In which scorpions and nun's farts are served as food, and Maddox falls in love

Yesterday was market day in Cotignac. So, while the kids were at school, Quincy and I wandered from stall to stall under a sunny sky, filling our shopping bags with sheepsmilk cheeses and olives and mushroom-and-hazelnut tapanades and lots of green beans, lemons and Spanish clementines. Also a whole roasted chicken and an enormously tasty ham that (if I accurately interpreted what the meat-man said) was cut from a baby pig. And if you're appalled that I'm not appalled by that, I'll remind you that although I do still consider myself a vegetarian, I'm a non-practicing vegetarian. And besides, this is France.

More than any of us, Jasper has been trying new foods here in France. It helps that she eats lunch at the school cantine practically every day. Some days she discovers new things that she loves; other days not so much. For instance, one day last week the menu included assiette de la mer. When she got home in the afternoon, I asked her how it was. She liked the sauce, she said, but not the scorpion that was in it.

Scorpion! I flashed back to when Jasper was just one year old and we lived for six months in Sri Lanka. Quincy was brushing her teeth before bed one night and very nearly stepped on a scorpion on the bathroom floor. I was already almost asleep, but I pushed aside the mosquito netting and climbed out of bed to deal dutifully with the arachnid intruder. It turned out to be scarier than I'd anticipated. The scorpion wasn't one of those slim little pinkie-sized things I remembered from my days in the Arizona desert. This Sri Lankan scorpion was a big as a banana, with monstrous claws and a thick black cord of a tail that arched menacingly toward me, making me acutely aware of the fact that I was entirely naked. It took a while, and was a bit of a struggle, but I eventually chased it out into the hallway and then cornered it on the stairs where I clubbed it to death with the end of a broom.

This is the image that jumped to mind when Jasper told me of her distaste for the scorpion she was served for lunch. "Scorpion?" I asked. "Well it looked like a scorpion," she said, "I didn't eat it all." Turns out, though, that it wasn't a scorpion. It was a prawn.

Maddox hasn't yet been sampling such a wide range of local foods. There's a cantine at his preschool but he hasn't been eating there. We figured he needed a bit more time to acclimate to the new school, new rules, and a new language that he still (purely on principle, I think) refuses to speak. The plan is for him to start eating at the cantine at the end of this week. In the meantime, he's been eating lunch at home.

Lately the kids have been bringing home lots of xeroxed reminders and announcements about the upcoming celebration of Carnival. It's a very big deal around here, with parties and parades, and all kids are expected to dress up as some legendary storybook character. We've lucked into a secondhand homemade Robin Hood costume that would be perfect for Maddox (among other things, there's an awesome leather vest and a green felt hat adorned with real feathers) except for the fact that he wants absolutely nothing to do with it. He's at that endearing / irritating age where he still regularly says hilarious things (such as the other day when, apropos of nothing, he said "I can feel my testicles growing"), but also increasingly refuses to listen to good advice. His stubborn rejection of Robin Hood is just one example. So too is his principled refusal to speak French.

Yesterday Maddox brought home a notice about a Carnival party at his preschool. Parents are asked to provide a snack of some sort, and the announcement listed several suggestions: "des crêpes, des beignets, des pets de nonne, etc." Pets de nonne? My trusty old French-English dictionary wasn't any immediate help there. So we got onto the computer for a little on-line translation: "Nun's farts." Nun's farts? Yes. Apparently, they're a popular pastry.

Also this week Maddox went with his preschool class on a field trip to a local olive orchard. He was very excited about it. When Quincy asked afterwards what he did in the olive orchard, Maddox said that he played. "Who'd you play with?" she asked. And he replied, "You know: my friend."

Ah yes, his friend. Her name is Hannah and, according to her mother, she talks about Maddox constantly. When Quincy dropped him off at school yesterday Hannah was already there; Maddox ran up to her and wrapped his arms around her in a long hard hug. When I returned him to school after lunch, the gate to the schoolyard was locked and so we waited outside the gate for a few minutes until a teacher appeared to unlock it. A bunch of other kids – the ones who stayed at school for lunch in the cantine – were running around inside the schoolyard. One of those kids was Hannah and she immediately ran over and grasped desperately at Maddox's hands through the iron gate. Meanwhile, Hannah's best friend (who speaks some English) ran up and, gesturing toward Hannah, told me this: "She is the amour of Maddox." Neither Hannah nor Maddox said anything. They just stood there, holding onto each other through the iron bars, like something you might see during non-conjugal visiting hours at a penitentiary. It was pretty charming.