Swim meet Swiss style

Yesterday was Sophie's first swim meet with her Swiss swim team.  She was very nervous, none of her friends from ICS were going to be there, the races for her age group were all 100m (she had previously only raced 50m races) and there had been a problem with the registration for the race and she had been entered into all three of her events as a boy!!  She was very quiet in the car on the way to the meet and I had butterflies in my stomach for her.  We got to the pool, after much discussion got her entered into the girls group and luckily she swam in the 1st heat of the third event so not much time to wait around and get nervous.  She did fantastic!  She had two events before lunch and her last after.  In stereotypical Swiss fashion, meet was very organized and the heats ran smoothly and efficiently.  Good thing too, 18 heats for each event with 5 swimmers in each heat!!  She spent the lunch break with Jon and Noah teaching her teammates the finer points of wiffle ball.  They caught on to hitting quickly, running the bases or when to stop not as quickly but a good time was had by all.  Great day!  We are so proud of you Sophie!!!

Final discussion of her placement regarding the boy vs girl confusion!!

backstroke diva!

Breaststroke

Jon telling Sophie what to translate for her teammates

Noah as catcher

Father's day and Chevrolet

Today is the 100th anniversary of the Chevy brand and since we just happen to be in the country of Louis Chevrolet's birthplace we got to celebrate in style.  The typical Swiss town of La Chaux de Fonds turned itself into Detroit's Woodward Dream Cruise with 100 years of Chevrolet cars.  Jon saw several that he had had growing up.  Great way to celebrate Father's Day!

Thomas leaves for India!!!

His belongings for the month

Some of the group

the packs

flight to Dehli on the board

Thomas and his World Challenge group left on Sat. for their month long trip to India, hiking, community service and a bit of sight seeing!  Trip of a lifetime!

Peabody

It is with great sadness that I write about the passing of our beloved Peabody.  He died last week.  He was quite old  (14) and had renal failure.  We all miss him tremendously and feel his absence daily.  The blog will remain Travels with Peabody as he made so many with us that it is a perfect tribute to him.  We will always love you Peabody and you are very missed!

International Festival

Our school puts on a International Festival with food booths from all the countries represented at the school, games, arts and crafts and music.  Students are invited to play and so of course Thomas and his band did.  They had  blast and there was a group of  6 little girls ages 3 or 4 dances right in front of the stage the whole time! Very cute although I think Thomas was hoping to attract a slightly older fan club!

The mothers of the band members

4th grade circus

Noah's class put on a circus under the instruction of a professional circus company that came in for a week and ran workshops with the kids.  It was wonderful.  Noah was a juggler.  He actually learned to juggle three balls!  Very impressive!  Kids had a ball.

Banana Peel Cure

So Noah has had a growing (no pun intended) wart problem on his fingers.  I asked the ped. here what he recommended.  I nearly laughed out loud when he suggested wrapping his fingers in banana peels, then duct tape.  We were desperate so we gave it a try.  It worked!!
Here is Mr. Banana fingers.

Morocco

We broke two of our travel rule (no bus tours and no boats) but the rainy weather warranted drastic meaures.  We took a bus tour to Morocco for the day.  It was only a 45 minute ferry crossing across the straits of Gilbraltar.  It was worth breaking our rules and we found Morocco very interesting.  We came home with a beatiful new rug!

Fueringirola Spain

After Barcelona headed south to a little resort town just south of Malaga.  It boasted having 340 days of sunshine a year.  We head 6 of the rainy ones.  Despite the weather we had a great time, swimming between rain showers, horseback riding, going to the market, walking the boardwalk and a day trip to Morocco.