As i have done in the last couple of years, i am posting my Christmas letter here as a way of reflecting on what 2015 has brought me and my family…
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Christmas 2015
HIHI
How are you? We hope this finds you well and enjoying this holiday season together with family and friends; celebrating the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ with great joy!
2014 was a year of new things for us and 2015 is a year for settling in.
We have been in our new home for 11 months now! Time has certainly flown by. We celebrated with a little house-warming party in May. We are settled in and really liking living in the middle of the village and being much closer to the shops and bus stop. We have lovely neighbours and get along well with each other. Tobias has only a 5-minute walk to school which is fantastic.
It is also only a 5-minute walk to the playgroup which Sandra runs every Thursday morning. Publicity was done in the months of February and May and there was interest but only 4 have been registered. Although there are only 4 kids for now, it is a nice little group with 3 boys and a girl. The children were unsure at first, as was Sandra, but now it’s running along nicely.
Even though it is only one morning a week, it still takes time to prepare each week and this means that Sandra has had to spend less time on her online shop, www.angelcraftsshop.com, which helps to raise funds for special needs orphans. She hopes to sort out some time management and get new crafts into the shop to boost slightly sluggish sales. As well as continue to advocate for special needs orphans as much as she can.
Tobias is now in 5th Class or 5th year of primary school. There is a lot more homework and more emphasis on academics than before. The school is gearing the students up for taking the major exams in the middle of their 6th year, which for Tobias is in about 13 months. Those exams will determine which stream of studies he gets to go into.
Because of the heavier homework load, Tobias and his friends have had less time outside of school to meet up and play. But most Friday afternoons, they find some time to do something together.
He has given up Unihockey as of the end of September and is now enjoying Hip-Hop classes with his best friend. He continues to go to Chinese class every Saturday morning and is getting better at Mandarin but he still is reluctant to use the language. I suppose there is little opportunity to do so here. Squash is still very much part of Tobias’ weekly routine and although he does get frustrated at how hard it is to be good at squash, he carries on.
In our last letter, you read that Walter had developed a thyroid issue. He had been on daily meds for almost 2 years and recently his doctor decided that he was well enough to stop taking the meds. We are very pleased with that progress. He continues to play football with his colleagues when they can and badminton too.
Walter’s role as elder in our church has seen him more involved in church-life with many meetings and much prayer involved. Walter also continues to lead worship whenever he can. And Sandra teaches Sunday School. She has also stepped into the role of Mission Liaison for the church and is loving the contact with all the mission partners and hopes to help the church be more involved with missions in a more practical way.
Here’s our one piece of sad news: our 3 remaining mice passed away in early September. They had lived a nice long life and it was time, even if it was sudden. However, we weren’t without pets for long. In October, we welcomed 3 new Gerbils: Belle, Jules and Claudia. They are cute and lively and certainly very entertaining.
Our family travels this year has included a trip to Liverpool, a place we love visiting, in April, to catch a football game, and yes, of course it’s a Liverpool game! It was wonderful to experience a live game, especially for Tobias.
Then in October, we went to the Expo in Milan, Italy! It was an eye-opener. Very tiring on the legs with all that walking but well worth it. We also got to spend lovely time exploring a bit of Milan with some friends.
Of course, our annual visit to Singapore is not to be forgotten. This year it was extra-special because we were able to attend a dear friend’s wedding! It was lovely! And we, once again, stuffed ourselves with wonderful local food. Our stay there was extended because Sandra’s father went into hospital unexpectedly and we stayed on to make sure he was recovering before Sandra and Tobias flew back by themselves. Walter stayed on even longer so he could catch up with his best friend whom he hadn’t seen for years.
Walter’s work travels this year have included South Africa, and other parts of Africa, Slovakia and other parts of Europe. He still enjoys his work and looks forward to the coming year.
Well, that’s it from us.
Wishing you a most Blessed Christmas and a wonderful New Year!
Please do stay in touch and let us know what has been happening for you.
What has 2015 been like for you? i know there has been ups and downs for everyone. i hope you have had more ups than downs and i pray that 2016 will bring you and your loved ones a whole ton of blessings!
