Well, it feels like it has been quite awhile since I have blogged. And we have been relatively busy, so I better GET busy!
This morning at breakfast Maddox said, apropos of nothing, “I want to live here forever” (of course, he pronounced it “forrreeever”). He wasn’t really able to articulate why. But, it sure beats “I don’t want to go to school,” and “How many more sleeps until we go back to Vancouver?” Ah, the capriciousness of a 4 year old!
A week ago our friend, Carol, who currently is living in Geneva, came for a weekend visit. She was our first guest here. Those of you who will be coming for a visit later should be glad to hear that we have worked out a number of the guest ‘glitches’ since she came. You know, minor details, like how to get heat into the guest house. While this probably won’t be a big deal when most of our visitors come, it was damn cold when Carol was here. I’m not going to go into the details of her visit because I believe she is working on her own blog entry to describe her visit to you. So, I will just leave you on tenterhooks for that one.
Le carnival was celebrated at l’ecole maternelle. The kids were to dress up as a character from a fable or fairy tale. I hadn’t realized there was a Spiderman fairytale. Actually, to be fair, there was only one spiderman in the crowd, which in this age set is pretty impressive. There were several Little Red Riding Hoods, a couple of Robin Hoods, some Spanish senoritas and quite a few princesses & animals. Maddox was a pirate. His costume was pretty lame (especially since he refused to put on his pirate shirt in favor of his fleece, and he tended to wear his eye patch pushed up on his head), but given that we only had one week to pull it together, I thought we did pretty well. We had been loaned a wonderful Robin Hood costume but for whatever reason he absolutely refused it. So then we agreed on the Pirate idea. We also started playing Pirate in the back yard to try to get him “into” it. So for several weekends he and Jasper ran around with handkerchiefs tied on their heads and cardboard swords and played in the backyard. It is a great garden for this sort of imaginative play – lots of nooks and crannies and hidey-holes.
We had the joy of experiencing some small town theatre, or ‘le Spectacle’. A local group put together an original show that involved interpretations of fables. They had a matinee for kids (free / by donation). It was held in a meeting room at la Notre Dame de Grace. It was pretty great. Though I didn’t ‘get’ a lot of it, I sure was charmed by the fact of it. I love theatre and there is something very sweet about small time theatre like this. I was thrown by the fact that one of the characters spoke in Italian (Come on, give me a break! I’m having enough trouble in French, here!). And also, while I was familiar with some of the fables, some of them were new to me (The Bat & the Two Weasels?) and some of the references to particular songs etc went right over my head. It made for a nice day though (we walked up the hill to the church, on the route of the penitents), and the kids loved it. We did get into quite a conversation with Jasper explaining penitents and the life and teachings of Jesus Christ.
We have done quite a bit of socializing over the past week. We were invited to dinner at Maddox’s girlfriend’s house. That was fun. Mark and I got a lot of French practice. Even though Sofie’s (Hannah’s mother) English is far better than Mark's and my French put together, she was kind enough to keep the conversation in French. She knows we want / need practice. As usual though, we would morph out of French when we really couldn’t communicate something and then morph back in. I like Sofie quite a lot. And since Maddox and Hannah are still in love, I think we will be seeing more of them.
This last Sunday was a glorious and sunny day and we filled it with lots of socializing with the Brenkman’s (Nathatlie & Ollie & kids). Mark started the day by going on a bike ride with Ollie. And then the family came over for a long and luxurious Sunday lunch. It was warm and sunny so we spent the day outside drinking and eating and chatting and laughing. It went on for hours. It felt very European. I loved it. When we were fully sated, and then somewhat digested, we all piled into our cars and drove up a nearby “mountain” – Mt Bession and explored around on top. We stopped at a memorial for some Resistance fighters who were killed on Mt. Bession (which was apparently a popular spot for Resistance meetings etc – lots of places to hide).
While I don’t fully agree with Maddox on the notion of living here forever, I will say that I am very much enjoying our life here.
