International Festival 2011

It was another great international festival at ICS!  This is our family's favorite event of the year - and this year was as good as ever.  It started out with a parade of nations, with students dressing in clothing representing their home country.  This year our whole family had American flag t-shirts!

There was entertainment by members of the school community, games, and food - so many different incredible foods to try from all of the different countries!  Dave helped out with the hamburger grilling at the American booth, the boys loved the dunking machine once again this year, and we all loved the entertainment.  Elise sang a Taylor Swift song with her friend Olivia Herring, and she also performed a Debussy piano solo.  We saw Swiss Alphorn players, Russian dancers and much more.  Mr. Adam, one of the boys' favorite teachers performed with his band, and at the end of the day we were even surprised to hear some country songs performed by a band of one of the bus drivers!

Elise's Musical Performances

For her Grade 5 Exhibition project, Elise composed a song which she named "Seasons" to show the different moods one goes through in different seasons.  Well, she got a lot of mileage out of this song!  First, she played it the evening of the Exhibition to a small audience, then she was asked by her mentor and the secondary music teacher Ms. Ward, to play it at the summer music concert on May 16th (Dave and I had to miss it, as we were in Prague, but we heard that she got a standing ovation).  This was the school music program, and she was the only soloist younger than grade 11!  Most of the soloist were playing for their IB performance requirement!  Then the principal Mr. Penny asked her to play it for the two primary school assemblies that week.  I got lots of compliments on Elise, and she got a lot of recognition!

Prague

This year's Bain annual partner meeting was in Prague in the Czech Republic.  We had "saved" Prague until now - knowing that Dave and I would get to go for the Bain meeting, and we had a great time (so nice that Bain invites spouses to these meetings too sometimes!).  The four days included opportunities for lots of different tours and activities, fitness, wonderful dinners and social events, oh, and, some meetings for Dave!  It was a great weekend, and a bit like a reunion for us to see friends we had known in San Francisco, some of them who are still in SF, and many who have moved to different places like we have.

Our first afternoon in Prague, we went on a short walking tour of the old town just to get oriented.  That evening we went to a formal dinner event.

The famous astronomical clock

The next day while Dave was in meetings, I went on a power walk tour in the morning over the Charles bridge to see the Little Quarter, followed by a city tour including going up the Old Town Hall Tower (the tower with the Astronomical Clock) to get a view of the city.

Wenceslas Square

Church of Our Lady before Tyn 

Church of St. Nicholas in the Old Town

A giant metronome installed where a statue of Stalin used to stand

 Another day I went to a cooking class at a castle outside the city with several other spouses.  So much fun!

Dave and I went together on an architectural tour of the city, including buildings throughout the city and palace area.

The Singing Fountain in Belvedere Gardens.

(we don't know exactly what "singing" we were supposed to hear!)

On my last full day I went on the Prague Castle tour, seeing St. Vitus' Cathedral and St. George's Convent.  The castle area was huge, and we did a lot of walking, but there are beautiful views down to the old town.

Rohbaubesichtigung

Way back when Dave and I first visited Zurich to decide whether or not we wanted to move here, there was talk in our church ward, the Altstetten ward, about a new meetinghouse being built.  We've now lived here nearly 3 years, and the building is finally nearing completion.  There was a tour of the building - work in process, once they finished the outside and were ready to begin the inside finishing work.  The church is located in Bonstetten, outside the city of Zurich on the opposite side from us - so quite a trip!  But it is a really nice building with a baptismal font and everything - 2 levels with underground parking as well (all new buildings in Switzerland have underground parking).  It was fun to see the building, and hopefully we'll be moving into it in early 2012.

Checking out the baptismal font