This is part 2 of my posts about the Autumn holidays this year… if you would like to read part 1, go here.
So we had a few days in Milan in the first week and that was basically the highlight of the whole holidays. Usually we travel all over Switzerland, checking out different museums or animal parks or some other interesting place. But this autumn after the first week, we kinda took it easy and laze around a bit at home and just did stuff near home.
We visited Castle Hallwyl with some friends who are back in country after some years away. i had always been interested in seeing this castle cos it’s one of the few castles with a moat in Switzerland. When we were there, there was a special exhibition about the big fire which destroyed a fair bit of the castle.
We wanted to join the group tour but was told that the lady doing it that day would be doing it in Swiss-German. So we decided not to join it but to wander around on our own cos it would be hard for us to follow along, especially for our friend’s kids who don’t have the language. However, we did get English audio guides which were great.
The castle has several different parts; a front castle, a rear castle, a tower (prison at one time), a barn etc. It had also undergone reconstructions at various times in its 800-year history. The rooms all show different aspects of its history and the story of the family who owns the castle, as well as life in general, medicine and entertainment during those days.
Top Left: Tobias working hard to shape a cannon ball, Top Right: View of the moat from the prison tower, Bottom Right: View of the Front Castle from the Rear Castle, Bottom Left: On the other side of the castle there’s a mill which had an interesting 3 wheel system, only one is left standing now.
Then my Uncle visited us. He only stayed with us for a couple of nights when he arrived and then one other night just before he left. So we only visited, quite briefly, Luzern and our town of Solothurn with him and his travel companion.
Left: The entrance to the old city walls in Luzern. Right: View of the walls from the tower.This is the view of the city of Luzern from along the wall. That day was quite cloudy but still a lovely view.
That was pretty much Week 02 – we cleaned and tidied and did those 2 little excursions.
It was lovely to have family visiting, we haven’t had family here since my parents and brother came a number of years ago. And now we have had my Uncle at the beginning of October and then my cousin and her parents near the end of October (we only saw them at the start of their trip and at the end cos they were on their way to Italy). Now in November, my brother-in-law and his family will be here but again we will only see them for a meal cos they are on a group tour.
Week 03 saw us going for a movie, Inside Out, which we had wanted to see for a while. And having cinema vouchers definitely made the decision to go easier. It is a great movie! Loved the characters as well as the whole idea behind it.
We did some squash practice and violin practice (there’s an upcoming concert). But the major highlight for me in Week 03 is Tobias cooking his favourite, Kong Ba Bao (stewed pork belly bun), all from scratch. So proud of him! 😀
From Left to Right: Cutting up the meat, blanching the meat, the stewed meat, ready and waiting to go into the bun.Left to Right: Tobias rolling out the dough to make the buns, the shaped buns waiting to be steamed.The finished dish; stewed pork on one plate and the buns on another. You assemble the bun yourself so you can make it as big or as small as you want.
It was YUM! And my Uncle said it was even better than the one they had in Zürich, at a Chinese restaurant. 😉
i got the recipe from an old uni friend who has a food blog. So get the recipe here! Thanks so much, V!
This is not the first time Tobias has cooked. He cooks quite regularly at home. You can read more about what else he has cooked here and here.
Well, that’s pretty much it. Week 01 was all excitement with the Milan trip and Week 02 & 03 was a relax homey holiday.
i wonder what the Christmas hols will be like this year.
Are you planning something special for your Christmas this year? Care to share?
We are back at school with the second term of the new school year. Tobias is in 5th class (5th grade or P5 for those in other systems). He is back in a single year class (last year, it was a mixed 3rd and 4th together). And i think last term was a good start to the school year.
So back to school means we had holidays before that – the usual 3 weeks of Autumn holidays. i had considered doing one giant post for all 3 weeks but after sorting through the pictures i think 2 posts would be better.
This is the picture summary of Week 01 of our recent holidays.