This morning at breakfast Maddox said, apropos of nothing, “I want to live here forever” (of course, he pronounced it “forrreeever”). He wasn’t really able to articulate why. But, it sure beats “I don’t want to go to school,” and “How many more sleeps until we go back to Vancouver?” Ah, the capriciousness of a 4 year old!
A week ago our friend, Carol, who currently is living in Geneva, came for a weekend visit. She was our first guest here. Those of you who will be coming for a visit later should be glad to hear that we have worked out a number of the guest ‘glitches’ since she came. You know, minor details, like how to get heat into the guest house. While this probably won’t be a big deal when most of our visitors come, it was damn cold when Carol was here. I’m not going to go into the details of her visit because I believe she is working on her own blog entry to describe her visit to you. So, I will just leave you on tenterhooks for that one.
Le carnival was celebrated at l’ecole maternelle. The kids were to dress up as a character from a fable or fairy tale. I hadn’t realized there was a Spiderman fairytale. Actually, to be fair, there was only one spiderman in the crowd, which in this age set is pretty impressive. There were several Little Red Riding Hoods, a couple of Robin Hoods, some Spanish senoritas and quite a few princesses & animals. Maddox was a pirate. His costume was pretty lame (especially since he refused to put on his pirate shirt in favor of his fleece, and he tended to wear his eye patch pushed up on his head), but given that we only had one week to pull it together, I thought we did pretty well. We had been loaned a wonderful Robin Hood costume but for whatever reason he absolutely refused it. So then we agreed on the Pirate idea. We also started playing Pirate in the back yard to try to get him “into” it. So for several weekends he and Jasper ran around with handkerchiefs tied on their heads and cardboard swords and played in the backyard. It is a great garden for this sort of imaginative play – lots of nooks and crannies and hidey-holes.
We had the joy of experiencing some small town theatre, or ‘le Spectacle’. A local group put together an original show that involved interpretations of fables. They had a matinee for kids (free / by donation). It was held in a meeting room at la Notre Dame de Grace. It was pretty great. Though I didn’t ‘get’ a lot of it, I sure was charmed by the fact of it. I love theatre and there is something very sweet about small time theatre like this. I was thrown by the fact that one of the characters spoke in Italian (Come on, give me a break! I’m having enough trouble in French, here!). And also, while I was familiar with some of the fables, some of them were new to me (The Bat & the Two Weasels?) and some of the references to particular songs etc went right over my head. It made for a nice day though (we walked up the hill to the church, on the route of the penitents), and the kids loved it. We did get into quite a conversation with Jasper explaining penitents and the life and teachings of Jesus Christ.
We have done quite a bit of socializing over the past week. We were invited to dinner at Maddox’s girlfriend’s house. That was fun. Mark and I got a lot of French practice. Even though Sofie’s (Hannah’s mother) English is far better than Mark's and my French put together, she was kind enough to keep the conversation in French. She knows we want / need practice. As usual though, we would morph out of French when we really couldn’t communicate something and then morph back in. I like Sofie quite a lot. And since Maddox and Hannah are still in love, I think we will be seeing more of them.
This last Sunday was a glorious and sunny day and we filled it with lots of socializing with the Brenkman’s (Nathatlie & Ollie & kids). Mark started the day by going on a bike ride with Ollie. And then the family came over for a long and luxurious Sunday lunch. It was warm and sunny so we spent the day outside drinking and eating and chatting and laughing. It went on for hours. It felt very European. I loved it. When we were fully sated, and then somewhat digested, we all piled into our cars and drove up a nearby “mountain” – Mt Bession and explored around on top. We stopped at a memorial for some Resistance fighters who were killed on Mt. Bession (which was apparently a popular spot for Resistance meetings etc – lots of places to hide).
While I don’t fully agree with Maddox on the notion of living here forever, I will say that I am very much enjoying our life here.
No comments:
Post a Comment