Letters, love, and lemurs from home

The mailbox (both real and vitual) has been pretty good to us in France and especially good to us this week.

In the last few weeks, there have been Easter cards from both sets of grandparents, care packages from friends and family, postcards and even a few real letters. In the age of the internet, we love every piece of "real" mail.

And then, this week, a package arrived from some Lethbridge friends, Amy and Damon, that exceeded anyone's wildest dreams (well, mostly Olivia's). And in it...was.... *drumroll please*... Foo-Foo's cousin, a lemur in disguise.

Really.

We have no idea what exactly Foo-Foo's cousin (tentatively christened Noo-Foo) is disguised as... a monkey? a bear?... but it was one of the happiest pieces of mail to ever be opened in this lovely house. You may be interested to know Foo-Foo's cousin doesn't giggle, but if you press its tummy, it makes its own (annoying) noise -- more of a space-aged zoom-zoom-boing. We will not take it near any chanting monks, I promise.

And while the Liv was thrilled with her newest acquisition, Katie was delighted by a Hello Kitty stuffed animal (also in disguise) which seemed to be a nice foil to the little lemur. Jack has been playing nonstop with his robotic bug (confidently christened George), which has antennae that can sense contact with objects and backs up and turns.

Yeah. Pretty cool. Thanks Amy and Damon!

And then Friday morning, Jack woke up to a LONG email message from his teacher and class in Canada. He has written a few postcards these last months (in French, and in cursive even, showing off his newly-acquired skills), and was thrilled to read comments from each member of his class (in French, typed by his teacher).

Some of the comments were a bit bittersweet -- a few students are moving away this spring and so were saying goodbye. A few from some of the girls in his class mentioned how they were sure he would be VERY intelligent and speak French so well when he got back. Others just said they missed him, and they hoped he was having fun. One of Jack's closest friends in the class, the amazing Ailene, thanked Jack for the cool pen he sent for her birthday... which also let the class know that while THEY were getting postcards from France, she was getting a pen (always good to make those distinctions clear).

Jack read the messages, and then wanted us to read it outloud, and then he read it again. I wondered if it would bring on a bit of homesickness or longing for Lethbridge (and even wondered if it was a good idea to read the messages at all). But he went on with his day as usual (well, except for the cross, of course), and didn't say much more about it. And then later that night, after I finished reading to him, I mentioned how the Easter holidays (a two week break) was starting, and that once he went back to school, he'd have just four more weeks of classes in France.

And then he did a funny fake "sniff-sniff" and I guess I looked surprised. "You'll be sad to leave?" I asked. "Bien sur," he said. And then, because he's seven-going-on-eight, he turned over and fell asleep.

The final piece of exciting mail also came Friday -- a couriered package containing the book John co-edited titled Wild Geese: Buddhism in Canada. After several years of work writing, editing, revising, proofing, indexing, and more, to see the REAL THING is print is pretty darn cool.

Not quite as cool as the lemur's cousin, of course... but pretty cool all the same.