Alex and Marie are here!

June 25, 2018

Alex is here!  Today, both Alex and the Vigliotti’s granddaughter Marie (Josh and Ashley’s sister) flew in to Geneva.  Marie got in about 10 am from the United Arab Emirates where she lives with her family – her dad works there running the University of Lausanne’s extension campus.  She will be staying with her grandparents this summer before leaving on a mission for the LDS church to the Lyon, France mission that includes the French-speaking part of Switzerland where we are right now.  So she will go home to UAE for a short time, report to the Missionary Training Center in Spain, and then basically come back to this area – either in France or Switzerland.  She and Alex are about the same age, and I first met her as a baby when I came for Noemi’s wedding. 

Alex had a very long trip here, but she made it in around 4 pm this afternoon!  When she was supposed to wrestle Helen Maroulis in Final X, she would have been in Pennsylvania on June 23.  She had planned to take a bus on June 24 to NYC where we had a flight for her to join us in Geneva.  When her Final X match was postponed, Alex was all the way on the other coast in Vancouver, Canada.  Knowing the situation, Marcie, who helps run Titan Mercury (Alex wrestling club and her generous sponsor) offered to fly her to NYC so she could still catch her flight to meet up with us.  Thank you again, Titan Mercury!  But Alex had long couple of days.  She got the Vancouver airport at around 4 am on the 24^th to catch a 6 am flight to Seattle.  She then flew to NYC on her second flight where she originally was going to wait 5 or 6 hours to catch her flight to Europe.  That third flight was delayed a couple of hours so she spent even more time in the JFK airport.  She was supposed to have plenty of time in Dusseldorf, Germany to make the connection to the fourth flight to Geneva, but with the delay, she barely caught the flight.  She made it though, and we picked her up in Geneva a little after 4 pm today. Fortunately, with all of the travelling she has started doing for wrestling, she is becoming a pro at sleeping on planes.  It’s so good to have her here!

Because Becky had mentioned the other day that Alex would be sad that she had missed Maria’s fondue, that’s what we had again on Monday.  Ashley and Jonathon came over for dinner to see Marie, and another friend of the Vigliotti’s Simone Pierre came as well so we had a big group for fondue, and of course, we had to play some petanque afterward as well.  We have been truly blessed being here and now having Alex join us!