Ali – Maya turned 11 years old on April 26th and had a birthday party sleepover last weekend. Right now you are feeling angry at the false advertising of the blog post title, as you realize this is just a boring post about Mays’s birthday but Ha! Elf means eleven in German so there. It’s not my fault you were picturing woodland dwellers with pointed ears. I suspect you have a desperate need to escape reality and suggest you seek counseling.
Anyway, as I was saying, last weekend Maya held her birthday party. 6 months before that, she was telling us that she didn’t really want a party because she had very few friends here and didn’t know who she could even invite. It’s not that Maya hadn’t made friends; she’s got by far more social ability than I and makes a new friend about every week. But the foreign immigrant/ ex-pat population that is the main source for her Aufnahmeklasse “integration” class in the Swiss public school system is pretty transient. So there was Ori who went back to Australia. Then Elouisa who transferred to another school. Then Maia and Eva who moved to Russia. Then Sixteen who went into the regular class in another school. Etc…etc….
But here we are at month 10 of our year stay and she has this solid friend group composed of Swiss, Expat Americans, Expat Canadians and Expat Brits. Four of the girls made it to the birthday party and we all started off in the woods grilling wurst over a fire, because that’s what Swiss people do on the weekend.
Then I organized a scavenger hunt and sent them off into the woods to accost strangers and collect items. 
Mind you there is zero stranger danger in Switzerland. This is just not a thing here. So sending kids off alone to run through woods is not only ok, it is essential childhood training. I should also mention that every kid owns a pocket knife and is standing over a hot fire with a sharpened stick grilling meat by the age of 4.
After the scavenger hunt, the girls came back to our place for chicken pot pie, cake, movies and, eventually, sleeping. 
The next morning there was a cook-off in our kitchen. Poor Joe would have benefited from beta-blockers or heavy drinking, as the thought of 5 girls given free reign in our kitchen sent him into heart palpitations. 
I’m happy to report we all survived and Maya is a happy 11 year old who has made some very lovely friends.