i'm hearing sheep.

Seriously. All day yesterday and today...sheep. I think they're somewhere in some of the green space near our street, and I CAN HEAR THEM, but I have yet to see them. I might go try to figure out where they are in a bit, here, 'cause it's driving me NUTS. Baaaaaaaaaaah. Baaaah.

In other news, German class continues to go well, and I love it. It has waaaaaaay more in common with Latin than I ever would have thought, but that makes it a little easier for me to understand the grammar (and not so easy for some of my poor classmates, heh heh...). Our first test is Friday, and it's only supposed to take a half-hour, but thus far we have roughly 234 vocabulary words to remember, including several verbs (and their present-tense conjugations), tons o' nouns (and their genders and plural forms, of which there are NINE possible for each word!!), interrogative words, every imaginable type of article, and plenty of adjectives. Wooooo, foreign language! It's daunting and exciting at the same time. I've decided that since we've spent the last two weekends in French-speaking places, I'm definitely learning French next. (And then Italian, followed by Spanish, and someday, Portuguese. And then Russian.)

So. This past weekend, we went to Colmar, France, for a day and a half. What a ridiculously adorable place! (Almost nonsensically so...the "old town" part looks like a set for a peasant city in Lord of the Rings.) It's a truly beautiful little place, but it was positively overwhelmed with tourists, seeing as how everyone had a four-day weekend, AND there was an Easter market there. Ugh. Tourists. I realize perfectly well that that's what we were, ourselves, but we at least make an effort not to be the annoying and ignorant ones. At any rate, I only have a few photos now 'cause Mike took the big camera and made off to Africa before I had a chance to download...so here's what I have, for the time being.

Water tower

Sorry 'bout the lamp post. I just loved this house.

Old town: timbers!

More timbers.

Stay tuned...more Colmar to come.

Also this weekend, we went to church on Sunday, then came home and had some friends over for Italian food (stuffed chicken...YUMMMMM.)

This sat in front of us at church. I wanted to take it home with us.

The International Protestant Church of Zurich. Really nice people.

Nathalie and myself, being pasta trees for Mike. (She's apparently the zen master of pasta trees.) Dave and Jen snickering in the background.

And did I mention that this country loves Easter...?

Meat bunnies. 'Nuff said. (Thank you, Dave, for the photo!)

I bought these the day after Easter for half-price...it's chocolates in a chocolate egg. Yesssssss.

Mike standing next to the giant inflatable bunneh at Sihl City, just for scale. These things are delicious. (At least, the actual edible ones are.)

Ooh, just realized I hadn't caught the world up on 'What I'm Reading'. Um, as last I recall, I was whingeing about everything I'd read after Peace Like a River, which then helped me to decide that I should read some of the "classics" I've always managed to miss. (My definition of a classic is, here, very loosely, something old-ish that everyone else seems to have read, but that I've somehow avoided thus far.) So far, it's been:

• Treasure Island. LOVED IT. Fantastic, well-paced pirate romp. Brilliant.
• Last of the Mohicans. Racist? Definitely. Sexist? Yup. Super long, rambling, and mostly repetitive? You bet. At least the final chase was interesting. And also: NOTHING. LIKE. THE MOVIE. One wonders how Hollywood had the chutzpah to even call it by the same name.
• Ivanhoe. Still working on this one, but almost done. Started really strongly, lots of action and intrigue, and bogged down in the middle, where Sir Walter Scott decided that he needed to include the ENTIRE lyrics to EVERY song that EVERY character sung...which slows the plot, somewhat. Still, a fun read, and who doesn't love a good Robin Hood tie-in? (Actually, still trying to figure out why the book is called 'Ivanhoe', since he seems to be something of a minor character at best.)
• Next up: The Count of Monte Cristo. 
• After that, not sure. Stay tuned. I know you're on the edge of your respective seats.

And now, to go find some noisy sheep, just so I know I'm not hearing nonexistent sheep sounds, and then off to make the final batch of flashcards for my German test on Friday. What a life I lead...all glitz and glamor! At least there's chocolate, my dears. Good, good chocolate.  =)