing if not persistent and enthusiastic, plus I have a low shame-meter when it comes to skiing so I have no issue just taking off my skis and sliding down the hill so… yeah.  Day 3 and 4 it poured down rain, which was probably a small salvation for us all and gave us a good excuse to just ride the cable cars around and drink hot chocolate.

O Come All Ye Faithful

The city of Geneva itself isn’t a city I’d seek out as a tourist (Rick Steves – famous for his European vacation guide books – warns visitors to Switzerland to skip the “Big Old Boring” city of Geneva).  The one exception is Old Town Geneva – a 2000 year-old city center comprised of a twisted maze of cobblestone streets that wind on multiple levels through the original walled city center that sits on the banks of the Rhone River.  One of the gems of Old Town is St. Pierre’s Cathedral, first constructed in 1160, which has an interesting Pantheon-meets-Gothic-cathedral look. 

On Christmas Eve, we went to the “Service of the Nine Lessons and the Carols” in the Cathedral.  Well, truthfully, we first ended up in the wrong place and showed up for the last ten minutes of a Dutch service in a nearby cathedral.  Needless to say, we got a few odd looks, strolling in just as the organ struck up the closing chords for the service. 

That diversion meant we arrived late to the correct location, and ended up sitting right behind a giant pillar.  But, notwithstanding the foregoing, it was a truly amazing service. Sitting in the pews of the ancient cathedral and listening to the choir’s voices, Jim and I reflected afterwards that it felt like we had for that hour and a half stepped in as participants in the history of the church in a tangible way.  That our stories had been woven into the stories of the thousands of other parishioners who had sat in the same pews for centuries preceding, walked the same streets, and sung many of the same ancient carols to celebrate advent.

It called to mind for me a passage from David Brooks book, the “Road to Character” that “life is not like navigating through an open field. It is committing oneself to a few of the institutions that were embedded on the ground before you were born and will be here after you die. It is accepting the gifts of the dead. . .”

It was an experience we’ll never forget.  Including the part where Claire in exasperation exclaimed, “Oh come on! How many verses to this carol ARE there!” after what felt like stanza 12 of “Oh Come All Ye Faithful.”

This was also the first Christmas that we’ve spent away from our families – but we are so grateful for the ways in which technology allows us to close the distance and connect with my brother and cousins who were celebrating together in Longano, Ethiopia – and the rest of the Giles and Haney crew back in Indianapolis.  It’s a small world after all…

Other side notes

We spent the last few days in Barcelona – which was my favorite European city we’ve been to so far.  That might be in part because Geneva is cloudy and rainy every day (and I mean EVERY day – just ask my parents about their visit here) in October – December, and Barcelona was 60 and sunny every day.  But it is a really wonderful place to visit so for any of you planning a European vacation, add it to your list!