4 Years in Switzerland

view from the Klausenpass

Four years ago today my plane touched down in Switzerland. I’ll be honest: I had higher hopes for 2021 a year ago. In some ways things are definitely better: Trump is no longer the U.S. President and amazing COVID-19 vaccines have been developed and are widely available in both the U.S. and Europe. Everyone in my immediate family has been vaccinated. On the flip side, the Delta variant is worrying and I don’t know when if ever things will be normal-ish again. I haven’t had any German lessons since the pandemic began, and I feel like we haven’t made much progress on integrating into Swiss culture. But unable (or unwilling) to travel abroad, we have gotten to know more out of the way parts of Switzerland over the past year.

I spent a 9-month stint working with the amazing mobile team at BlockFi on a native re-write of their mobile app. I’m quite proud of the accessibility support that we built into the app. In May I returned to work at Y Media Labs in a role as principal engineer.

It’s been a cold, damp, rainy summer so far in our corner of Switzerland. The weather for water sports has not been very good. It feels like the summer that never was.

What’s next? I’m still not sure, but it looks like we’ll get another year here, maybe two. Hike even more mountains. Snowshoe through the winter. Work on my cross-country skiing.