weekend with visitors
After much anticipation all around (this has taught me not to tell Bao about exciting events until like, the day before, or endure 'is it now? it's sooooo long!' 475762 times an hour), S and E finally arrived in Geneva last Friday morning. S is one of my oldest friends and we have seen each other at our worsts and hopefully, our bests. E is her ten-year-old daughter and I can still remember when S was pregnant with her, and when she was born, and when she was a chubby toddler. How she has grown, and how S and I have grown alongside, as well.
The Bun and Bao were both in school so our visitors got to settle in quietly before I whisked them off to have a quick coffee and croissant at Chateau Penthes. Nothing like some sunshine to beat jet lag, eh. (Although honestly it was more cloudy than sunny so er, nothing like some caffeine to beat jet lag!) At least the cafe was very nice and we managed to snag the last croissants before going for a walk around the gardens and looking out at the view. Later on we had a nice long lunch at one of the lakeside restaurants in Genthod before popping across the way to pick The Bun up from school.
Lunch by the lake.
Both kids are enamoured with E and are especially intrigued by an online game she's playing called Growtopia. Right now they're content to sit beside her and observe while she plays, but I'm dreading the moment when The Bun asks me for an iPad of his own and games like E has got. E is pretty mature for a ten-year-old and has learnt to regulate the amount of time she spends gaming - this after crying over poor grades and dropping out of the top two classes - but The Bun is still very far from doing that. S and I try to limit the amount of screen time and encourage the kids to dance and play pretend, but it's not always successful because of their age differences. Anyway, it's still nice for the kids to have a visitor who's not a boring old adult.
On Saturday everyone went along for The Bun's school sports day. E was quite surprised by how the children ran in lanes spray painted onto the field, instead of a proper athletic track, and how the eccentric headmaster, dressed in his trilby hat and Scooby Doo tie, walked around commentating on the races and making very dry jokes in-between. Apart from the sprints and proper 800m and 1000m races, there were fun races for the kids. The Bun's class, for example, had a pirate race where they had to run to stations on the field putting on items of pirate clothing, and then hop on one leg (peg-legged) to the finish line. After the races were over the children got to play games and eat junk food at the carnival in the school playground.
There was a carousel in the middle which The Bun has more or less outgrown since his Reception days, a few toss-item-at-target games, an art-and-craft station where the kids made glittery keychains, a used book stall (best part of the carnival for me, books for 1CHF each!), Pimm's for the adults, cakes and sweet treats for the kids, football games, and more. Bao is finally old enough to participate in almost everything, and even though she didn't win anything she did collect various small sweets in her attempts.
After sports day the sun was shining brightly so we decided to take S and E for a walk in the Versoix woods nearby. We spent the good part of an hour just sitting on logs by the river watching the children hurling pebbles into the water. Midway through Bao announced that she needed to poo which sent J and me into quite a tizzy! Just before we'd left school I had taken her to the toilet with no result so I was quite cross with her and she cried. We were quite deep in the forest and there was no way we'd get to a proper toilet in time so Bao ended up, uh, contributing the the lush early-summer growth all around us.
Later that night I tried (re)explaining to her the importance of using toilets as and when we came across them but she piped up, 'we covered it all with pebbles and leaves Mummy! It's okay!' Argh. File that into my mental folder of Bao's poopy misdeeds (the first was in a Michelin-starred Lisbon restaurant) to torment her with in teenhood. Bao and poo: 2, Mummy: 0.
On Sunday morning all of us went strawberry picking again in Meyrin, and with the sunshine the strawberries have all grown lusciously fat. E in particular loved the experience. We ended up with three punnets and all of us ploughing through the haul over the next few days (as I type this, I've just finished making the last batch of chocolate-covered strawberries for dessert tonight). We then made an impromptu decision to drive into France for lunch on Le Salève, one of the smaller mountains along the Jura mountain range. We got a bit lost on the way but luckily we managed to snag the last long table that could fit our group of six.
It ended up being a luxuriously lazy lunch. It was a bit drizzly and cloudy so we couldn't see the Alps in the horizon, but it wasn't wet enough to deter the kids from playing in the garden. They made wildflower bouquets, 'fed' the chickens outside grassy bits, and who knows did what else. One of the waitresses was nice enough to open the chicken coop so that the kids could have a look inside, and gave Bao a fresh warm egg to take home, wrapped up in a napkin and a big nest made of aluminium foil. In the meantime the adults were talking and drinking wine and losing track of time.
BFFs at lunch.
The table next to us was having a three-generational lunch - a young man, his mother, and his grandmother at the same table. The grandmother was especially intrigued by our children and struck up a conversation with The Bun when he brought me a small bouquet of flowers. Kiddo was soon enveloped in her embrace and treated to three warm bisous. She attempted the same with Bao but the kid wouldn't stand still long enough for kisses, although she did proudly present her egg to her. S and I had a short chat with them in butchered French about empty nests (the mother raised four sons which she said made her 'tres fatiguée' but now that they have all grown up and moved away she felt sad about the quiet house), growing old gracefully (Grandmother turned out to be a spry ninety-five!) and how different Singapore was compared to France. All of us enjoyed ourselves, and rolled out of the restaurant full and content.
On Monday S and E took a guided tour around Geneva's city centre and to the pretty French town of Annecy, but it turned out to be a bit of a disaster, mostly because the tour guide was completely crap. He never bothered to count how many clients he had for the day and managed to lose six people (!!) by leaving a cathedral without them. He never told anyone when they were meant to have lunch, and his time-keeping was so bad that poor S and E only managed to have a bite at 4pm! Utter rubbish.
