School Updates

So I thought it might be time to send an update on the state of school.  The girls have finished their first trimester and Marc and I met with their teachers to see how things are going.  First our impressions, then the teachers’ impressions, and finally the girls impressions.

From our perspective the girls seem to be doing much better.  No more crying at the gate, no more tears before bed because of the stress, and more smiles at pick-up.  They seem to enjoy seeing their new friends at school and still really like lunch.  I will devote a blog post soon entirely to the school lunches here; they deserve their own post.  They get a 2-hour break for lunch and play time so I’m sure this really helps to break up the day and all the time spent at their desks.  They both seem to be doing better with homework and in starting to understand their teachers. Lola’s teacher did mention during our meeting that she now has to remind her not to talk with her neighbors in class … what a nice problem! (have to admit that this problem does run in my side of the family  :-) )  Also Téah added one day of “French School” to her schedule and she now goes every Wednesday morning by herself, which is quite an accomplishment. Although Marc had warned me, I was surprised that one of the biggest adjustments at the beginning for the girls was the style of teaching used by everyone. Lots of yelling at the kids, barking orders and threats constantly, particularly at the boys. And sure enough, the French kids don’t know any better, they just roll with it.  Actually, I believe the boys in particular are so used to it, it does not have any effect on their behavior anymore. We did have to help our girls understand that all this yelling was not directed at them and although we all miss their teachers from last year and the awareness our school has on emotional intelligence, adaptation was the only way through.

The teachers are happy with their progress, their French language teacher, Beatrice, did point out a low "buy-in" from the girls for the first month. She felt the girls had not been processing the move enough and where behaving as if they were going to return to the US soon. We both agreed with her observation, since we didn’t really have time to process the move ourselves. But over the fall, the girls started integrating themselves more socially, which in turn helped change their attitude towards their new situation. Lola has made huge progress in her cursive writing and is almost caught up with her math. Reading is still a bit behind, but that’s understandable since she is now learning to read in two languages at the same time. Téah is struggling a bit more, because of her year as a TK last year, she essentially has skipped a whole grade and is thrown into a class of kids that are expected to already have the building blocks of reading and writing. Poor Téah, she has had to grow quite a bit in 3 months. We have the alphabet down, still working on numbers, and if we are lucky, she will have almost caught up with the class by July. Téah’s regular teacher, Francoise, has unfortunately no English to fall back on to explain things to her, so Téah’s had to really figure it out on her own and that makes for very long days sitting at her desk. Lola’s teacher does have a little more English to help when needed, but Lola does come home not understanding big chunks of what happened during the day.

Now, let’s hear how the girls feel about their progress and school in general.  For consistency sake I went ahead and asked them the same questions I did at the beginning of the school year plus a few new ones.

Lola's Thoughts:

Q. What are you working on right now in school?

A. Before the break I was working on a calendar, making ornaments, practice writing cursive, learning multiplication and working on long addition

Lola's writing at the start of the year

Q. What do you like doing at recess?

A. I like playing tag prison and gamel with Jade, Roxane, Amelie, and my sister 

Note: over the Fall the girls actually got pretty into marbles and Pokemon too.  One thing that really stands out for me is that the boys and girls play together a lot during recess, on their own accord. I don’t feel like that happened as often back home.

Q. Are you still liking lunch at school?

A. Sometimes but it depends on what they serve, I like the mashed potatoes and meatballs, some of the desserts, and I always take a lot of bread

Lola's writing now -- having gone to school in the U.S. I have to admit that I can't help her much with the cursive here; many of the letters are actually written differently

   

Q. What do you think about “French Class”? – Lola is pulled out of her class twice a week to work on her French with other children in the district who are not native French speakers

A. I don’t like it much anymore because I feel like I’m missing out in my class at school and then I have to do make-up work when I get back to my class, I am learning new words in French class but I’d rather not miss out in my main class

Q. How do you feel about your progress overall?

A. I think I’m doing way better in writing, I’ve learned a lot of French and can communicate with my friends really well and I understand my teacher most of the time

Q. What do you like about school here?

A. Some of the work is fun, sometimes at the end of the day we get to do art, I like the lunch sometimes

Q. What do you not like about school here?

A. I don’t like it when I don’t understand my work and I have to wait for the teacher to come over and explain it to me, I don’t like on Mondays when I have to be at French school in the morning and then I can’t be with my friends at lunch, sometimes the kids are mean

