French stores whose names I enjoy saying:

• Darty 


• NafNaf 


• Quick


• Podmod


• BUT


• Ed


• FNAC

and my personal favouite:

• Flunch

Le mecredi

So, kids in France through elementary-level don’t have school on Wednesday.  Don’t ask me why.

  {OK if you must know…the best I’ve understood it is: something to do with the official split between church and state in 1905. After this, the Catholic church asked to have Wednesdays off, so children could receive the religious education they had previously received at school.  So they got Wednesday off -but had to make up for it on Saturday mornings. So most French kids used to have school on Saturday morning - but a few years ago Nicolas Sarkozy made good on a campaign promise and passed a law that young kids can’t have school on Saturday -but then they didn’t have to go back on Wednesday}

ANYWAY - our kids don’t go to school on Wednesday.  Which to me seems to actually make for a great rhythm for a small child. Basically they have: 2 days of school - break- 2 days of school - longer break. Lather, rinse, repeat.

In some ways it feels like they are only ever going to school on a Monday or a Friday -because it’s either their first day back - or their last day before a break. This weekly schedule also means that many activities are set for Wednesdays: gymnastics, rock-climbing, skiiing, ballet, music lessons etc.   Our youngest two are in gymnastics, with Jonah having settled on rock-climbing.  (After all - he is taking Fencing at school - so that is already taken care of)

Last Wednesday we went for a hike on a trail just up the road from us. It was a beautiful sunny day - and we had a great hike.  This Wednesday afternoon (activities in the morning, then lunch,then homework) we went for a bike ride along the same trail.

Unfortunately -PhD studies do not seem to follow the same rhythm - so now that I have started my courses this may be the end for me.

more eating

After a couple hours of eating amazing canapes….we started eating this incredible meal.  We ate for hours…almost 5 in total!

 

 

  The cheese course included 3 different regional cheeses.  The gratin dauphinoise was by far the best I have ever eaten…served piping hot and super creamy.  Thank you to Stephen and Dervla for an incredible dinner!  

French-Irish Wedding Extravaganza - the part where we eat (some more)

So as you would imagine, standing around and eating incredible Canapés (Hors d’œuvre, appetizers, whatever it is that we are supposed to call them) non-stop for hours really makes one hungry.  Well lucky for us [luck o’ the Irish I suppose] we were in for a serious meal.

We were lead into a candlelit stone barn that had tables from one end to the other.  {don’t worry - Susan will fully cover the food in a subsequent post}  At one point when we wandered outside (between some course, and the one to follow) -  we stepped out into the darkness of the château grounds that was punctuated by hundreds and hundreds of candles. There were candles lining the paths leading back to the chateau itself, there were candelabra in the trees with dozens of candles in them.  It was like something that you would say “wouldn’t it be cool if…” - but you’d never actually pull it off. Later Derv & Stephen lit what appeared to be a firework atop the wedding cake, and the dancing began.

Oldies like us had finally had enough dancing and late-night capers - so we got back to our lovely B&B and noticed - that we did in fact have reason to be tired as it was 3:30 (or as I call it “half seven”). Apparently we missed out on another 3 hours of dancing etc. that continued after we left.  (sheesh - kids these days)  Wait - they’re only a few years younger than me (sheesh - people without small kids these days).   The next day we stopped in for a quick bit at the pool-side party / Sunday lunch before we started our drive home. More great food, outside, in the château courtyard.

So we finished with our 650km drive home - to fetch our sleeping kids - and get them home as there was school for them the next morning at 8:30.

Moral of the story:

If you get invited to a château in the wine-country of South West France for the wedding of a lovely Irish lawyer from London and a cycle-crazed Irish lawyer …. you go.

French-Irish wedding Extravaganza (Part Deux)

So on Saturday at ‘half three’ (that’s 3:30 - and not literally ‘half of three’ - which would be 1.5 - or 1:30 as I would have guessed) the wedding itself got going.

The wedding itself was a beautiful affair.  We weren’t quick enough to beat out the relatives who sat on the side that was in the shade.  So 3:30 - in a chair facing directly to the sun in the South-West sky, in a black suit. It was a bit warm - but singing “Lord of the Dance” and trying not to slip into my horrible Irish accent was plenty of fun.

From the moment Derv & Stephen walked back down the aisle, the champagne bottles were popped - and from then until supper there was NON STOP food & drink.  All sorts of things from frois gras, salmon, gespacho, melon soup, oysters, some sort of fruit sculpture, smoked salmon, shallots…..I can’t even remember half of it. This was over on the other (shady) side of the chateau, overlooking the vineyards.  This went on while a silver-haired frenchman played what one could only imagine were old french love songs on his accordion.








