Festival International de Ballons

Last weekend, Tom and I headed to Chateau D'Oex for an international hot-air balloon Festival. I have never seen so many hot-air balloons in all my life! We were there for 3 or 4 hours and balloons took off constantly. There were all sorts - mintaure, radio-controlled ones, one that took a man in a glider up to be dropped, and then all sorts of shapes. We saw a birthday cake, a big horse, a turtle, an astronaut, a Scottish bagpiper and lots of others. The day was beautiful and the sky was so pretty filled with graceful, colorful balloons.

Slightly blurry, but a good picture of the sky full of balloons!

Scottish Man and the silver one is the balloon that made the first non-stop flight around the world!

Tom liked the giant turtle that looked like it was trying to grab me.

A picture of the field where they got the balloons ready to go. It took quite awhile to get them off the ground! You can see the minature balloons in the middle in front and to the right of the red face.

Schwarzee in the Snow!

Fribourg isn't located at a very high elevation, so we haven't seen a whole lot of snow in our area so far this winter. However, the mountains around us are all snow-capped, so if we're willing to do a little driving, we can find some snow. Some friends called one weekend to see if we wanted to go sledding with them and we readily agreed. We drove about 30 mintues into Schwarzee where it was snowing steadily and the lake was frozen solid. We had fun trudging up the hill, sledding down and then doing it all over again. It was hard to get a good run in, since the snow was so fresh and continued to fall, but it made for low impact crashes. After an hour or so of this we were exhausted and went to the restuarant there for some coffee and french fries. What a fun day!

Dave sledding while Tom looks on.

A view of Schwarzee and Tom climbing the hill. Snow is falling rather heavily at this point.

Week 3 in the States

The last week of our vacation was spent at Black Rock Mountain State Park in the North Georgia Mountains. Tom's family usually rents a cabin over the Chritmas holidays and we were invited to join them. It was nice to have a break from running around and all the Christmas excitment. It rained steadily for half the time we were there, but we kept ourselves occupied. We slept in, played cards, played computer games, worked on a 4,500 piece puzzle, ate and ate and ate, and when it was nice went hiking on nearby trails. I really enjoyed having a fire in the fireplace and making s'more by it almost every day we were there.

Hiking around Black Rock Lake.

Working on the HUGE puzzle. It was spread out on a big board that we had to move each time we wanted to eat at the table. We did get over half-way done with it while we were there!

In the Atlanta airport - bye, Atlanta, until next time!
(Did you notice that the dinasour is sporting holiday attire?)

Week 2 in the States

Our 2nd week home was spent in Albany, GA and Dothan, AL. We took a day and a half in Albany to visit some friends of mine there. We had dinner and got to help make Christmas cookies with Danyel, Zoey and Taelor and then had lunch with Lexi and Brenda. Definitely not enough time, but it was good to do a little catching up.

After Albany, we headed over to Dothan where we spent time with with my family and celebrated Christmas Day. We spent our time working on a 3000 piece puzzle of the Bavarian Alps, playing Bop-It with Lisa and Andrea, cooking, eating, making pottery, looking at Christmas lights and going to a Christmas Eve Service. Lisa spent the entire time in the garage with her new pottery wheel and tried to teach anyone willing to get messy. Tom took her up on the offer and made a jar with a lid! Unfortunately, our camera seems to have gone on strike this entire week, so only one picture - thanks Dad!

The Brown Family in front of the Christmas tree.

Week 1 in the States

We spent our first (of three) week in the states shopping, eating, visiting with friends & family and speaking English to anyone we ran across. We'd been saving our clothing shopping for our trip home since it's cheaper and more familiar. It was easier to do in the states, but it also meant that we were running all over Kennesaw trying to get things done. We did manage to squeeze in a few trips to Starbucks as well as some burger joints for good, American hamburgers - it was nice to have things that felt like home.

Since I haven't found cheap sunglasses (meaning less than 50 bucks) here, one of my first stops was to Target to get a $10 pair. As I was trying pairs on, Cristina and I got a little silly :) Like our look?

The Holsts (and Luke) in front of the Christmas tree. Yes, Ellie - at 12 - is now taller than me.

Just for fun :)

Tom's 27th Birthday!

We flew to Atlanta on December 12th so we were in the states on the 13th - Tom's birthday. So we got to treat him to some of his favorites - a steak dinner and a Krispy Kreme birthday cake!

Saint Nicolas Day

After over a month and a half, I'm finally updating! We've been quite busy, and now you get to hear about what we've be doing!

December 6th is Saint Nicolas Day which is celebrated here in Switzerland and we got to experience some of the festivities first hand. On December 1st, there are Saint Nicolas parades all over. There was one in Fribourg, and even though it was chilly and rainy, we went. Our neighbors (Chantal and Pascal) have gone almost every year since they were small and invited us to go with them. We got downtown just in time to see the parade which consisted of two high school bands and then Saint Nicolas riding on a donkey along with his entourage. Saint Nicolas (who is not the same as Santa Claus here) throws something like soft gingerbread and waves as he goes by. We managed to get some of the bread so I was able to try it and have the full experience. The parade ended at the big cathedral downtown -aptly named the St. Nicolas cathedral - where St. Nick gave a speech while the crowd packed shoulder-to-shoulder in the street listened. After the speech (which we didn't understand much of) we walked around the open market and then found a place to eat dinner. It was a fun evening and another glimpse into the culture in which we are living.

On the actual Saint Nicolas day, I went Christmas shopping with Chantal. We saw 3 different St. Nicolas in various stores or on the street. We even got an orange and some gingerbread from one! A tradition (as far as we can tell) here is for St. Nick to come on the 6th with a big bag of oranges, dates, figs, nuts and maybe some presents. So they were out in force distributing goodies to the shoppers of Fribourg during the day. That evening, Tom and I went to a friend's house for their traditional St Nicolas dinner. It consisted of bread men (instead of gingerbread men), cheese, dried meat, fruit and nuts and they shared stories of their Dec 6th traditions with us. It was neat to be included in their special day.

St. Nicolas gave his speech from the balcony of the church - right under the circular stained glass window. I don't know if you can tell, but the street is packed from where we are all the way to the church.

Chantal and myself waiting for the parade to pass us.