Q. What do you miss about school at home?

A. I’m missing all my friends a lot and I miss my teachers, I miss all the freedom and the art

Teah's Thoughts:

Q. What are you working on right now in school?

A. Writing in cursive, a lot more math (learning our houses), some reading

Note: The math houses, if you're not familiar, are a way to learn all the different ways to get to a number (see photo below)

Q. What do you like doing at recess?

A. I like playing with my sister, play tag, play French games with my friends (Roxanne, Amelie, Eve)

Q. Are you still liking lunch at school?

A. Sometimes it’s yummy and sometimes it’s not, I like the mashed potatoes with butter and meatballs and the days they serve the fat fish

Q. What do you think about “French Class”? – Teah is pulled out of her class three times a week to work on her French with other children in the district who are not native French speakers

A. The school that it’s at is very overwhelming with lots of kids yelling and screaming, in the class I like to write things on the tableau (the white board), doing the morning questions with “tiki” (stuffed squirrel)

Q. How do you feel about your progress overall?

A. I’m getting way better at French and math, reading is hard, writing is a little hard, and I’m understanding my teacher better

Q. What do you like about school here?

A. Playing at recess, lunch time, going to the library

Q. What do you not like about school here?

A. The mean kids that don’t let me play with them, the mean maître (the male teacher that fills in for her main teacher), sitting all day at my desk is not fun

Q. What do you miss about school at home?

A. It’s much more fun and I really love all the play time and my friends

November Happenings

It’s hard to believe but it’s already been three months since we arrived in France.  Of course in some ways it feels like it’s been longer and in other ways it’s gone by really fast.  This last month I spent most of my days working on my first eBook, which I’m really excited is finally finished and ready for the public.   I recruited most of Marc’s time to help me with this project and as always he proved to be an incredible help.  The girls are doing better and better at school.  Both of their French continues to improve and they continue to make more friends.  At this point I think Lola’s French is even better than mine.  I’ll do another post soon giving you more details about school and how the girls are feeling about it.

This month we enjoyed celebrating my niece’s 17^th birthday and my own.  I'm not sure if all of France celebrates birthdays in this fashion but in Marc's family whenever someone has a birthday we host everyone at the birthday person's house with a feast, generally on the Sunday closest to the birthday.  My sister-in-law totally outdid herself for my niece's birthday.  

The incredible centerpiece my sister-in-law put together!!

Celebrating Margeaux!  It was the first time we were all together; Marc's parents, Valerie's parents,  Valerie's grandma, Valerie's brother's family, and us!!

Our lunch: lobster with ratatouille, rice, and arugula.  So good.  

Margeaux picked out the menu; pretty sophisticated I thought for a teenager.

The dessert spread.  Unreal!

Me and the birthday girl.

For my birthday we hosted everyone at our house and I was so caught up in the lunch that I forgot to take pictures of it.  Not nearly as fancy as my niece's party but delicious nonetheless.  

We had mussels with french fries, salad, cheese and bread, and this seriously amazing dark chocolate cake.  I honestly have never tasted anything like it before.  It's appropriately called "Bitter".

We had our first visitor from home, my dear friend Sarah, and enjoyed showing her the local sights.  We went to Annecy, Evian, Yvoire, Thonon, and Morzine.  We packed in as much as possible into just 4 days.  We had a lot of fun and it was a nice break from work.

As a side note, while we were in Annecy I had to complete the final steps to confirm my Visa.  Apparently everything we had gone through with the Consulate back home wasn't enough to secure my Visa once we were here.  Within three months of my arrival I had to complete Phase 2 (of course nobody told us there would be a Phase 2).  I had to get a chest x-ray to show that I didn't have TB, had to have a medical exam by one of the appointed government doctors, fill out more paperwork, and pay another 250 euros!!  Thankfully the girls didn't have to do this as well.  Although they claim this is it and I won't have to do anything else while I'm here, a part of me doesn't believe it.  We'll see.

On our way up to Morzine we stopped in Montrion to take a walk around the lake.  It was breath-taking but really cold.  At one point I had to leave everyone else behind to get back to the car as I literally could no longer feel my toes.  I'm seriously not acclimated to the climate here yet.