We went to Milan for 4 days over the first week. The main aim was to visit the Expo in Milan. i had heard about it in summer and the fact that the theme was Feeding the Planet, Energy for Life really helped convinced us to go. Also, we don’t know if the Expo would ever be so near us again in the future. So we took the opportunity and went with friends who had already been there in August, which was great cos they knew all the “shortcuts” to get in faster and avoid queues and where the nice things were.
We stayed in this cute little one bedroom apartment near the Garibaldi train station. See the cute little walk up in the picture above left. And the view although not of mountains and greenery, was nice cos it had that in-the-middle-of-a-bustling-old-city feel.
Just to show you the rooms we slept in. Tobias slept on the sofa bed in the open plan living-dining-kitchen (pictured above bottom). And we had the upstairs room which was really spacious and could have had another single up there.
We had driven the 4 plus hours from our home to Milan and so didn’t feel like doing very much that evening. We had a very late lunch, shopped for some breakfast items and then headed to the Central station to have a walk around the central area of Milan. In the above photos, you see the inside of the nearest Metro station to us and the wonderful architecture of the Central station.
The next morning we were off to the Expo. We got there at 10ish and got our tickets. And because we managed to meet our friends at the train station, we were saved from joining that very long queue you see in the above-left photo and walked with them to another entrance where there was almost a very short queue. In the right photo, you see the main “street” of the Expo. According to the map provided, if you just walked from one end of the main street to the other, it would take you about 40 to 45 mins! That’s without stopping. Can you imagine how big this thing is with all its branch-offs to each side of this main street?
The first thing which caught my eye as we entered the Expo grounds proper, were this Food People. They are sculptures of people who appear to be made of food items. There’s this soldier-looking food guy and behind him a fruit lady and many others. i really liked them.
On the map, they advise people to start their journey through the Expo at Pavillion Zero but our friends who had been before said it was too slow and not worth the time, mainly because we would already have seen most of it before in various other documents which we have watched before (we like watching documentaries).
So we headed straight for the Rice pavilions (i don’t have good photos cos the country pavilions in this area were very small and crowded). Then it was off to the Chocolate area – my favourite food!! (Pictures above, clockwise from top left) You could get a chocolate moustache or a choco-kebab. Unfortunately, the chocolate fountain was only for show. But you can take a rest on little chocolate blocks (plastic) outside the Italian Chocolate Pavillion.
One of the highlights for me was this photo exhibition in the Arid Zones. It featured amazing photos of these desert areas and breath-taking landscapes.
We did lots of walking around and, of course, sampled some food. But we had chosen not to queue if possible. There were queues for lots of the big country pavilions, such as Japan where the queue time is usually 2 hours! We did decide, however, to try queuing for the Qatar one, after asking someone near the entrance how long they had waited. It was a reasonable 15 minutes so we joined the rather long queue. BUT… it was longer than that for us because just as we reached the entrance (pictured above left) the “special” groups arrived and they were given priority – groups with disabled persons, small children and with special passes. But we got in eventually and i thought it was an okay display but not as impressive as some others.
We also queued for the Malaysia pavilion. Just for 10 minutes. And it was a well-organised display of the country’s various achievements in food as well as in technology. Unfortunately, it was very late in the night already and the fourth part – the cultural exhibition – was no longer opened. But out friends went on another day and managed to catch a lovely 40 minutes performance of the traditional Malay dances.
It was close to 11 pm when we got back. 12 hours of walking does give you very tired feet 😛 We saw lots of other pavilions but i can’t really show you everything and i didn’t photograph everything either.
Left: the Toti class of submarine, wholly Italian made. Right: a special exhibition of painting and whimsical robots.
The next day, we decided to give the Expo a little rest and headed for the National Museum of Science and Technology, also known as the Leonardo da Vinci Museum Milan. Of course, given that name, our main intention was to see the exhibits which are re-creations of Da Vinci’s inventions. And it does not disappoint. Not only did it not disappoint, it was so fascinating that i didn’t take many photos at all, being so engrossed by the various exhibits.
