This fall, Rowan decided to try out for the Cross Country team at FIS. After running for several weeks with kids from 6-12th grade (tryouts had to be extended due to a COVID case in the 7th grade), he ended up making the JV team, which is made up of seven 6-8th grade boys. This weekend he had his first meet, on the FIS home course, racing against kids from Dusseldorf, Zürich, and Münich.

Parents weren’t supposed to ‘spectate’ to reduce crowding at the start/finish, but I staked out a spot in the forest and pretended to just be out walking (picture me trying to ‘act casual’ given it was 48° and raining). It was awesome to see this kids get to put their training to the test against the other schools, and Rowan managed an 8th place finish out of a field of 36 runners. Yeah!!

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In other news, since Rowan moved to the Upper School, the kids no longer get the same conference holidays, so Cara had a couple of days off from the Elementary School that Rowan didn’t have. She and I spent one of them with friends at our favorite retro amusement park, Lochmühle, which I wrote about in a previous post for its hilarious DIY approach to operating rides. With the low crowds due to the virus and to most kids being in school, the girls had the run of the place.

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With COVID numbers back on the rise again all over Europe, I’m thankful for each and every day we get to be outside among the living. I hope to have many more weekends like this, but we’ll take what we can get!