If the title of this post sounds strange, it’s because it is. In Switzerland, athletics and academics don’t mix.

And here’s a big American cheer for that.

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Slightly dishevelled from the night before, I head to the park with my kids.

Feeling delicate, I opt out of Frisbee and lay on a blanket to watch the world go round. With the kids playing happily, I turn my attention to people around me. (more…)

Last week, I was all zen about accepting the Swiss schooling system as it is.

But now that school has actually started, I’m back to ranting and complaining. (more…)

Two years ago, when my eldest was about to start the première enfantine (first year of kindergarten), my chest was tight.

Not because my baby was all grown up and going to school, but because he was going to school to do… nothing. (more…)

My husband was born in Germany to Swiss parents, and only moved to Switzerland when he was eight years old.  In Germany, he went to what he calls a ‘Hippie-Kindergarten’: Lots of freedom, lots of creative games, lots of playing with mud. 

He remembers the move to Switzerland as somewhat traumatic – suddenly the permissive ‘anything goes’ - environment was replaced by a life governed by implicit social rules which he didn’t really know, but everyone else seemed to.  Even now, my husband’s family don’t think much of the strict adherence to social rules the Swiss are normally famous for.

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The building work for a new retirement home in our village was finally finished at the end of last year.

One wing of the building houses the new locally-funded nursery school (known in German-speaking Switzerland as KITA - ‘Kindertagesstätte’). After two years on the waiting list, our older daughter Xiyan got a place in it. (more…)