Our grand new adventure: 3 months in Switzerland

We are in Lausanne, Switzerland - right now! I know I haven't blogged since Easter but I'll skip our summer for now and get on with our adventures here...

The last week of June, Don attended a conference in Monterey, CA where he finally met the professor, Dimitri Psaltis, that he was trying to arrange an international rotation with last fall. Just as we'd given up all hope that we'd be able to go internationally as a part of Don's PhD, the stars aligned!

Professor Psaltis was at the conference, Don's professor introduced him to Don, Don showed him his research, Psaltis liked it and asked Don to come to Switzerland! Don called me during one of my league tennis matches and I answered on a whim between sets. When I heard we were going to Switzerland, I started jumping around screaming. Not exactly proper tennis etiquette but I was so excited! No one begrudged my impolite outburst once they found out why I was screaming.

Once we got back from Monterey (I flew out at the end of Don's conference without Sam and proceeded to get a violent stomach flu while on our romantic vacation - a story for another time) we started preparing. Don applied for his visa, we got Sam's passport application turned in and then the furious preparation began. We decided to leave our apartment full of our things and pay the rent rather than move everything out for three months (expensive but so much less stressful!) I am so glad we did. It was surprising how much time preparing for the trip took - quitting my job, training for a new job when I get back (I'm now a professional Musicare preschool music teacher! Yay!), putting Sam in preschool and taking him out, getting travel plans organized, getting credit cards that work in Europe (normal cards don't work - you have to have a electronic chip), giving away our farm share, finding a place to live, learning a tiny bit of French, finding raincoats and rainboots (it rains a lot here - half the month of December), updating my wardrobe in general (I got rid of several things I wore as a 9th grader - yikes),etc. Sadly one of the most stressful parts of my preparation was finding a pair of black boots. I honestly tried on about 50 pairs and bought and returned 3 pairs before settling on a comfortable, not so beautiful pair. Embarrassing but true. Man, I really hate shopping.

And finally, last Thursday, we stayed up late packing our three big bags. At about 12:30 am, we realized that the regulations for British Airways had changed and instead of 75 lbs. per bag (it's been a while since either Don and I have traveled internationally with anything but backpacks), you can now only have 51 lbs. per bag. So we downsized, repacked and decided we had to take an extra bag. 

On Friday, we finished cleaning our house and giving away everything in our fridge and headed down to Don's parents in Colorado Springs. The chaos and transition of moving was taking a toll on all of us, particularly on Sam, so we knew having a couple days to just be still and recover before the trip would be really helpful. Also, Don's parents watched Sam on Saturday night so Don could take me out to dinner for my birthday; 28! So nice! We got our car cleaned out (first time it's been vacuumed in years - literally. It was disturbing) and hooked up our computer so we can view it with our computer here. Then, on Sunday, we got everything together and headed to the airport.

Here we are getting ready to head in... 

All set to go! 

Sam was so thrilled to be on the plane. For weeks, we had been prepping him to sleep on the plane - hence the monster jammies. We worked hard on our brainwashing - we talked about it almost nightly telling him over and over that we were going to take off and then go to sleep... We decided that despite wanting him to sleep on the plane, it would be better for him to go into the trip well rested so he had a nice 2 hour nap before we left for the airport. Perhaps that was our first mistake. Not really sure what we could have done differently.

He was so tired. We thought for sure he was going to go right to sleep. He was so sleepy but they left the lights on in the cabin for about an hour and a half and he wouldn't lay down while they were on. Finally, they turned off the lights. By now, it was well after 10:30 pm and we were worried Sam would have a terrible time if he didn't sleep - so we gave him Benadryl... And it did absolutely nothing. He was wide awake...

Here he is 8 hours after take off - at about 5 am our time... Still awake. 

I could not believe the kid's stamina. He fell asleep for 20 minutes as we were landing and then cried for about 15 minutes when he woke up... It was rough. Poor little guy. Thankfully, that was the end of the crying (and unfortunately, the sleeping).

While we were in the London airport, I completely passed out on a bench while Don took care of Sam. Then, we caught our flight to Geneva...

...as we were landing, we saw the Alps sticking out of the clouds as we landed. Amazing! We can see this peak from our bedroom and living room window. 

Sam was thrilled with the train ride from the airport to Morges.

Once we got to Geneva, I called Elodie to meet us at the Morges train station. Elodie is a friend of my dear French friend, Laurie-Anne who lives in Boulder. L-A used to live in Geneva and without her, we would not have had a place to live in Lausanne. She put me in contact with Elodie who lives in Lausanne who put us in contact with Valerie, a wonderful woman who had rooms for rent in her beautiful house. The house is in the countryside outside of Lausanne near a small town named St. Prex. 

We had nearly given up hope of finding a place to live after contacting every apartment complex we could find and being rejected by everyone. Even the secretary in the department Don is working at EPFL, the university in Lausanne, tried everything she could think of to find us a place to live with no success. We couldn't find a furnished apartment in town for less than $2,600 CHI and no one wanted renters for only 3 months. 

Not only did Elodie help us find a place to live, she came and rescued us. She picked us up at the train station and saved us from having to transfer to another train (we barely made it on to the train in the first place - too many things and not enough hands) and from having to take multiple trips back and forth in the dark to haul our 4 heavy bags, backpacks, and Sam in the stroller the full mile in the dark from the train station to the house. She was a lifesaver.

We had been traveling for 18 hours by the time we met up with Elodie and we were exhausted. Valerie, the woman who we are living with is on a trip to Utah for 2 weeks so she had a friend, Diane, meet us at the house and show us around. We were absolutely thrilled with the house (it's so beautiful - I'll post pictures tomorrow) and absolutely exhausted so we headed right to bed. 

One of Valerie's cats jumped on Sam in the night and scared him so badly he was inconsolable. He did finally get back to sleep and after a few more nights of crazy sleep shenanigans (up in the night for four hours,  not sleeping 'til 11 pm the next night) I think we're finally getting on a schedule. 

Pictures of our house and the beautiful town of St. Prex to come! We are so happy to be here!