We also had our first snow in Anthy at the beginning of November.  That was the first time the girls ever saw falling snow.  They woke up and ran outside, so excited.  Of course it didn't last very long.  The mountains though saw quite a bit more and it did stick around.

We also celebrated the equivalent of Veteran’s Day here.  They recognize it as a national holiday as well but take it to a whole other level.  November 11^th is the day the treaty was signed ending World War 1.  At the exact hour the treaty was signed, 11:30am, all the church bells across France ring to signify its significance.  From 11-11:30 each town holds its own celebration in front of the church or the Marie (the city hall) remembering the war and all the fallen soldiers.  In Anthy, they had kids from the local school read off all the names and ages of each of the soldiers from Anthy that died during the war.  They also read several letters recovered from the soldiers.  It was quite an event. 

We did not celebrate Thanksgiving here.  It was just another Thursday with the girls at school all day and Marc and I working.  In French fashion I made a quiche that night.  :)

Winter is here.  It’s much colder than what I’m used to in California.  I’ve had to upgrade my winter wardrobe, thankfully with my birthday money I was able to do just that.  Looking forward to Christmas in France and very likely a snowy holiday.  Hope you all are enjoying your holidays back home.  More updates to come.

And Then There Were Two

I was really hoping this story would have a happy ending but unfortunately as life sometimes goes, we don’t always have control over the end result. 

After I published the last blog post, Reese continued to improve.  The next two days she started eating more and running around with the other two.  We saw glimpses of her former self.  We definitely thought we were out of the woods but in hindsight I think we had simply entered a more dangerous zone where she was feeling mischievous again and wandering farther away but still not fully healed and unable to move as fast as she used to.  Of course, it’s easier to notice this in hindsight. 

At some point on Tuesday afternoon, while Marc and I were working in the house, the hens were out foraging and gradually traveling farther and farther away from the house.  Before we were ready to head out we went looking for them and couldn’t find any.  We looked in all the usual places but no sign.  We decided we would just have to leave them out and hope they would come back by the time we got home.  As we started to drive away and round the corner off the driveway and onto the main road, we were startled to find one of the chickens dead on the side of the road.  At first it was hard to know which one it was.  Sparing you the details let’s just say it was obvious that she had been attacked with a clear intent to eat her.  Marc wrapped her up in a bag and took her back to the house.  Of course at this point we were half expecting that all three chickens were dead.  Marc tried searching again for the other two and eventually found Sadie wandering out of the forest.  He quickly put her back in the coop and went deeper into the other forest hoping to find the other but no luck.

When we picked the girls up from school I was dreading having to tell them what had happened.  Once we were in the car and headed home I broke the news.  Screams and tears pretty much sums up their reaction.  At this point unfortunately we couldn’t tell them which one had been killed and what had happened to the third one.  All we knew for sure was that Sadie was okay and in the coop.  As soon as we got home, the girls sprinted to the coop.  There they found Sadie inside and Zoe waiting on the outside of the coop.  This of course meant that Reese was the one who had been killed, which again in hindsight certainly made the most sense because of her previous injury likely making her more of a target.  The girls were devastated.

Each day gets a little better.  Still some sadness but the tears have dried up.  Both the girls made sweet little memory books of Reese and Teah asked me to print out a picture of her so they could always remember her.  The other two have basically been on lock-down with only 30-60 minutes each day of “yard time”.  We of course still feel torn.  Although they’re safe I hate that their “cooped” up all day.  Ugh!  As my friend Emily said, farming is truly not for the faint of heart.  The circle of life can sometimes be a very hard reality.  And we haven’t been very good at separating our feelings for the chickens as pets versus farm animals.  At this point we’re happy to still have two and hope that we can keep them safe and happy for the rest of our year here.

RIP our feisty, funny, little chicken

Birthday Mauling

This last week was my birthday.  And all in all it was a pretty good day; yoga, flowers, chocolates, shopping, lunch with the family, until we got home.  As the girls often do when we get home, they ran to the chicken coop to let the hens out to stretch their legs until night-fall would call them back to the coop.  They quickly ran back to us hysterical and in tears.  The chickens were already out of their coop and apparently the coop looked like it had been “attacked”.  Marc and I headed over to what honestly looked like a mauling:

Let me back up a minute to give you some back-story.  We’ve had the chickens now for a little over a month.  They’ve been really fun and quite delightful; in addition to providing us with amazingly delicious eggs.  I think we’ve all been surprised to discover how attached we’ve become to the chickens.  At this point they definitely feel like pets to us and we’re getting to know each of their personalities a little better and YES we can tell them apart.  :)

Reese is the most outgoing of the bunch and whenever she sees us she literally runs over; hoping there might be some food.

