Sunday, January 31, 2010

Weekend update

I wish I had taken a picture from our house on Thursday night. It would have shown John on Skype, talking on to Franck (one of the owners of this house), who was on his computer in Canada and who then did a conference call with his father at his computer in a house in our little village, who was (thankfully!) talking on his phone to Monsieur France Telecom about our telephone and internet woes. It was an impressive feat of technology – trying to solve our technological problem.

Apparently, it is a problem with the line to the house, and France Telecom will need to fix it. Now, we’ve only been here two weeks, but already I know enough to not hold my breath that France Telecom will be able to do that any time soon (I figure if you set the bar of expectations VERY low, you can only be pleasantly surprised). And I am so grateful to Laura and Franck for arranging a native French speaker to talk to French Telecom on our behalf. I am feeling pretty OK about my language skills for most conversations (and am remembering so much more French every day), but the telephone is SO hard. So three cheers to Franck's father!

And no one knows why we still can get Skype when we can’t get a dial tone on the phone or a regular internet connection – but we do seem to have Skype (lisnjohn1) if you need to reach us urgently, and a French cell phone if the schools need to reach us. I figure it’s a bit of a safety net to keep us connected to the world, and I'm not going to complain about it even if no one understands why we are getting it.

In the meantime, Franck and Laura have hooked us up with an internet connection at another location, where John or I go (briefly) once or twice a day to check in with the outside world.  It’s working for now – and one unintended consequence is that instead of turning to my usual daily must-reads (The New York Times online, The Globe and Mail online, etc.), I have looked instead to the many wonderful books in this house and started devouring those.

Oh yeah, books! I remember you! First I enjoyed a fluffy and fun read called Entre Nous about finding your inner French girl (full of lots of useful tips including how you can’t really buy coffee to go in France (no kidding!), advising buying fewer items of clothing but the best quality you can afford, and extolling the virtues of sayin "no" (or "non") from time to time). Then, I picked up the wonderful writing guide/inspirational tome by Anne Lamott called Bird by Bird. You know how there are books you need to read at a certain place and time? Well, this is one of those books. She strikes just the right note of teacher/friend/editor/fellow writer sharing the lessons learned... and it was just the bit of inspiration I needed – the kick in the pants to get back in the habit of writing *something* every day. We’ll see how long her pep talk lasts – and feel free to email me and encourage (harass?) me as I try to get back into the world of writing again.

The kids had a good end of the school week, although we had more snow which meant that the bus for Jack was cancelled Friday (he had taken it for the first time on Thursday and loved it) and that the kids are not properly shod for the moment. I had considered long and hard what winter wear to bring and, it seems, I made the wrong call on this one. France is generally more temperate than Canada (I can't help laughing a little as a write that -- most places in the woirld are a bit more temperate than Canada!) and often there are winters with very little snow. This, however, appears NOT to be one of those winters. So we have been putting the kids in lots of layers (which works) and sending them to school in their rain boots and two pairs of socks (which mostly works, sort of). I know I could go buy new snow boots – but what if it doesn’t snow again?

We braved the snow and bad roads to go to check email briefly Saturday morning and then (more importantly) to head to the Beaune market. At several points I thought we should turn around and go home – the roads were quite slick and it was looking worse by the minute. But when we arrived at the market, I swear you could almost hear the harps of heaven strum and the angels sing as the grey skies broke and the sun and blue skies cascaded down on all the market goers! Clearly we were meant to be there -- and we had a wonderful outing. The kids and John returned to the carousel (bien sur) and I did a quick tour to pick up a few things we needed. It wasn’t as big of a haul as last week, but still pretty good considering how little time I actually spent there (we wanted to get home as we didn't think the blue skies would last long -- and they didn't).

 
 


Pictured above, you can see the haul: six apples, eight pears, four avocados, four containers of strawberries (on special this week because the vendor wanted to go home), tapenade, walnuts, hazelnuts, dried apricots, dried strawberries, olives, a new cheese of the week (again, I didn’t catch the name... I need to bring a pen next week!), salami dried with goat cheese (DELICIOUS!), a quarter of a roasted turkey and some French beans, a Florentine baguette, the most delicious tomatoes I have ever had in January (grown in a nursery in the south of France), an umbrella, and local honey. Pas mal, n’est pas?