S and E left for Croatia yesterday, where they will be gone a week, so life at home has resumed normal programming for the kids and me. J is headed off to Hanoi at the end of the week, and The Bun will be at camp for three days next week, so it will be nice when S returns to Geneva next week so that I can have some company. Otherwise it would be pretty quiet with just me and Bao at home! (Although, in all fairness, that child could probably win the chatterbox olympics hands-down.)
The Bun and Bao were both in school so our visitors got to settle in quietly before I whisked them off to have a quick coffee and croissant at Chateau Penthes. Nothing like some sunshine to beat jet lag, eh. (Although honestly it was more cloudy than sunny so er, nothing like some caffeine to beat jet lag!) At least the cafe was very nice and we managed to snag the last croissants before going for a walk around the gardens and looking out at the view. Later on we had a nice long lunch at one of the lakeside restaurants in Genthod before popping across the way to pick The Bun up from school.
Lunch by the lake.
Both kids are enamoured with E and are especially intrigued by an online game she's playing called Growtopia. Right now they're content to sit beside her and observe while she plays, but I'm dreading the moment when The Bun asks me for an iPad of his own and games like E has got. E is pretty mature for a ten-year-old and has learnt to regulate the amount of time she spends gaming - this after crying over poor grades and dropping out of the top two classes - but The Bun is still very far from doing that. S and I try to limit the amount of screen time and encourage the kids to dance and play pretend, but it's not always successful because of their age differences. Anyway, it's still nice for the kids to have a visitor who's not a boring old adult.
On Saturday everyone went along for The Bun's school sports day. E was quite surprised by how the children ran in lanes spray painted onto the field, instead of a proper athletic track, and how the eccentric headmaster, dressed in his trilby hat and Scooby Doo tie, walked around commentating on the races and making very dry jokes in-between. Apart from the sprints and proper 800m and 1000m races, there were fun races for the kids. The Bun's class, for example, had a pirate race where they had to run to stations on the field putting on items of pirate clothing, and then hop on one leg (peg-legged) to the finish line. After the races were over the children got to play games and eat junk food at the carnival in the school playground.
There was a carousel in the middle which The Bun has more or less outgrown since his Reception days, a few toss-item-at-target games, an art-and-craft station where the kids made glittery keychains, a used book stall (best part of the carnival for me, books for 1CHF each!), Pimm's for the adults, cakes and sweet treats for the kids, football games, and more. Bao is finally old enough to participate in almost everything, and even though she didn't win anything she did collect various small sweets in her attempts.
After sports day the sun was shining brightly so we decided to take S and E for a walk in the Versoix woods nearby. We spent the good part of an hour just sitting on logs by the river watching the children hurling pebbles into the water. Midway through Bao announced that she needed to poo which sent J and me into quite a tizzy! Just before we'd left school I had taken her to the toilet with no result so I was quite cross with her and she cried. We were quite deep in the forest and there was no way we'd get to a proper toilet in time so Bao ended up, uh, contributing the the lush early-summer growth all around us.
Later that night I tried (re)explaining to her the importance of using toilets as and when we came across them but she piped up, 'we covered it all with pebbles and leaves Mummy! It's okay!' Argh. File that into my mental folder of Bao's poopy misdeeds (the first was in a Michelin-starred Lisbon restaurant) to torment her with in teenhood. Bao and poo: 2, Mummy: 0.
On Sunday morning all of us went strawberry picking again in Meyrin, and with the sunshine the strawberries have all grown lusciously fat. E in particular loved the experience. We ended up with three punnets and all of us ploughing through the haul over the next few days (as I type this, I've just finished making the last batch of chocolate-covered strawberries for dessert tonight). We then made an impromptu decision to drive into France for lunch on Le Salève, one of the smaller mountains along the Jura mountain range. We got a bit lost on the way but luckily we managed to snag the last long table that could fit our group of six.
It ended up being a luxuriously lazy lunch. It was a bit drizzly and cloudy so we couldn't see the Alps in the horizon, but it wasn't wet enough to deter the kids from playing in the garden. They made wildflower bouquets, 'fed' the chickens outside grassy bits, and who knows did what else. One of the waitresses was nice enough to open the chicken coop so that the kids could have a look inside, and gave Bao a fresh warm egg to take home, wrapped up in a napkin and a big nest made of aluminium foil. In the meantime the adults were talking and drinking wine and losing track of time.
BFFs at lunch.
The table next to us was having a three-generational lunch - a young man, his mother, and his grandmother at the same table. The grandmother was especially intrigued by our children and struck up a conversation with The Bun when he brought me a small bouquet of flowers. Kiddo was soon enveloped in her embrace and treated to three warm bisous. She attempted the same with Bao but the kid wouldn't stand still long enough for kisses, although she did proudly present her egg to her. S and I had a short chat with them in butchered French about empty nests (the mother raised four sons which she said made her 'tres fatiguée' but now that they have all grown up and moved away she felt sad about the quiet house), growing old gracefully (Grandmother turned out to be a spry ninety-five!) and how different Singapore was compared to France. All of us enjoyed ourselves, and rolled out of the restaurant full and content.
On Monday S and E took a guided tour around Geneva's city centre and to the pretty French town of Annecy, but it turned out to be a bit of a disaster, mostly because the tour guide was completely crap. He never bothered to count how many clients he had for the day and managed to lose six people (!!) by leaving a cathedral without them. He never told anyone when they were meant to have lunch, and his time-keeping was so bad that poor S and E only managed to have a bite at 4pm! Utter rubbish.
S and E left for Croatia yesterday, where they will be gone a week, so life at home has resumed normal programming for the kids and me. J is headed off to Hanoi at the end of the week, and The Bun will be at camp for three days next week, so it will be nice when S returns to Geneva next week so that I can have some company. Otherwise it would be pretty quiet with just me and Bao at home! (Although, in all fairness, that child could probably win the chatterbox olympics hands-down.)