Sadie initially seemed to be the mother hen.  

She's very sweet and a bit better behaved than the other two.  ;)

Zoe has probably changed the most over the course of the month.  She started out as being shy and a follower of the other two.  And now she’s clearly the leader of the group and I’ve even caught her being a bit of a bully, especially to Sadie.  Pecking her to move over or taking her spot where she was comfortably lounging in the sun.  Chicken psychology…..who knew!

A couple weeks in, Reese and Zoe were getting into all kinds of mischief.  When we’re home during the day we try to let the chickens out so they can roam and forage.  Unfortunately though our yard is not completely fenced in so they do end up wandering a bit; never too far though. 

One day I was working outside a bit and had left the kitchen door open.  When I came back in I found the two of them perched under the table and not anxious to leave the house.  Another day Reese and Zoe literally disappeared for half the day.  We searched all over and they were nowhere to be found.  It was almost time to pick the girls up from school and I was getting ready to have to tell them that the chickens had disappeared when I decided I better go look one more time.  I walked up the driveway to the main street that leads to our house just in case they had wandered that far and sure enough, there they were walking up the street back to the house!!  Where in the world had they gone?  They sauntered past me and back to the yard completely oblivious to the fact that I had just stressed out for half the day imagining all the worse possible scenarios of what could have happened to them.

But the innocent mischief started to get worrisome a week ago when Marc found Reese looking rather frazzled and stressed in the neighbor’s open yard along with a bunch of feathers on the lawn.  He couldn’t find the other two!!  Again, around the time to pick the girls up from school the other two suddenly appeared in the yard; seemingly okay.  We couldn’t figure out what had happened until three days later when I was just getting up from the table to start on lunch and happened to look out the front window to see the neighbor dog, in the other neighbor’s yard, tossing one of the chickens up into the air!!  I quickly ran over and rescued Sadie who visibly seemed okay albeit with some feathers missing and a look of stress in her eyes.  Marc grabbed Luna and took her back to her house.

Luna’s house shares a fence with ours and apparently she found 2 holes in the fence where she could leave her yard and get into ours.  Pre-chickens this had been fine.  She’s a sweet and playful dog who loved to come over and play with the girls.  Post-chickens however her playfulness is clearly a problem with the chickens.  It didn’t seem like she wanted to hurt or eat them.  I think she just wanted to play but clearly it was not mutual.

Marc told her owner what had happened and of course she felt bad but claimed that she had tried to fix the holes and couldn’t get to them through the bushes that had grown around them.  Well so now of course we were on hyper alert whenever the chickens were out.  Two days later was my birthday and since we were gone most of the day we had left the chickens in their coop.  We never imagined they wouldn’t be safe inside their coop.  Clearly we were wrong, as we discovered when we got home and saw the coop in ruins. We have no absolute proof it was Luna but can’t imagine any other animal doing it.  We're pretty convinced that if it had been a fox the chickens would have been dead.

We found Zoe and Sadie pecking around and they amazingly seemed okay but we couldn’t find Reese.  We finally found her under the bushes and she was not budging.  As night was starting to fall I was finally able to coax her out.  From the looks of it she got the brunt of the attack.  I’ll save you the visual but let’s just say her backside was in a bad way.  She managed to walk back over to the coop, drank a bunch of water, and made her way into the house for the night with the other two.  It took quite a bit of coaxing as the other two did not want to go back in.  While Marc was fixing the coop fence, Zoe actually flew up on top of the coop and wanted to stay there.

It’s been four days since the attack.  Marc found both of the holes that Luna had been escaping through and was able to board them up.  No Luna since and no more attacks since?!?!  The coop is stable but not sure if it’s going to make it through the winter.  Reese is hanging in there, surprisingly.  We did some internet research, “how to care for an injured chicken”.  We did our best to clean her wounds with hydrogen peroxide and separated her from the other two.  We’ve been trying to feed her extra protein and even some garlic to help with healing and lessen the chance of infection.  She’s been sleeping a lot and only eating a little.  It’s still too soon to know if she’ll make it but today there seemed to be a little turn for the better; she ate more and was walking around more with the other two.  A little glimpse of her former self.  Although she still can’t scratch for food, today was the first day she tried to.  We're all hoping she'll pull through.