It was not just the da Vinci stuff but everything else too. This museum is BIG! And very hands-on, great for kids. Before going, i had read on their website about their i-Labs but unfortunately, on site, for some reason we couldn’t go in, then we sort of figured maybe it’s just for organised groups, cos we saw a group of school kids going into one of the labs. But we won’t have had time either.
There were so very many sections! From history to space, communication to music, recycling to steel production and transport, OMG! We were lost, all 6 of us, just walking room to room and discovering even more rooms with even more wonderful things to “play” with. It says on their website FAQ that it would take roughly 3 hours to go through the whole museum. i would recommend you reserve an entire day!
There isn’t a proper cafe within the museum but your ticket allows you to go out, have lunch down the street and come back. Which we did. In total, we spent almost 5 hours and still didn’t see everything. i would definitely go back again. Especially since the museum has plans to re-do the da Vinci exhibits along a historical timeline.
We decided that we really should go back to the Expo and since they offered an evening ticket for just €5, so why not?
We knew there were a few pavilions we wanted to see, so with limited time, we headed for those only. We walked in and had a quick look around at a performance art exhibition by 5 artists from a certain school – the name escapes me now, but you can see one of them working in the picture above on the left. On the right is a picture of the hydroponics system in the Belgium (i think) pavilion, which we found very interesting and was probably the most on-topic pavilion we saw.
We also saw the Israel Pavillion. The picture above left shows the very cool vertical field they have outside their pavilion. And i thought the way they presented their pavilion was great because it drew the audience in through the use of a well-known (at least in Israel) personality telling a family history – Israel’s history in food production. And i learnt from them that the Israelis invented cherry tomatoes 😉
The Thailand pavilion was also quite nice (see the pretty dragon fountain outside their pavilion, pictured above right) and was another one we queued for, about 30 minutes. As you would imagine, rice is a huge part of food production for Thailand and it was interesting to see so many varieties.
Our very last stop for the night was the South Korea pavilion – it was nice and thought-provoking but i get the feeling that they designed it for people to slowly wander through and think about the questions they were asking through their exhibits. They didn’t provide the answers to sustainable food production but instead asked people to think about it. However, because there were so very many people wanting to see stuff, they had to keep the crowds moving and so kept ushering people forwards.
So ends another feet-tiring day, but it was mentally amazing! We did see other pavilions but that would be too much to post here.
On our last morning in Milan, we decided to go to the Duomo while our friends decided to go back to the Expo. That would have made it their 5th day there already and still they didn’t see everything… that Expo is HUGE!
The Duomo was amazing! It was very impressive. Just standing outside you can tell it is an amazing piece of architecture. They were also quite concerned about security (see picture above right) and checked everyone’s bags.
There are 2 types of tickets for the Duomo, one which allows you entry into everywhere and one just for the main cathedral and the museum. Since we still had a long drive ahead of us, we decided on just the cathedral and museum.
The stained glass is beautiful! And there are so many of them! In the 2 photos above, it is just 2 huge panels of many. There was a large number of people inside but everyone was quite quiet and reverent so it was good.
See those high vaulted ceilings (pictured above left). The atmosphere that gives is truly awesome, peaceful yet you get a sense of greatness. The marble flooring is also something to look at (pictured above right), all that in-laid marble. Speaking of which, the marble used for the Duomo comes from a specific region in Italy and it has a pink tinge because it contains iron in it. (Something i learnt from the earth-cache, geo-cache that is here)
My one regret was not getting the audio guide which would have given more history and information about the place and architectural elements. But it gives me a reason to go back 😉
We then went to the museum in the next building. It featured lots of religious artwork, such as tapestry and stonework and even woodwork. The top picture shows the tops of the stone pillars in the Duomo. Walter and Tobias are standing next to a sculpture of God, apparently. And the is also on display (pictured above right) the old metal skeleton of the Madonna which stands on top of the Duomo.
That was the end of our trip to Milan. i felt the trip was too short and i would definitely like to go back to Milan again.
We spent the next day lazing at home and letting our feet recover 😉
Us on Tobias’ 11th Birthday!
trippingdifferently 