We've moved, we're settled, horray!

It has taken us close to a month, but we are finally settled in our new home. We now have internet access and a cable connection (with more channels in English!), so life once again feels complete. We live in what is called a Reihenhaus, which is essentially a glorified town-home. It has a yard and a finished attic that is now the playroom, so the kids are in heaven. We live very close to the tram, and Sam's school commute has been cut down from close to an hour (one way) to 10 minutes. Andrew also now has a shorter commute, as we are only 3 miles from his work. Our neighbors are all Swiss and incredibly nice, with my favorite being the man across the street who is 90, speaks English and has a girlfriend who he went to school with 77 years ago. I am in love. The best part is that we have a small driveway where we can park our car. Goodbye parking garage.

Of course there are some inconveniences to our new life here, like the fact that my freezer is the size of a shoe box. Or that I can only wash about 3 pair of jeans in our pint sized washing machine. Or that we have to pay to dispose of our trash (more on that later). Overall though, the move has been good and we are very happy. It was wonderful to get our things back from storage, and my heart leaped for joy when I saw some of the items that I packed: hello, Cotsco sized syrup and laundry detergent! There were others things, however, which left me scratching my head. Did I really need to bring a 3 year supply of coconut milk? I guess I thought that I wouldn't be able to get it here (you can).

Pictures of moving day-front of the house and backyard with storage shed.

The view from the boy's bedroom window. The hill in the background is packed full of hiking trails and is really fun to explore.

The attic playroom- yes I did clean it for the purpose of this picture (don't judge).

Funny Story: Our backyard is overgrown and in desperate need of a cleanup, while the neighbors to our right have a perfectly manicured backyard (this is VERY Swiss). One day while I was attempting to clean up our yard, I started to talk to my elderly neighbor to the right. Mind you, he doesn't speak any English and I know about 5 sentences now in German. He seemed very pleased that I was cleaning the yard, and came into our yard to show me how to compost the leaves and sticks. I guess he took this as an open invitation to come into our yard anytime, because a couple of days later I saw him from our attic window raking up our leaves! I really should have been embarrassed and stopped him, but instead I hid in the corner of the window and took this picture. I figured if he really wanted to be out in the rain cleaning my yard, who was I to stop him.