No, it's not always quite so amazing

The last few posts have been a bit larger than life, and I realized that it may look like our existence right now is made up of big sunshiney trips to Paris and seven hour gourmet meals every day.

It's not.

In fact, a lot of our life here looks much like it did in Lethbridge. So much of the day is focused on the routine and admittedly boring (but necessary) jobs of preparing meals, cleaning up from meals (marveling each time at just how messy the floor can get -- it never got that messy before kids, and without a dog, it is worse than ever), doing laundry (which we do quite often as we didn't bring that many clothes), keeping the house clean, getting groceries, doing our work, driving kids to and from school on school days, emailing or calling  family when possible, paying bills (almost all of them online, thankfully), and the countless fun and not so fun jobs of life with three kids (wiping bums, helping wash hair, trimming nails, resolving (or avoiding) sibling conflicts, taking walks, helping with homework, trying to help them write thank you cards, finding favorite toys, building Lego, reading books and more).

But as much as I love the rhythm and routine of these parts of my daily life, I woudn't want to write a blog about it -- and I am not sure that anyone would want to read it!

In addition to the mundane, there are parts of life here than are, in fact, less than perfect.We just found out today that Lauren, the eldest daughter of our friends who came to play Sunday, broke her wrist when she fell running down from Coconut Mountain with Jack. It didn't swell up and she was able to move it some on Sunday, so everyone (me included) thought it was just a sprain. But one trip to the ER this morning after it continued hurting, and Lauren returned home with a cast, some pain medicine, and a good story to tell.

Another less than perfect part are the language struggles. It is 1000 times better for me than it was in Japan, and for that I am grateful. I take every opportunity I can to practice with real French speakers (the nice matron across the street who was gardening while I waited for Jack's bus, the grandfather walking home from dropping his grandchildren at the bus stop, the baker at the boulangerie, the parents of Jack's friends, the kids' teachers, just about anyone) and I have found I can keep up with quite a bit of any given conversation.

But there is a big difference between quite a bit and all... and what happens in those missed parts ranges from the amusing to the possibly serious. For instance -- I know for sure that I agreed with the grandfather walking home today that the Quebec accent is quite difficult to understand (I found the same thing to be true). But I may have also agreed that Canada's prime minister, or maybe it was France's prime minister, was a horse's behind. Or perhaps simply that one of them was riding a horse once. I'll never know, but I was nodding enthusiastically.

On the less amusing side -- Jack came home from school today and reported that his teacher said there were two men wearing sunglasses and driving a white car in the village where he goes to school who were possibly kidnapping children. But as soon as those words were out of his mouth, he added that he wasn't exactly sure about that. He doesn't think anyone HAD been kidnapped -- yet. It may have just been a lesson in not talking to strangers, and then two men in sunglasses *could* be riding around the village looking to kidnap children. The teacher, Jack added, did tell them to not talk to strangers.

Ah, such clarity for everyone. We will be asking the mother of Jack's friend who is coming to play tomorrow exactly what the teacher said -- and in the meantime, John kept all three of them in closer range this afternoon when he took them up to Les Chaumes to play (just in case!). While they were there, John reports, three of the four cars that passed by happened to be white -- including one that looked especially sketchy to newly paranoid parents. (As John stared the car down, Jack reassured him with exasperation and a smile that "it doesn't mean they're ALL criminals, dad!")

Also on the less-than-fabulous side is that things are very expensive here. Aside from baguettes and wine, almost everything here seems to cost more than it does in Canada, and much more than it does in the U.S. (We are especially aware of this as the girls' shoes are getting tight and replacing them will not be a cheap endeavor). But a blog complaining about that would quickly grow boring (I think), so we just do our best with the budget and figure we'll have lots of time in Lethbridge to build our savings account back up.

There are other parts that are less-than-perfect. I think we have all at one time or another had moments of being lonely or homesick or exhausted or frustrated or annoyed and more. But thankfully those have been just moments, and not days (or weeks or months!) -- and when they happen, we try to remember that even if we had stayed in Lethbridge, we would have all had moments of being lonely, or bored (and wishing we were travelling), and exhausted, frustrated, annoyed, and more.

It might be because I'm definitely a glass-half-full kind of person, or maybe because I like to write the kinds of stories I also like to read (the funny stories, or the unusual stories, or the French stories) -- but at any rate, you can be sure that in between the burning of straw bon hommes, between trying smelly and stupendous cheeses, between making the kinds of friends you want to stay in touch with always, and seeing great sights... there is a lot of regular life happening here.

Or at least as regular as life in a small French village can be. Did I mention how, on my way home from a run yesterday, I met a man walking his tiny dog and his ugly donkey down the street?


Really. And that's just not something I'd ever expect to see at home.