(Oh, and Katie and Livie are in tank tops because we were doing their laundry and pretty much EVERYTHING else was dirty.)

And a few other observations from the week:

* We passed by a high school at some kind of morning break and were surprised (although perhaps we shouldn’t have been) at the number of students smoking. Crowds of teenagers, all wearing black and grey jackets, of course, but also school backpacks, were huddled in the cold, smoking, smoking, smoking. It feels like the U.S. and Canada are quite different in this area... even when I was in high school (way back then), you wouldn’t have seen this kind of number of students with cigarettes. I wonder if they are taxed as heavily here? It would be interesting to find out if there have been any changes in who smokes (and how much they smoke) over the last few decades.

* Like in Lethbridge, it is not always easy to get details out of Jack about his day. But we did manage to ask just the right question the other night to elicit a response about the behavior of kids at school. He said the kids are wilder on the playground but calmer in the classroom. He said he’s been a little surprised at some things – seeing kids (boys and girls) throw snowballs at each other, fight, kick, wrestle, pull hair, etc. – but all of the kids involved seem to *want* to be wrestling/fighting/throwing snowballs, etc., and no one seems to be upset about it. He said none of it’s been directed at him, either, and that he’s been happy to be playing tag, hopscotch and other games with boys and girls. He added that the students are unsupervised for most of their breaks. The flip side is that he said things in the classroom are very, very calm. There has been only one time where one student was acting out in a way that Jack noticed this last week and where the teacher had to raise her voice a bit. His own classrooms in Lethbridge have been pretty calm, I think (when considering have twenty children together in a confined space), so for him to comment on this is pretty telling, I think.

* On Thursday, when I was waiting for Jack to catch the bus, I was talking to a girl in his class. She told me (unprompted... I had only asked how old she was and hearing she was almost eight, asked if she knew Jack) that Jack is a quick learner and hard worker... that there is something he doesn’t understand one day, and then he does the next. Bravo, Jack!

* We pushed our luck a bit with Kate and Liv and had them try heading back to preschool for an afternoon on Thursday. The afternoon program sounded wonderful – lots of time spent reading books and painting and playing. While they were fine, they were SO tired when we picked them up.  So for now, we will have them go only in the mornings. They both are having so much fun there. We are feeling VERY lucky about how well it’s all going for all three kids at school.

* On Monday, I will get to accompany Kate and Liv on a field trip to Dijon. In the morning, the class will go to the museum. They will have a picnic lunch, and then see some kind of puppet show (I *think*... I could be completely wrong about all of it, too!). They are very excited about this, and I am excited to get back to Dijon.

Speaking of the beautiful city to our north -- I have exchanged emails with the Harmels, the family I lived with in Dijon in 1993, and am going to try to get together with their daughters (who have many children) this week and with them in a few weeks (they have been travelling quite a bit lately). I am so excited to see them -- I look back at my time in Dijon and so many of the wonderful memories took place at their apartment, at the kitchen table with Christine, as I learned about France, French, and more.

* Two of the kids (Jack and Kate) have picked up the cold I heard actively in both classrooms when we went to visit our first week here. Sigh. I know it's inevitable (between travel, weird sleeping schedules, and new germs they haven't encountered before), but I don't like it anyway! Kate had a rough night but seems to be a lot better this morning. Jack had a rough night and seems to be about the same today. Neither has a fever,  headaches, or body aches, and Jack's doesn't sound like it's tranformed into his asthma cough (and he says it doesn't feel like his asthma cough)... so I am hoping it's just a regular old cold.  Fingers crossed for their quick recovery!

And I think that's about it. Sorry for such a long post... and apologies, too, if you email and we don't reply right away... we are mostly just checking in and making some travel plans (Jay and Judy are coming to visit next week!), and hoping for the best for France Telecom to fix the phones.

Thursday, January 28, 2010

Internet woes

Just a quick note for family and friends... we are having Internet and telephone problems at our lovely home (and thanks to Franck and his family for talking to France Telecom so we don't have to...). I am writing this from an Internet cafe in Beaune and may not be able to check in again until Saturday around the same time. If our home connection works before then, I'll send a note and let you know.

So don't worry if you don't hear from us!

Thankfully we had to have a delicious coffee while working here.... ah the struggles of life in France.

