Our New Home (eventually)

As many of you already know, we'll be moving to Europe very soon! Or not so soon. You see, there's this little virus going around...  

Anyway, we interviewed with The Ecole d‘Humanité, a small boarding school in Switzerland at a London job fair in January, and not only did they offer us jobs, they offered to fly our whole family out to check out the place and make sure we liked it. After minutes of hemming and hawing, we decided to take the trip during our Carnavales break. Spoiler alert - we liked it! 

We'd be in the Alps for the twins' third birthday and since they only have one of them every four years (Leap Year babies, after all) we decided to do it in style. We planned for several snow days in Switzerland and Austria during the week, which meant that our first stop upon arrival in Munich was a sporting goods store. Snow gear is a bit easier to find in Munich than in Panamanian stores, as you may have assumed.

"Hey twins, we found ANOTHER pair of ski pants to try on. Twins?"

We got the kiddos geared up, but then had to wait and watch the Carnival/Mardi Gras/Fastnacht parade blocking in our car.

While the Smurfs are originally Belgian, it seems the Germans have adopted them wholeheartedly. And no, I have no idea what's actually going on.

After a well-deserved night's rest, we headed west to Schweiz. Just about when we blinked and missed Liechtenstein, we started to see some white stuff falling from the sky.

By the time we (carefully) pulled up to the school, it was really coming down.

The school looked magical and we kept having to pinch ourselves.

We went to a couple of days of classes and had the big talk with the kids about whether we should go here. The Little Lady was all in as soon as she heard they raised goats, and the rest of us weren't far behind (although our reasons were less goat-related). We are excited to be at a school that seems like a beautiful extension of the kids' experience at Alice Birney Waldorf School in Sacramento, with a balance of thematic learning, arts, and outdoor activity. We'll serve as house parents to a small group of boarding students and teach social studies and math. 

I will say that with the current global lockdown and dangers of crowded urban areas, we're even more excited to be in a tiny town in the Alps for a while. We just have to get there...

On our last day at the school, the Dean of Academics and her family took us out for an afternoon of sledding! The school is at the foot of a ski resort, so we just had to hop on a bus and ride it a couple of stops.

The next day was the twins' official birthday! After a fun Karneval morning meal at the school which involved everyone (except us) dressing up in period clothing, we headed over to Lucerne/Luzern to wander a bit and then took a tour of the nearby ​Aeschbach Chocolatier. The birthday kiddos decorated their own chocolate bar, while The Eldest, Sarah and I shared one.

Happy 3rd birthday big kids!

For the birthday dinner we drove to the foot of the Austrian Alps because why not?

"Wait, hold on a sec."

After finishing up we walked to our car and noticed this:

I guess they like to have ginormous bonfires to celebrate Carnival. At least there's snow all around this one.

For the (day after) birthday celebrations we went up the hill and came back down a few times on "the world's longest alpine roller coaster." But in a ski resort. Wacky, eh?

And that was that. We flew back to the tropics the next day, our school shut down eleven days later, but we have our memories of adventures in the snow intact. Unlike our travel plans for April, our last quarter of the school year, and our chocolate cow.

Maybe we shouldn't have packed it in soft checked luggage, eh?