Our friend Jenn took us on a bit of a tour of the chateau - there were massive rooms with huge open stone fireplaces and bear-claw tubs.  There were so many rooms - and I couldn’t count the number of times I heard : “this one room is bigger than my flat in London!”  There was a theatre room in the basement where the requisite slide show was being played, there were massive winding stair-cases, and a children’s playroom (next to the children’s dorm) that felt the size of our first house.

Then it was on to the barn for the supper…

Ça Marche Comme Ça

Some of you have noticed that - due to overwhelming demand (i.e. one person) - we added the ability to subscribe to the blog (so you don’t have to waste all those valuable seconds of your day looking at pictures of us to see if there is anything new).  To do so - just click on “subscribe” up there at the top [see how easy I make this] and you will have options of email, RSS etc.   Also, due to demands of our readership (i.e. Susan mentioned it) we have added a little groupie thing over there to the right.  Sign in and watch your indie street credibility soar! 

French-Irish wedding Extravaganza (part un)

This past weekend we drove from here to close to Bordeaux, which is basically a 650km road trip from one side of France to the other.  We had friends take care of our kids for the weekend (yes, yes - those are good friends) so we could make the trek just the two of us.

Quick Background:  last time we lived in France we had two really good friends - an Irish and a Scottish girl who lived in an apartment just across the river from us.  We hung out a lot with them - saw them once in Edinburgh a year after they moved- and haven’t seen either of them for about 9 years now!  Well we were fortunate enough to have moved back here a few weeks before our lovely Irish friend Dervla had her wedding at a chateau outside of Bordeaux.

We dropped off the kids at school on Friday - and headed west. From here to Bordeaux the drive is mostly through this massive mountain range right in central France - which was ever-so-creatively named: Massif Central.  From there we started to descend towards the wine country of South West France. It was nice weather for the drive- but started getting hot by the time we arrived mid-afternoon.

On Friday night there was a dinner at Chateaux Pitray (but not the Chateau Pitray that we drove to first…) It was a great supper out in the courtyard with a small pond, candlelight, next to the river etc.

The next morning we looked around the countryside a bit and visited a vineyard with some Irish relatives just about 800m down the road from where we were staying. There were loads of Irish friends and family there- as well as lots of English and Scots (so in case you thought I was writing with an accent - that’s why)

Once I saw the temperature hit 30 in the early afternoon- I knew it was time to get on my black suit -and get ready (read: deodorant) for an incredible outdoor wedding.

à la bibliothèque

We stopped by the little library in the village on our way home today and got each of the kids a library card of their own (although somehow my ability to spell in French means that there is now a “u” and an “r” at the end of Matea…..)  It’s a quaint little library, with two older ladies working the front desk. (they seemed about as comfortable with their computers as I do with the method by which I should eventually get my long-term-visa)

It’s a bit harder for the older two to have to pick out “little kid” books, but for now that’s their level of French comprehension.  Well, also some Tin-Tin and Asterix were in the mix - but I’m afraid the kids really won’t fit in well if they don’t have some rudimentary understanding of classics like those.

This is how we roll.

First Day of School

Last Thursday was the kids first day of school. New country, new language, new/no home, new friends, and then new school  - hence we were expecting a very smooth and easy rentree (note: english really needs a single noun for “back to school time” - can some of you work on that?)



Luckily when we met with the school Directrice a week or so ago we were able to convince her and Jonah’s teacher that perhaps having him also skip a grade would not be the best thing for him. Since he was born in 2001, he should be in CM1, but according to what grade he was in last year in Canada, he should be in CE2 (don’t ask me what any of that means, or what it stands for, or what it’s equivalent to - I am just now actually remembering that our kids are in Moyenne Section, CP and CE2).

The school seems great. It is a very small school in the village, behind the church, and next door to a nunnery. There are a few English families in the school, so Matea & Jonah each have an anglo-buddy sitting next to them to help them survive. Micah’s teacher has great English, and said she will give him whatever help he seems to need. It’s a private Catholic school - which seems to be more important for the ‘private’ part than the ‘Catholic’ part. The directrice, and teachers at this school seem much more interested in helping kids do their best, and not beating them into memorizing the correct things so that they will do well on tests.
For more on that phenomena, see this article forwarded to me from my brother-in-law.

Luckily we had LOTS of help trying to figure out what the immense list of school supplies was - as things like ‘plastic-envelopey-things-for-a-binder’ were not part of my vocab previously.

Le Pont du Gard

On our way home from le Midi we made a small detour off the autoroute to stretch our legs, let the blood flow back into my white-knuckled driving hands, and let the kids do what all small children love best - look at ancient Roman ruins!

The Pont du Gard is an absolute engineering marvel. It was part of a 50km aquaduct system that carried water from a spring to the Roman city of Nimes. It drops only 12m over that entire length - so the layout and building of the entire system had to be incredibly precise - which is impressive considering 1st Century building equipment.

We walked around a bit - wandered over to the other side - and then cooled off in the river, and the kids chased fish before we had to get back in the car to drive back home - as all three of the kids started school the next morning.