Dear Friends and Family,

In January, we kicked off 2004 with a company gala dinner in the posh ski resort of Flims. You might remember that last year’s theme for the bash was 1920’s. This year, we enjoyed getting groovy with music and fashion from the 1970’s: imagine “That 70’s Show.” Despite the auspicious start of the New Year, as most of you know, in September of this year, Merck & Co. was in the press with a recall of one of its biggest drugs. A lot of you may have been worried how we have been coping. Although it has definitely been a set-back for our company, be assured that we both still have jobs and are even busier trying in our own little ways to help our poor company—Kevin by launching more doctor websites and Nina by continuing to cut costs out of the Swiss subsidiary’s budget.

Aside from work, the overriding theme this year has been the abundance of major life events: graduations, weddings, repatriation, and pregnancy…In May, we traveled to the US to attend Kevin’s sister Malaika’s graduation from Yale’s graduate program in Architecture and catch up with the Kim family. During our stay in the East Coast, we met up with Nina’s sister, Lisa, and college friend, Francis to enjoy NYC. We also took the opportunity to explore the pharmaceutical capital of the world—New Jersey! By day, we visited Merck’s headquarters to network with our US colleagues, and, by night, we were entertained by former Novartis expat friends from Basel who are now back stateside.

This year we had the pleasure to attend a total of six wedding-related parties, ceremonies, and receptions: Kevin’s friend, Cindia’s reception in Bratislava, Slovenia, in May; the June reception of our Zürich friends Michelle & Dominique; the July wedding of Kevin’s colleague, Maya, in Luzern; Michelle & Dominique’s formal wedding at a Chateau in France in September; also in France, the October wedding of Emry and Brigitte, who caught Nina’s wedding bouquet 5 years ago; and finally, the Disney World wedding in Orlando of our dear friend, Maridel, in mid-October.

About a month after we came back from our May US trip, Nina received an offer from Merck to come work in NJ, resulting from a chance meeting during our short headquarters visit. We spent most of June and July agonizing over the decision. It would be a great promotion for Nina, and it seemed like a promising opportunity for Kevin too. Despite our love of Switzerland, we do miss some aspects of the American lifestyle — not to mention our stateside family and friends! Aside from the lack of Swiss mountains for Kevin, our friends who had re-patriated to New Jersey had nice enough lives that we could see ourselves adjusting to quite comfortably. The whole thing was very tempting, but on the eve of August 1st (The Swiss National Day), exactly 9 years to the day since Nina first arrived in Switzerland, we made the decision to stay in Switzerland for at least 3 more years until we could possibly qualify for Swiss citizenship (a whopping 12 years is required!)

The main reason why we elected to stay on in Switzerland is the discovery that Nina was pregnant! We were ecstatic but also surprised at the timing! The pregnancy hasn't always been a smooth ride, especially in view of our past experience with miscarriage; however, we have enjoyed experiencing every moment of it. Now, in our 30+ week of pregnancy, we are finally starting on baby preparations and look forward to welcoming our baby around Valentine’s Day next year. Kevin's method of nesting is bidding for baby gear on E-Bay every night and surprising Nina with interesting purchases. Nina is busy tying loose ends at work and looking forward to a six-month maternity leave to spend with the baby.

To ensure that our baby has plenty of space, we moved in November to a townhouse with one more bedroom. The house is just five minutes away from our old place. The view is just as bad (industrial) as our old place, but, hey, we can't beat the 10 minute commute to work. Come visit us in our new home! We hope we can catch up with you in person soon. Have a wonderful Christmas holiday! Wishing you peace, health, and happiness in the New Year.

and

Kevin and Nina
Zürich, December 2004