Things I miss

Many of my friends and family often ask what I miss so far about being here.  Besides the obvious – which would be my family and friends, here are a few more!

1) Target.  I use to go there at least once a week and you can get pretty much anything there.  Here is Suisse you pretty much get everything at the Migros or Coop – their 2 main grocery stores, but it’s not the same.

2) My coffee. Yes, they have really good coffee here and yes we will buy a drip coffee maker once we move into our new place, but Nespresso coffees aren’t the same.  They are amazingly good, but I feel like I need at least 3 to start my day.  Our temporary apartment has a Nespresso machine, and it comes in quite handy, but I do miss my coffee at home.  At home each morning I would have my (big) Starbucks mug full of yummy coffee – always with either some French vanilla creamer or hazelnut creamer.  Crazy enough – coffeemate is made my Nestle, which is based out of Vevey, Switzerland, but they don’t sell it here.

3) The space.  I realize that our home back in PA is quite large and that we’ll eventually grow into it, but I’m still adjusting to the size of places here – I mean we went from 9,300 sq ft to 1,600 sq ft (our new place has about 2,200 sq ft).  Our temporary place is nice, but it has very unsafe steps to the upstairs (you know the kind with a huge gap that small children can slip through), and we don’t use the upstairs bedrooms.  I’m a little weird, I’ll admit, but I like being on the same level as the boys.  The downstairs has 2 bedrooms, so we have Thomas in our room with Henry next door…it’s tight! The refrigerators here are very small – which then means you have to go to the store every few days.  Back home we could stock both fridges and not worry about the store (besides little things) for like 2 weeks.

4) Shopping.  To be honest, I haven’t ventured out to go shopping yet, but I do miss the mall.  Some days I just went there to get out of the house, especially when it was rainy!

5) The language.  Switzerland isn’t a place where the language is French but most speak English – all in all most people only speak French, some with broken English.  Google translate is my best friend over here – I take it everywhere!  I have met some really great people that are in my shoes and 1 Swiss family that lived in Boston for 4 years – it’s all about stepping out of my comfort zone and saying hi to everyone!

The food is great here, I love that I can walk everywhere and rarely do I drive.

I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t excited about coming home next Thursday.  I am really loving life here, but going back to my comfort zone (especially for the holidays) will be awesome!

That’s all for now,

Xoxoxo Tara