Friday July 25th

On Friday morning Beth and Shawn gave their presentation. Nicolas Pron, the Global Administrator of DevInfo, attended along with Kris Oswalt from DevInfo Global Support and Sameer Thapar from their Indian Support branch. They were all wearing suits, which made the presentation seem really important and special. Beth and Shawn did a wonderful job and it was very interesting. I may use the game they created with my 5th and 6th graders this year.

After lunch I met with Aviva to discuss my progress on the research paper. I felt better after talking with her, and she gave me some really good ideas.

We decided to celebrate completing our first week here, so Angie, Beth, Shawn, Apryl, Doug, and I went downtown and had dinner at the Edelweiss Restaurant. It was so much fun. I had raclette for an appetizer, which was a plate with some melted cheese, a potato, a pickle, and some pearl onions. If you order it for a meal you also get beef to eat with the cheese. Then we shared two kinds of fondue. One was mushroom and cheese and the other was tomato. The mushroom and cheese one was a bit strong for my liking, but I loved the tomato one. They brought little potatoes and big baskets of bread to dip in the fondue.

But the great thing about this restaurant was the music. Two men were playing and singing. One played the accordion the whole time and the other switched between various horns, spoons, a saw, and an alpenhorn (more about that later). They also yodeled and played cow bells. And there was a large ceramic bowl that they played by spinning marbles around inside the rim.

Even though the music wasn’t the least bit Polish, it kind of took me back to my childhood because of the accordian and the horns. Finally they played the alpenhorn. The man had to stand at the top of the staircase in order to play it, and the horn reached all the way to the bottom.

After they played a couple of songs they asked if anybody would like to give it a try. Beth shot out of her chair like somebody had lit a fire under her, and Angie and I followed.

After dinner we walked down near the lake. They’re having a festival again this year so there were lots of people and things to see.

Piaget, Cartier, Rolex….. No. I didn’t buy anything there.

Apryl, Shawn, Beth, and Angie

After wandering a bit we took the 1 bus to the 28 bus to a path that leads up to the John Knox center past what I call “The Secret Garden Gate”. Here’s a picture of it from last year.

We are getting good at finding the correct bus (Angie loves maps ), and you can avoid the HHH by taking this route. It was a lovely, relaxing night, and the weather was beautiful. I hope I can hold this memory in my mind for a long, long time.