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

A view of our village

French schools are closed on Wednesdays, which suited us all just fine. The kids got a very good night's sleep at last (and slept in a bit, too), then lounged around this morning, watched French cartoons (which feels both culturally and linguistically worthwhile!), ate, played, and hung out.

This afternoon, we walked through our village to Mont-Saint-Victor, home of  a 12th century Roman chapel and a cemetery. The walk started in village, took us past the Mayor's office (he who was required to sign so many papers for the kids to go to school), and went straight up some wooden steps to the top of a beautiful hill. Tall trees and a sunny day made the hike take on a bit of a magical feeling, and all five of us walked home agreeing it was a great walk.


 

 

I love old cemeteries. When I worked at the Philadelphia Inquirer all those years ago, one of my favorite stories I did was on old graveyards in New Jersey. Just as I did back then, I wanted to know all of the stories behind the tombstones and people buried below. One of the tombstones showed at least three (and maybe more... the etching had worn off) members of the same family who all died in 1915. Was it an illness? A fire? Really bad luck? It couldn't have been the war -- not all of them seemed the right ages for that.


 

 

 

And there are so many stories that could be told from this place -- and not just the ones found in the cemetery. When I wrote earlier that this village seems old, I wasn't kidding. The village is mentioned as early as 761 AD! Laura and Franck have left a bit of a history of the village (and in English) and I am just going to go and quote most of it to let you know a bit about our new (and temporary) hometown.


 

According to Laura and Franck's history, the village "has long served as a natural gathering point. No less than five Roman roads converge in the village and its surrounding area. In 761, the village is mentioned under the name 'VILARE' which signifies 'rural habitation'.

"The word 'FAYE' became associate with the village due to the trees in the surrounding forests, known in local parlence as 'FAGUS'. In 1200, the village was referred to in written documents as 'VILER LA FAIE", which then evolved to its modern name of 'Villers-la-Faye' by 1740.


 


"The Mont-Saint-Victor which dominates the village used to go by the name the 'Mont de Villers.' This hilltop has known a long and varied history, and has over the years been the home to both a Gallo-Roman village and a fortified house in the Middle Ages. In the cemetery at the top (which was our destination during our walk today), you will find a little Roman chapel from the 12th century. A statue of Saint Abdon (one of the many patron saints of Villers) from the 15th century is still to be found in the chapel's edifice.

 


"From the deck of La Maison des Chaimes, you can see a round stone tower which is one of the remaining vestiges of the village's chateau (that was the Rapunzel tower that Katie and Livie liked so much).

"The Knights of Villers, a very eminent family of knights in the Middle Ages, built a large castle here in the beginning of the 15th century. It consisted of three large buildings flanked by four towers (the only one remaining is the one you can see from our deck, Laura wrote -- and is the one we walked by on Sunday), a chapel, and of course, a grape press. The whole ensemble was protected by a deep moat and drawbridge. If you walk down there today via the rue du Chateau (which is where we walked on Sunday), you can walk along waht used to be the moat wall (Jack REALLY liked that idea... and just wished the moat was still here).


 

"Traces of Roman and other ancient inhabitants of Villers can still be found all around the village. Laura wrote that many winegrowers in the region would find old Roman coins in their vineyards but kept it quiet because nobody wanted the government to expropriate their vineyards and start a dig... after all, she wrote, "Then what would they drink?"





It's a pretty village, too. John and I drove around a bit yesterday and actually found some scenery in and around neighboring villages that WASN'T breathtaking and beautiful. We returned home feeling even luckier to be perched on the side of our hill, surrounded by vineyards and forests and old stone houses and history everywhere you look.

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

My kingdom for a portable coffee mug?

Well, we're finding our groove more and more each day, and on the whole it's wonderful (says someone who just, for a little snack, scarfed down half a baguette with real butter from the world's best boulangerie).

But we're not fully there. For one thing, I still find it hard to get to sleep at a decent hour, which means I am not waking up as early as I should to get myself and kids ready for the day. And that means (horror of horrors) that I am not drinking enough coffee before leaving home to take the kids to their various schools.

And that's NOT a good thing.

Yesterday, Kate and Liv started preschool (maternelle) and they did SO well. The teacher was terrific, the girls played with dollies, playdough, AND paint (a trifecta of preschool fun), and they were so happy with themselves and their school when we picked them up for lunch.

