My eldest daughter's school held its end of year play over the last few days. We went to watch it on Tuesday. Over the past couple of weeks she has been turned into a zombie with early starts and days spent in the theatre getting it right. I'm impressed by the resilience of five year-olds that they can survive the demands of the schedule that meant on Friday, Monday and Tuesday they started at 8am and didn't finish the day until nearly 9pm. I made some notes on the things that really stuck with me during the performance and their preparation, here they are:
The lady who shushed us all when we tried to clap on the first three movement
breaks.
The utter lack of understanding, because it was lots of French all at
once.
The girl who did the free back somersault.
The dance lady who
clearly didn't know her own lines.
The bored three year-olds who had come to
watch their older siblings and were crying from tiredness.
The boy whose eyes
were rolling back in his head as he watched.
The random arm stretch, with its
expressive movement.
The random Russian words that I guess were meant to mean
something, if only it was that the theme was Russian.
The casually bizarre
costumes that look great on some and odd on others, because kids are all
different sizes.
A daughter who spent put in her performance, all the while
keeping an eye out for her parents.
The music - Stravinskii.
The utter
sincerity in their carefully, but not expertly choreographed movements.
The
late nights.
The early mornings.
The credit to their teachers.
The
words from the Director about community; manifested at the end when dozens of
kids and teachers took the applause of the parents.
Lots and lots of small
children, who you'd casually under-estimate on a daily basis if you saw them on
the bus, aged between 5 and 13, working together and actually doing enormous
credit to their hard work.
View from Servette
I live in Servette in Geneva, these are my views
Thursday, 9 May 2013
Sunday, 21 April 2013
Goodbye Lindt
Es kann ich nicht verstehen/ Je ne peux pas comprendre |
Labels:
Brands,
Coop,
expats in Geneva,
French,
Lindt,
Speaking French
Saturday, 12 January 2013
Kid's Skiing Near Geneva
![]() |
Piou-piou, we look up to you |
We've tried a few lessons last year, so we decided to go for a week We enrolled them in a week long ski course with a giant yellow bird called Piou-piou, because hey, when you think of animals that might be good at teaching people to ski, you think of birds! Piou-piou is actually the mascot for the Ecole du Ski Francais' courses for kids aged 3 and older.
At the end of the week both girls received a little badge for completing the course. Though the big one clearly deserved it more than her little sister as she completed every minute of the course, whilst altitude sickness (literally: on Christmas eve) and bad weather, combined to make the little one less enamoured of skiing, and in the end she only completed about half the course. I think she was the smallest one on the course, perhaps if the weather was better she would have been ok, but I suspect now we'll have a tough time getting her back on skis.
It occurred to me that the Ecole du Ski Francais might be to skiing what the British Council, or Bell is to English. But then a friend tells me kids the eldest will start skiing with school in a couple of years and be taught by the Ecole Suisse de Ski, which, you'd think might be better (just cos it's Swiss), but according to the World Cup Standings, this isn't so. Anyway, the irony is that from Geneva they have to go to France to ski, as it's closer.
Friday, 14 December 2012
Cycling in Geneva II
Portable chop-sticks, whip 'em out, away you go. Not so easy to put back in |
What you can see is the result of me getting my front wheel stuck in a tram line and going over the handle bars. I didn't think much of it, but subsequent handshaking by an over-enthusiastic man with a beard and too many power cleans followed by pull-ups, sadly did for a wrist that I thought was only "a little bit sore".
Sunday, 9 December 2012
Birthday Parties in Geneva
Visit lulaloo.ch for great invites |
Thursday, 22 November 2012
French Lessons
We started going to French lessons provided free by the canton, because our eldest daughter goes to a local primary school. I can't work out whether the idea of the free French lessons is benign, a gentle encouragement to learn the language so we can support our daughter in her school work, or aimed more at encouraging our cultural assimilation. The class is a ragtag of immigrants to Switzerland, a mixture of people from all over, but mainly, oddly, from Bolivia or Korea. There are a few folk from the Middle East and one or two Europeans. None of us are very good at the language, we all try hard one way or another.
Wednesday, 14 November 2012
Healthcare in Geneva
I thought I should fire this thing back up, as the summer distractions are now well and truly gone. So this post is about doctors, in Geneva, and the one I'm seeing at the moment who is making me laugh. Way back in August I crashed off my bike, high siding and landing on my hand. At the time I decided it was only a flesh wound, so carried on with slight soreness that seemed to be getting better, that was until I was doing pull-ups in the gym (will cover in another post), and made me and the two guys I was working with almost throw up as my wrist made a huge cracking sound. The sort of sound that tells you, really, you should go see a doctor. So I did.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)