Icare's dream

Obviously, Swiss man like to fly. For such a small country (7.5 M), we have a lot of "Sky people".

One of them, Bertrand Piccard, was the first to fly around the globe in a hot air balloon. He now works hard on a project of a solar plane that could fly around the Earth. He's the son of Jacques Piccard, who was "the deepest man" because he explored the Mariana Trench, during the Deep Challenge, and grandson of Auguste Piccard, who was the "highest man" (72'177 feet, in a balloon too!). What a family!

Another on is Claude Nicollier, a NASA Astronaut who went 4 times in the Shuttle, and even took one space walk! He followed his dreams too. Seeing his eye sparkle when he speaks about his life in the sky is really a treat.

This is "FusionMan"... Yves Rossy, another who followed his dreams, and became a bird!

Tomorrow, Sept 26th, Yves Rossy is going to try to cross the Channel with his powered wing. I wish him good luck. You'll be able to watch it here, quite early in the morning. 

How wonderful it must be to like that in the sky... to fly like a bird!

Interiors

Here are a few pictures of the interiors of our house. Not everything is very tidy - most of the time not - you know me!!! But I took the advantage, the other day, to take a few pics!

Léa's room: you pass a thin pink drape, and enter a nice, cozy place

     

Sam's room: much more "naked". I'll try to find nice curtains, but for the time being, I haven't found any. Here, they cost the eyes,, and the cheaper ones are not even nice! I should have bought some more at World Market!!!

My kitchen. Too small to dine in, I still like it. I was shocked to see how small the appliances were..  that's terrible.

 

On the other side, I already got used (back) to it!

The other day, I wanted to make mini-muffins, and the pan I brought back from St.Louis didn't fit in the oven!

      

 The fridge is quite tiny as well, even if for swiss standards, it's not too small.

Did you know that milk is bought here in quarts?

Actually, 7 walking minutes away from home, there is a dairy shop. I wanted to buy bulk milk over there, as it's possible. BUT... there's no container that would fit in the fridge. So I have to buy long past milk (that used to not be available before my trip to the US!)

After Ike

My dear Friends, 

My computer is still set up with the Midwestern time. Now, it's 11:20 PM in St.Louis. I quit watching the weather forecast, because it was somehow depressing. But I still read the news, STL today online... and my best time at home, is when I can listen to NPR over the Internet!

So I've read and heard about the flash floods that occurred in the aftermath of Ike.

I hope that you're all doing well in this wet condition, and I just want you to know that I don't forget you (how could I?)

Take good care, I miss you!

Caroline

About the title

As the name to this blog will be kind of hard to memorize, you better put it right away in your favorites!

On the other side, if you understand what it means, you might find it easier to keep in mind. So I'll try to explain it.

You all know Midwest, as it's where I met most of you.

So.. imagine, we also have a Midwest in Switzerland! Well, it's called "Midcountry", which is "Mittelland" in Swiss German. No, we don't speak german where we live, but at least that's the denomination for the area.

It's more or less flatland, between the Jura mountain, and the (pre)Alps. 

So maybe, after 3 happy years in St.Louis, that's why we feel so much "at home" in this part of the country! The people are very laid back (the state of Fribourg, where we're now, used to be mainly agricultural until approx 20 years ago), nice, and not stressed, like for instance in Geneva or Zürich.

I'll tell you more about it next time!

For my US friends

My dear friends, I've been happy in your country, where I've lived for 3 years. These years were mostly happy, some periods were really hard, but on the whole, good memories are stronger than bad ones.

Now that I'm back in my homeland, I want to tell you how much you've meant to me, and to my family, when we could meet more regularly.

You've asked, and also I promised I'd blog for you, in English, so that you can "see" where we live, how we live. I'll try to keep up with this blog as much as I can, and especially, I hope that your comments will feed it!

I will start today with a very typical picture of our everyday life: the weather has been very rainy and ugly lately, and it's cold. Our heating system isnt' on yet, so we tried to keep warm as well as we could: a good cheese fondue for dinner, and a nice fire in the fireplace. The only problem with the fire is that, although the chimney was open, there was quite a stunk in the house. Maybe because it was the first time it was in use after some work had been done to it? We'll know next time!