Holiday Adventures

As I mentioned in the last post, the girls had a holiday from school the last two weeks of October. Although it was definitely nice to have a break it sure did throw off our routine and made for a bit of a rough transition once school resumed again.  But we survived and enjoyed the family time.

Thought I'd share with you some of our day-trip adventures.  Since finances are tight at this point, we do have to make it another 9 months, we decided to stay close to home and explore Haute Savoie a bit.  That's the region of France we are living in.

Annecy
Despite the rain, we enjoyed a day trip to Annecy.  This beautiful town on Lac Annecy is about an hour away from us.  It's known for it's old town charm and winding canals.  I coupled business with pleasure as I had to get a chest x-ray to show that I don't have TB.  This is only one of several other things I've had to do in order for France to honor the Visa that I thought I completed in the US.  Ugh! More on this in a future post.

We had lunch at this sweet, little restaurant right on the canal.  Wood-fired pizza, salad, and....

That's right, Escargots!! (or snails, if you can't tell by the pic)

 

We actually got the girls to try one!!  Lola's stayed in.

Not Teah's though.  She tried a bit and it quickly went back on her plate.

 I just love the canals and that little cutie posing with her lollipop of course.

Mountain Trips
With the base of the Alps literally being only 10 minutes from us we enjoyed several trips in the mountains.  There are three Valleys close to where we live; Valle Verte, Valle Aulps, and Valle Abondance.  We drove all the way through Valle Aulps to the ski resort of Morzine.  We walked through the town, the girls got to ride the merry-go-round, and we enjoyed delicious baguette sandwiches before heading back home.  Marc's brother has a chalet in Morzine that we will be fortunate enough to visit during the winter for skiing so I will definitely speak more on Morzine in future posts.

We also explored Valle Verte a bit and hiked up to the top of Mont Forchat.  The girls actually did it with only minor cheerleading from me along the way.  It was a beautiful view at the top.  We could see the mountain tops and the Lake; a 360 degree view.

When we got back to our car a beautiful, but quite large, mountain cow was waiting for us!  

Thankfully she didn't mind us too much.

Along the route to Morzine is the Abbey in Saint Jean d'Aulps.  They had a monastic market one Sunday afternoon, which we visited.  The Abbey is a former Cisternian Monastery and was founded in the 11th century!! It had a great museum inside chronicling the history of the Abbey and the feuding Lords in the area.  I felt like I was back in Ken Follet's Pillars of the Earth (if any of you have read this book or watched the mini-series, you know what I'm talking about).  It was fun to read up on the history a bit.  That is definitely one thing that continually enchants me about France. There is so much history that we just aren't accustomed to living in America.  We forget how young our country really is.

Had a "fun" talk with the girls about corporal punishment for bad behavior.  Ha!

Inside the Abbey's Cave

Abeilles = Bees (in case you couldn't tell by the adorable bee houses behind the sign)

We have a bit of a North Face ad going here.  Ha!

They have a beautiful herb garden.

The ruins of the Abbey.

The Market had an array of local goods but of course we only took a photo of the beers!

Visiting Friends in Geneva
We rounded up our holiday by visiting some long-time friends of Marc's family.  We always make it a point to see them when we come for a visit.  They live just outside of Geneva, so we got to go into Switzerland for the day.  It was a lovely day and we took advantage of the weather by walking around their village.  Geneva is actually surrounded by France.  So part of the hike actually took us to the French border which had a little sign marking it and felt a bit odd to be straddling two countries like that.  The walk also took us right by the CERN particle accelerator (which is underground).  That was also exciting and strange.  If you don't know what CERN is it's the European Organization for Nuclear Research and they operate the largest particle physics laboratory in the world!!

Holding their adorable long-haired Guinea Pig, Crunchy. 

Why walk along the trail when you can run through the vineyards!

We also interspersed our day-trips with some lazy days at home where the girls got to have lots of Barbie and Chicken time.  They're two favorite activities currently.  Not so much the Barbies but the chickens are definitely becoming one of my favorite past-times as well.  They continually delight me. I never realized just how much fun they would be or just how mischievous!  More to come on their shenanigans in a future post.