It was a rockier start for me. I didn't have the same emotional meltdown that I did with Jack (having a built-in best friend in class with your children clearly makes things easier from a mother's perspective)... but I didn't have time for breakfast, much less un cafe au lait before we left the house. Despite this, after making the various rounds that morning and receiving even more paperwork to fill out -- and then meeting with the woman who runs the school cafeteria program (an experience that merits a post unto itself) -- John and I decided it would make the most sense to get some groceries sans enfants, which is clearly the best way to do it.

But what about the coffee (or lack thereof)? We didn't bring a portable mug with us to France (limited luggage and all) and, bien sur, La Maison des Chaumes is stocked with plenty of beautiful ceramic mugs, but nary a plastic portable mug to be found (not a complaint, Laura! This is clearly my own issue!). So we thought we'd look for a coffee at or near the grocery store. Alas... France has NOT been overrun by Starbucks (which I know is GOOD in the big picture) and so there were no drive-through latte windows on the way to the store and no smell of Pike Place Roast to tempt us as we shopped.

Headache growing, we got the groceries and returned to the car. There was not quite enough time to drive all the way into the center of Beaune before we needed to pick up the girls. So we drove around the outskirts of the town a bit, passing a few places where one could go and SIT and linger and have a coffee... and I know there are other places where one can stand at the counter and slam a shot of espresso (but I usually see men doing this, and always feel a bit intimidated joining them)... but in our short search, we found no where (that we could tell) where one could buy a coffee to go.

And this reality seems so very French to me. If one is going to have a cup of coffee, one should clearly be sitting (not driving or grocery shopping or dropping children at school), lingering, enjoying, and indulging in the act of coffee drinking. One should not be simply trying to mainline the caffiene straight into the blood stream!

I like this idea in principle. And if I finally start sleeping like a normal person, I should even be able to plan to wake a bit earlier to have enough time to linger over the morning cup of joe. That's the hope anyway. On verra (we'll see!).

In other news -- we took a great walk on Sunday afternoon from our house to the neighboring village of Magny-les-Villers. We walked past an ancient chateau (with Katie and Olivia shouting "Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair" as they admired the stone tower -- as in Japan, I feel like our children are much LOUDER than everyone else. Sigh...). We then wandered through vineyards to a small shrine with a statue of the Virgin Mary in it, past a mist-shrouded cemetery and then up the hill into Magny. After a short break for the kids to snack on Petit Ecolier cookies, we wrapped around tiny, winding streets of the village where Kate and Liv go to school, and then headed back on a different path through more vineyards. We figured it was about three kilometers (give or take), and the kids were great hikers.








Sunday night, we also discovered the coolest low-tech gadget I have EVER seen. It's called a Pèle Pommes and Laura (our landlady) wrote about it here on her blog, and you can order one here if you want to experience the fabulousness for yourself. It's magical! With very little effort, it peels, cores, and perfectly slices apples, pears, potatoes, and more! We had so much fun with it and peeled so many apples that I had to make applesauce for dinner that night -- and we have been enjoying perfectly peeled pommes every day since. (NOTE: as cool as this gadget is, if you are someone with whom we exchange Christmas presents (Mom -- I'm talking about you here), don't go buying one for yourself, because you just might be getting it under the next Christmas tree!)







































Jack continues to enjoy school. He said all of the girls want to hold his hand when they stand in line to head in or out of the classroom to play. Personally, I am amazed that his 7 and 8 year old female classmates are so, well, French! In just three short days, I have seen perfect shoulder shrugs, sighs, pouts, and many flicks of hair with an "eh"... well, it's kind of amazing to witness in person. I haven't yet asked him if he notices this difference... I kind of think (like always), he is pretty oblivious to it.

As far as the actual classroom goes -- well, his class is going to a movie in Nuits-St-Georges this afternoon and he was very excited about that. He is working on cursive writing every night and that seems to be Maitresse Nathalie's biggest worry (and it's not a worry for us... although we do want him to be able to read his teacher's writing at school). His French (at least according to Jack and to his teacher) is actually pretty good!

