We've spent the last few days in Switzerland having full meals, full nights of sleep, and very nice weather. We have had a traditional Swiss meal, of course tried to feed some more cows, taken Desty on a few walks, and played some ping-pong. Quick recap of some highlighted events:

1) Tuesday began with an extensive sleep, followed by pancakes for breakfast. Erin and I had a task given to us, and that was to go to the cheese maker and get Raclette cheese for a Swiss dinner on Wednesday. This was quite the task considering the guy who makes the cheese did not speak very much English. Therefore, getting the cheese consisted of Erin watching Desty outside, me venturing in, using broken "high" German and rudimentary sign language to communicate what we wanted. Pic is Steve victoriously exiting the cheese shop. We got it eventually, and finished the afternoon with our usual walk with Desty around the farm fields in the village (where she gets to run for free). On the way back, she laid in a mud puddle to cool off (pic). We also semi cooked dinner that night...we tried noodles with spicy peanut butter sauce. Although it was pretty good, it wasn't enough so we had second helpings of spaghetti (with fresh sauce) that Stephen's aunt quickly whipped up. Delish! Also, another side note-Stephen's cousin, Andreas, runs (and is also very active otherwise) and can eat more than anyone I've ever met. He ate at least 4 full plates of pasta that night...it was incredible. He also gets up and takes Desty on walks/runs/rollerblading before school in the morning...so I guess that's why he can eat that much.

2) Wednesday we woke up a bit earlier, went to the local supermarket and got postcards, and then to the post office to get a few more stamps. While in the supermarket, I went to get a beer, and the two women working behind the counter thought that I wasn't old enough (16 is the legal age for drinking beer), and were discussing it in German, luckily I heard a bit, and told them I was 23, Ha! They were shocked. Thankfully I didn't go...I was outside eating pistachios. Following this, we took Desty on another walk around the farm area, and snuck a few cherries from the tree. Last night, we prepared for the Raclette meal that we had gone shopping for the day before. This is when you take pieces of cheese, melt it in a little stove thing, everyone gets their own cheese melter (below the stove in pic) so you can make the cheese as bubbly (or not) as you want and then spread the melted cheese over potatoes, veggies, and anything else. It is delicious, but so much cheese is very heavy (and even heavier for people with dairy problems). Following this we had ice cream (coffee and strawberry), and then went to bed. This ice cream, by the way, is made from the milk of the cows I try to befriend on the evening walks by the farm. Also, another fun fact about Kestenholz, and an advantage to living in such a small villate, is that they buy some of the village's goods (ice cream, potatoes, pickled goods, honey, syrups, desserts, liquors, etc.) from a small store that has an honesty policy...about 90% of the time, no one is there to run the store so you buy your goods and put the money in a box with a note of what you bought.

3) Today, we were supposed to have gone to Montreux near Lausanne, but after me not sleeping much (due to the cheese meal), I also couldn't sleep (thank you Steve), hence the reason, Whitney and Devon if you read this, I emailed you around 8:00 U.S. time...we are going to go for walks and such today, hopefully going on Monday. I think tomorrow we may go to Bern for a look as well, but I'm not sure.

Ping Pong

Mooo

Jammin to Jamacain tunes