I went to Switzerland this week to visit L’Ecole Internationale Bilingue du Haut-Lac in the town of Vevey, which is the international headquarters of Nestle foods. Over two very busy days, I saw everyone in the infants and juniors and went up to the secondary department to talk to year sevens.

I’ve returned very tired and with a head full of cold but, as so often happens on these trips, a head full of ideas too. For me, the most exciting thing was to see everyone’s reaction to my new iPhone App, more of which later. The App went live on the iTunes store while I was away. I should probably have been attending to it, But I couldn’t remember my Apple Password!

We had great fun with Nursery, Reception and Year One, who are split into two cohorts on different sites, as it is a bilingual school. They had written a story about Mickey the Marmot, which I then illustrated for them. Over at the main school, Mickey had magically turned into Sally – some forceful girl editors involved there, I think – and had become an astronaut. So I gave her a spacesuit, earrings and handbag!

In a couple of my sessions I found it quite hard to concentrate, as the huge picture windows looked out over lake Geneva and every now and then A huge bird would swoop past. It was a very dark bird of prey, which I’m pretty sure was a Black Kite. I saw one dive down and catch a fish later and it looked exactly like this video at Arkive.com.

We had lots of stories and did lots of drawing and I had a great time. Many thanks to everyone for making it such a memorable trip. I shall have to do a How to draw Mickey the Marmot video soon!