In a Swiss valley

found a very interesting website today www.tree-nation.com which aims to plant 100000 trees this year. They have projects in various parts of the world where people can plant trees, and follow the progress on blogs and facebook. You can give trees as gifts, or companies can sponsor several trees.

I think it is a great idea, maybe some of my relatives will be getting a tree this year

actually, it is my daughters 18th coming up. A tree would be a nice gift for her as well I think.

closer to home there is also http://www.treeforall.org.uk/ which plants trees in the Uk, and http://www.treesforcities.org/ which is also UK based but with international projects and been going since 1994. Seems there are a lot of charities at it out there, so maybe it will be hard to choose.

for the football fans among you, the big news here is that the Swiss U17 team won the world championships at the weekend, beating the reigning champions Nigeria in the process.
This is major news here, we are not renowned for our football skills

While researching this post I had to smile when I came across this aricle:
http://www.vanguardngr.com/2009/11/17/u-17-world-cuppainful-fall-of-the-eaglets/comment-page-1/#comment-94507

4th paragraph down the writer refers to Switzerland as "this tiny Scandinavian country"
The writer is from Washington, and unfortunately not the first American to confuse Switzerland with Sweden. After all it starts with the same two letters

Apparently Unfriend is the word of the year 2009. I had never heard of it, but it means to take someone of your friends list on a social networking site.

Novelty words making the shortlist were "deleb," meaning a dead celebrity, and "tramp stamp," referring to a tattoo on the lower back, usually on a woman

so now we know.

http://www.reuters.com/article/lifestyleMolt/idUSTRE5AG09H20091117?sp=true

not something we see much of here

What is there for a group of Thai ladyboys to do in Degersheim, a Swiss village with a population of 4,000? For weeks the dancers rehearsed a choreographed show and mingled with the locals. Their Swiss manager hopes to tour with them across Europe. (SF/swissinfo)

on TV at present is Wetten Dass, a cult German language program, where members of the public come on with crazy things they bet they can do in a set time live on the program, and celebraties have to say if it possible

the current one is John Cushak as celebrity, and the bet is that a guy driving a big digger thing can use the machine, in the studio, to get 5 baseball balls in the net. 5 balls out of 8 in 5 minutes.

Anyway, the German for a digger is bagger, but they pronounce it like bugger with a posh accent in english, so all I can hear is bugger this and bugger that. Not sure what Cushak makes of it

The bagger driver won the bet though, amazing sight watching a big digger swinging a ball into a little baseball net.

today I went shopping. I bought a nice cashmere cardigan, size S, cos that is all they had. I bought a cashmere jumper size M from the same store, and then in another store I bought a Top in a S, which was plenty big enough, could have done with an XS, and then 2 tops each an L.
Everything fits perfectly!!

so just goes to show, you can't always believe what it says on the label.

this evening I attended a church service in nearby Thun. I say Church service, but it is more a housegroup with a service. Tonight there were 7 of us. I have not been in months to this group, and a special call had gone out to get more of us there.
Anyway, the vicar came, and started the service. He stood in front of us, we 7 were sitting in a circle on chairs. And then the strangest thing, that I have never noticed before, as generally I see him in front of 100 people at our main Church. The vicar never looked directly at any of us. His eyes were roaming the room, looking into corners, looking over us, looking at the floor, looking at the ceiling. Anywhere but us. This was totally weird, I was so amazed watching this performance that I could not really concentrate on what he was saying. He did spend a lot of the time addressing the floor, which was less weird than when he was looking all round the room, but only slightly.
When I got home my husband suggested that maybe he has a glass eye, but I don't think so, and actually at the table afterwards, he could look at whoever he was addressing, on a one to one basis.
is this some sort of disorder? Or has he high anxiety or something? he never seems particularly nervous, always in control, regardless of what happens.
It was totally weird, like he could see lots of people or spirits there that we could not. Not something I want to experience again in a while.

Just read EllieGants post about poltergeist activity switching on the radio in her house. It reminded me about what happened to my youngest yesterday. She has been home sick this week, with dizzyness and a bit of a fever. No real cold though, no cough, so I think nothing to do with pigs.
Anyway yesterday my husband, who was otherwise home with her, had to go out for a few hours, and she was alone. She was lieing in her bed and started having hullucinations. She saw her 3 best friends in her room, and felt the hand of one of them on hers. This freaked her a bit. She heard voices nearby but could see no one, and then she reckons her bedroom door opened, but of course there was no one there. This happened twice, with no one and no cat around. So she was then really spooked and called a friend, who very sweetly caught a train to come and see her. Her friend managed to scare any ghosts away, which is lucky.
Poor kid, but I reckon we are not haunted, although the day before a blackbird flew into one of our windows at the back, and although she tried to save it, it died in her room. So now she reckons its death caused something weird to happen.

now we are Swiss we finally get to vote. This I find a huge boost after living here 19 years. Today the papers arrived for the vote at the end of the month. We have 3 national motions that require decisions, 2 of which are really contentious. The most contentious, and probably the one most widely pubicised is the initiative to ban the building of Minarettes, which are the towers attached to mosques. This is a right wing initiative by the SVP, the so called Peoples party, who are so energetic in trying to kick foreigners out of the country. They are so insular, it is incredible. The posters, which have been banned in a lot of cities, showed lots of black Minarettes on Swiss land like rockets, with a black clocked person in front of them. Totally crazy and rascist, but it got them lots of free publicity.
I will definately be voting against that motion. We are a country with religious freedom, and no way can such discrimination and fear mongering be allowed to win. They will lose this one, the majority of Swiss are against it.
The second one, nearly as contentious, is to ban all export of swiss made military weapons and ammunition. The pros are touting that as a neutral country we cannot profit from wars in other countries. The cons are talking about loss of jobs. It is a difficult one, as it will make little difference in the world, but a world of difference in Switzerland. Those against the initiative happen to be mainly the ones in favour of the first one, but with some other parties supporting them.
And the third is whether to use the tax on aviation fuel to finance air traffic rather than what it is currently used for which is road traffic measures and general stuff. Not sure what the advantages are in a special fund, will have to read the papers, but I do wonder how they will replace the funds, it must lead to higher tax somewhere.

And then there are the local councillors to elect, and local, means our village. So lots to read.
Last vote, our papers never got to us, even though they had set off, which was strange. This time only I have received them, and not my husband. His must still be on the way.
Maybe they send them via the UK

more info on http://www.swissinfo.ch/ in English even, plus you can see that terrible poster. It is reminisent of the black crows one they did stealing swiss passports, and the white sheep kicking out the black one when they were trying to get rid of criminal foreigners easier. All those inititives they lost.

well I have noticed today major upset in blogland through the deletion of the tags. I know poor Marion was very badly hit, and her whole system is destroyed.
I think I got away lightly with just 2 tags being deleted. Not sure anymore where one of them was anyway so guess it is not important.

I read the explanation (and apology) from blog team. It makes sense, even if they should have given us a pre warning message of which tags would be deleted. I have never really got to grips with tags, so maybe I need to be more organised in the future.