pieced-together

I have so many things floating in my head that I want to write about, but don't necessarily want to author the World's Longest Blog Post Ever so I'll try to just sum up a few things:

Yesterday, through our village friend and social networker Connie, I got to meet this incredibly sweet German woman and her husband, who live just up the road in our village. They came by in the morning, to say hello, and the woman (unfortunately I didn't quite catch or remember her name, I'm terrible about that) invited me for tea in the afternoon since her daughter, who is 4-5 months pregnant, would be around. They served me tea and fresh-made apple crumble and the daughter, Celine, and I talked about all sorts of pregnancy-related stuff, and laughed about the fact that she's actually the daughter-in-law of Jean-Pierre, the contractor who rebuilt our house.

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Jessica leaves for the US in just a few days, and planned a big fondue dinner last night at Au Vieux Carouge, a restaurant that will definitely go down on my list of great places to take people in the future. The fondue was delish (is it really possible that this strange dish of melted cheese and bread has grown on me?), and the company was, of course, superb. It was a great way to say good-bye to both Jessica and Serena before they both go off to the states till the new year.

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I got an email from Mom yesterday saying that my aunt Barb suffered a brain aneurism. The bleeding seemed to have stopped soon after, and she was alert and seeming fine, but they still needed to do surgery, and a fairly precarious procedure at that. Luckily they seem to be in the best hospital, with the best doctors to deal with this. I got an update this morning saying that the surgery went very well, now they just have to watch her in the ICU for 10 days or so as there are certain complications that are known to arise from this type of thing in the days that follow. Zach was actually hoping to get together with her and my uncle Casey for dinner when he's in San Diego next week, maybe he'll still get to go by and say hello and send our well-wishes.

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Zach left this morning for California, will be gone for just under 2 weeks. Already I'm feeling lonely knowing he'll be gone for so long, but I have things to keep myself busy to help pass the time and at least this is the last trip he should have to take until after the baby's born. He's got a long shopping list of things to bring back, including a digital SLR camera that will be our anniversary/Christmas gift to ourselves this year. =) I'm pretty excited about that, actually-- Zach originally wanted to surprise me with it, but instead decided to get my input (and I have more time to scour through the endless review sites online). I'm glad to have a few months to toy with it and learn how to use it before the arrival of this little person that I'm sure will be my prime photographic subject very soon (sorry, Sierra).

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It is almost 100% certain now that we'll be staying here in Geneva through the end of 2008. A few weeks ago Zach made some discoveries that made it seem like the company was planning on moving us back as early as this summer, but since then some talks have happened and I guess they realized they want him here after all. I won't lie, part of me was starting to get excited about the prospect of going back to California early-- back to the weather, the friends, the markets, the strawberries (oh good lord the strawberries!), the ease of life... But I know this is for the best, and I'm also really glad we'll have that extra time here to enjoy life in Europe and the incredible Swiss chocolate and ice cream, to travel, to host visitors, to practice and reap the rewards of our French. California is quite likely our long-term destination, Europe however is not a certainty and we'll take advantage of as much time here and we can get.