Katie and Livie are very happy at school -- although Katie has been reluctant each morning to leave the house (this was often true in Lethbridge, too, as well as in Japan) and both girls have had some meltdowns each of the last few afternoons (which thankfully pass). But Maitresse Maud says they are doing great. They play well with others but also are (she said approvingly) very independent. They love riding bikes at recess, painting and coloring, and learning songs. Their teacher has been working with the class on a few English songs... and John and I had to control our laughter last night as we heard Liv walking around the house singing "Clap your 'ands, one two three" with the perfect accent of a French person speaking English (no "h" in hands, and the same lilting tone of her teacher!).

John has done just a small bit of work and writing so far. Now that the kids are in school (and I have now braved the tiny French roads twice to pick up Jack... talk about needing courage!), he should be able to actually do what we came here to do -- his work! Again, I can only say on verra...or perhaps, on espère (one can hope!).

Saturday, January 23, 2010

Market day

Someone -- and I'm not naming names here -- might have gone a little crazy at Beaune's market today.

This was the haul we brought home:

In case you can't tell, that's about 10 pears (three different types), four apples, a beautiful head of lettuce, two containers of sweet strawberries, one artichoke, four avocados, one small chicken (already cooked on rotisserie), fresh pasta, parmesean, baguette, dried apricots, a cheese of the day (I didn't understand the name, but trust me... it was GOOD), ham, hazelnuts (already shelled), almonds (already shelled), olives from Provence, basil-olive tapenade, and three treats from a patisserie.

And the almost embarrassing thing is that this was with me restraining myself... I could have *really* gone crazy if we didn't have three kids eager to get to the carousel and only a certain number of Euros in my purse.

 

What an amazing market. Flowers, fish, cheese, fruit, chickens, bread, butter... all the delicious things you could dream of were right there, waiting to be tried and purchased. Jack and I had a REALLY good time at the nut/dried fruit/olive/tapenade stall... he let Jack try a number of dried fruits (he settled on apricots) and he let me try a number of olives (I settled on Provencale). Kate and Liv came back later and decided that next week, they would like the dried strawberries. Nice to know we can go back next week!

The kids were not 100 percent smitten with the market, though. At one point, inside a giant hall where many of the meats, fish, and cheeses were being sold, Jack made a face and said to us (not quietly), "I'm surrounded my my mortal enemies: stinky cheeses and fish!" Some of those stinky cheeses are amazing... he just doesn't know it yet!

 

 

 

 



 

 

 John even found a black coat for a mere 20 Euros. In the spirit of less luggage, he had left both his black wool coat and his black leather coat in Lethbridge and brought his multi-pocket, multi-purpose blue rainish coat. He immediately regretted leaving the black coats at home (no one -- and I mean NO ONE -- has been seen wearing anything close to his kind of coat). While we were in Colorado, he found a black wool coat with my Dad at Costco...but it had a hideous (yes, hideous) faux fur collar. The laughter of the women at my parents' house forced a return on our way out of town and John has been on the lookout for a new coat since we got here. The market coat was just the thing.




As I made my last purchases, John took the kids over to a beautiful old carousel. They loved it -- each rode twice, and picked out their rides for next time.


 
 
 

We brought our haul home, had a big Saturday midday meal, and now might all need to take a nap. What a wonderful Saturday ritual. 

Friday, January 22, 2010

Vraiment incroyable (truly incredible)

OK. So I was clearly overreacting and overemotional and over-everything. We arrived a little early to pick Jack up at school for lunch, so I listened at the door a bit. At one point, I heard the teacher call on Jack. He answered (correctly, I assume, because she said "tres bien, Jacques"). And when he came out, he had a smile on his face.

It was all just fine. He did great. She came out and said "il apprend tres vite!" (he learns quickly!) and that he did very, very well. She said she is letting him print his work (glad she didn't make him use cursive, as we only worked on writing "c", "o", and "a" last night while recognizing all the others) but that she is glad he is working on it at home.  And she said she'd be interested to hear what he thought of the class.

He said it was great. Hard at times, but mostly good, and he was pleased that he received 4 out of 10 on the dictee (the spelling test, with words he had never seen or studied before), and pleased that he understood a lot of what the teacher said. The kids were nice, the teacher was nice, and he thought it was a great first day.

Whew.

We celebrated by going to a park the girls had seen in the village with the amazing boulangerie. It was a bright, sunny day and all three had a great time being outdoors. We grabbed some quiches and other snacks at a charcuterie and then took Jack back to school nearly two hours later.

He amazes me.

He also said he was glad it was the weekend after today!