Last night we met up with 2 other couples for dinner-- Laura and her boyfriend Torbin (sp? it's a Dutch name, unsure of the spelling) and Anna and her husband Nicholas. We went to this restaurant in Geneva that had fabulous food (even if it was a bit on the pricey side). One of my sides was a serving of mashed sweet potatoes that I swear must've been half-butter! Anyway, it was a great time, I think it was really nice for Zach to get to spend time with some other people living here that aren't his co-workers. We need to organize more get-togethers like this, though we may have to offer up our house more often to limit the number of expensive dinners out. Towards the end of the meal Yoko and her husband Takeshi (sp?) stopped by, a nice surprise as Yoko is 9 months pregnant and due to pop any day now, so we didn't expect to see her. She' looked absolutely adorable, as always. Her and her husband's presence forced us to speak French (they only know a little English, they're both Japanese) but that's really a good thing. Except I'm sure Nicholas was just laughing at us inside-- he's Swiss, and our attempts at French must have sounded atrocious to him. ; )
This afternoon we met up with our relocation expert to take care of getting our Swiss driver's licenses. It's a fairly easy process to do... as long as you take care of it within the first year or residence. With our US licenses they basically just compile some paperwork (including me needing to ask the Texas DMV for a record of when we were first issued our licenses, apparently an important factor here) and then they give you a Swiss license, right then and there (we just had to wait 30 minutes to get our card). Seems kinda odd to me, trusting us to know all the local rules of the road without any sort of test, but hey I'm not complaining!
I'd heard that when they give you the Swiss license you have to give up your US one, and then you get it back when you move away. This obviously would have been highly inconvenient (I can just imagine us trying to get into a club or buy alcohol in Texas using a Swiss license!). Luckily they let us keep both-- woot! However I also noticed that my CA license will expire in sept 2008, which isn't that far off. If we're still living here I may be out of luck till we move back to the states. But that's quite a ways off still...
Not sure what's on tap for us this Friday night, though considering we were up kinda late last night it might be an early one for us this evening.
glad to know you guys are now legal swiss drivers! ;)
ReplyDeletewhen i renewed my hawaii id last month they issued it right on the spot as well. struck me as funny, but also very efficient. california needs to get on board!
i wonder why you wouldn't be able to return to california to renew your driver's license when the time comes, if you are still living in switzerland. you could just use one of our addresses...seems like it'd be a shame to have to start all over again upon your return. do they still allow you to renew by mail, i wonder? maybe that'd be even easier than flying all the way here to renew. just thinking out loud, really... :)