Well we made it to France

So, we made the journey from Germany to France on June 13, 2009. It was a long, long, long drive. We left in the evening and stopped someplace in France just beyond Switzerland at around 1:30 AM. We were bone tired and all the hotels made us take 2 rooms because we have 3 kids. Next time I will lie about the number of children I have. It is ridiculous. So when we got to the rooms Xavier and I had an argument as to where the kids would sleep. He won and Anais and Austin slept alone in a room, while XAvier, Nicolas and I slept in our room. So I heard lots of mischief and had to be cop for awhile. Finally, I thought they were asleep around 3 AM and went to sleep myself.

It's a good thing I can smell smoke in my sleep....

When I awoke to smoke fumes and I heard Anais and Austin giggling in the next room. I flew out of bed as pictures of the hotel burning down flashed across my mind, I wondered why aren't the smoke alarms going off? When I got to their bedroom, they had shut the adjoining door and also shut the door to their bed. When I got inside, smoke was pouring out of the lit table lamp next to Austin and he was standing there stark naked laughing. I asked " What is going on in here?" as I ran to the lamp to stop the fire. He answered, "We're baking a cake." : )

I turned off the lamp and pulled the smoldering clothes out of it that were wedged inside the lamp shade. I found Austin's PJ's closest to the light bulb. There were holes and it was covered in embers. I attempted to blow the embers out, but they merely flew off his jammies and landed on the bed. Naturally, starting a fire on the bed is a really bad idea, so I put his PJ's, smoldering embers and all in the sink. Needless to say, his pyjammas are ruined, so he was forced to sleep naked for the rest of the night. I put him in the cot next to Xavier and I went to sleep with Anais in her bed. All was well for the rest of the night.

The next day, we drove another 7 hrs to get to the gite since we didn't have keys to get into the house. The weather was already better in France, the vegetation had changed and it was a lot warmer and SUNNIER!!!!

Oh the sunshine, dry air and the smell of lavender. Oh happiness, oh joy. My nose was in shock. I've had a sinus infection since the year 2004. My nose tried very hard to get a sinus infection. I kept sneezing and sneezing and waiting for it to come, but it never happened. I just sneezed and was well again. How crazy.

KIDS:

Anais spoke French right away and understood that here she doesn't speak German or English. I have to say, I was pretty impressed with her attitude. Sometimes she would cry and say she missed her friends and Martina, her teacher. She also missed Lukas and Eva our neighbors. I felt terrible for her and wanted to get her to make friends as soon as possible. I put the kids in summer camp locally for July and August and started Nicolas in daycare as well. Anais made a few friends in camp and was ok happy. We met the only other American in Greoux, she is from the East coast and is a writer. I thought I was going to faint from joy. I always wanted to meet writers, but I never know any. They always seem so mysterious. Our kids made friends with their kids, so the summer went by without too many hitches.

Austin hated camp and hated France. He wanted to go back to his friends in Germany and asked a lot after his best friends. I explained he won't be able to go to their house because Steingau is too far away now but he'll make other friends here. He didn't much care for that answer. The camp counselors had a lot of grief with Austin because he made no pretense about hating camp. He couldn't understand and would refuse to join the group. He told me no one likes him and he tried to speak to the other kids in German at first, then English. Some of the camp counselors could speak English and tried with him, but he was also unresponsive.

Nicolas reacted ok to daycare. It took the entire summer to slowly get him acclimated to going to daycare, starting at 15 min and finally getting up to 3 hrs. That was a little frustrating. The daycare ladies had an issue because Nicolas doesn't speak French. Mind you, Nikki was barely a year old. They wanted me to speak French to him at home. It was bad memories of Kinderpark with Angelica all over again. I told them I will not speak French to my son, but will do baby sign if they like. Having already taken a course, we quickly ran through the different signs. Well, guess what? German baby sign is totally different from French baby sign, so I had to learn their sign language and practice it with Nicolas. I told them to keep speaking french and using the sign together so he will learn quickly. He's a clever little chap afterall. He can't speak much but can say "It's what?" and "What's that?" That took me a long time to understand. He would point to things and ask what they are. So, when I finally got it, I would tell him the words and repeat them and he would laugh and laugh.

The house is ok. We live in a village of old people. The old and ailing come here to Les Thermes. It is an old Roman Bath House filled with doctors curing every need. So, in the summer Greoux is flooded with silver haired people. I heard the numbers are this: Greoux has 2,500 permanent residents and in the summer we have 40,000 residents, all of whom are retired and ailing. At least it's not Lourdes. Lourdes, France is an interesting place to visit at least once in your lifetime. If you can stomache thousands of people working for the Red Cross, monks, and thousands upon thousands of nuns and little dime store shops of the virgin Mary paraphanilia, and of course the worst form of the sick and ailing, all of whom are very close to death. It is a famous and sacred place where some random farm girl claimed to see the virgin mary appear like 20 times. There is a natural spring that has become holy, so the sick and ailing cue up to be dipped into the holy water to be cured of their ailments.

I just received my carte de sejour so I am legally able to work in France now. My sisters came to visit for about 1 month total. Rhonda kept me very busy as we discovered the area. My favorite is still canoeing in the Gorges du Verdon. Sharone and I went hiking in the Calanques near Marseilles. that was really fun. Oddly, I had never visited the Calanques before. So, I think we had a good time. Life felt very calm after they left.

I haven't experienced much culture shock, just with everyone smacking their kids around. That was a little shocking. No such thing as time outs in France, just smack, smack, smack. Walking across the street, bam. Walking through the grocery store, a little yelling, then smack. Out on the play ground, the kid doesn't come over fast enough or share his toys, smack. The amount of light and semi-frivilous smacking was a little shocking. Beyond that, people were so nice to me. They always talk. There is a lot of banter. I think banter is important with people in the south. It is important to chit chat, who'd a thunk it?

That is all the news there is here. Oh yes the kids got into the international school in Manosque. They are in the English-French section. So they have English 2 days a week and French 2 days a week. They are also in FLE which is French for foreigners to get their French up to speed with the other kids. Hopefully the next news I will give you, I will have a job.

Talk to you again soon. I do think about all of you often. Take care everyone!

Love,

Jennel