Friday, April 2, 2010

Allez, Jack, allez! (or, running in his father's footsteps?)

One of the activities we've heard about from Jack these last weeks is that his class was training for un cross. It involved all of the 7 and 8 year olds running and running, in preparation (apparently) for a big competition. (Part of me thought it was just a clever way to have a class full of 7 and 8 year olds sit still -- first make them run for 10 or 15 minutes!).

Livie and Katie's class would also be a part of this event, but after a few days of watching them run without much enthusiasm (or without really running, from what we heard), the teachers kindly suggested that they might like to stay with the younger students who would not have to run. Liv was pleased with this plan. Katie thought she could do it...and in fact, she had marks on her hard showing that she completed some laps during the maternelle's training runs,  but in the end she was just as happy to stay and read books.

As with many of our school experiences, we were pretty unsure of what to expect. Tempermental weather kept changing the plans, too (would it rain? would they have the picnic first? would the class walk from school or would students take a bus?). The many notes home with changes of plans stretched the limits of some of my French vocabulary and I had to sheepishly ask a French father at the bus stop one morning if I had made a mistake sending Jack's running shoes and giant water bottle to school (I had, as the race was postponed and so Jack had an unnecessarily heavy backpack that day. Sorry, Jack!)

But... today was the big day. All of the children from the village schools in our area were there, as well as children from another grouping of village schools. Jack ran seven laps in 10 minutes... and had a blast, he said.

Next thing you know, he'll want to start running through vineyards for wine.

Allez, Jack, allez!

(And thanks to Geraldine, who managed to get these great shots!)

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