P.E. in France

This month the girls got to embark on a very interesting addition to their French schooling experience with some "special" physical education classes.  In the Fall P.E. consisted of walks to the lake or to the park to play games.  As the weather turned colder they walked to the community/activity center to do tumbling and other indoor games. This month they got to add in swimming and skiing!

A very cool thing they do across France is teach the kids how to swim, as part of the school curriculum. Apparently one of the requirements to graduate in France is that you know how to swim. In our Region every school gets 4 weeks of swim lessons, which they rotate through at the local (the only indoor) pool, for all children grades 1st and 2nd (although communities that have access to more pool time extend this all the way to 8th grade).  Every Tuesday and Wednesday morning for the month of January, they bus the children to the pool, conduct the classes, and then bus them back for lunch. Being a swim family, the girls actually already know how to swim, but I LOVE that they make this a priority for all children.  AND a bonus for the girls is that it finally gives them something they can excel at in school!!

Fun obstacles!

Teah showing off her diving skills.

Don't you love how she's rocking the Marlins cap! 

(in case you don't know that's her Papa's swim team back in California)

An interesting side note here is that because it's technically part of P.E. the teachers have to teach the swim class. The lifeguards/swim instructors (Maitre Nageur) at the pool help, but generally the pool never provides enough staff to take over the process.  This is also different from how they run pools in the U.S.  Each pool employs a staff of professional lifeguards that have chosen this as their career. In France it takes about 1000 hours of education to become a lifeguard, compared to about 25 hours in the US. They teach swimming to the local schools in the morning and guard the rest of the day. Some of them also help coach the swim team if they have one at their pool.

After speaking with some of the other parents at the school apparently in the Spring when the weather starts to get nicer again the kids get to walk down to the lake for kayaking for P.E.  Seriously!!  These kids don't even know how lucky they are.

The other pretty amazing thing the girls are getting to do for the winter is learn how to ski. Throughout this Region of France (Le Chablais) the local government offers a subsidized program for elementary school kids to learn how to ski on Wednesday afternoons.  Assuming the snow co-operates the program goes for 12 weeks (January - March).  They get out of school at 11:30, we rush home to eat and change, and then drive back to the community center to catch the giant double-decker bus at 12:15, which takes them up to Morzine (~45 minutes away).  The bus also picks up the kids from another school along the way.  They ski all afternoon and get back to the community center around 6:00pm.

This program, called L'Atel Ski, has been in place for over 50 years! Marc learned to ski with the same organisation....not so long ago. ;-) It costs each child $14 per Wednesday they choose to participate.  This covers their transportation and ski lessons.  In the Fall, L'Atel Ski also offers used gear for a very low price. We bought their ski boots (which we can sell back at the end of the season if we want) and rented their skis and poles for the season, all for ~$50 per kid. Thankfully the cousins had hand-me-down ski clothes and all we were left to purchase were the helmets; thankfully Santa helped us out with that.

Since the girls had never been on skis before (or let's be honest, even real snow) Papa decided they needed to put all their gear on and cruise around on the snowy grass before their first day. 

Totally geared up (literally), name tags on, and ready to board the bus.

Pretty sweet bus, right?!

After 3 Wednesdays of ski school, we can report that Lola is very excited about it; she really loves it. Teah, on the other end is "comme ci comme ca' (so-so). On the plus side, the bus has a TV and they get to watch a movie - nice! - on the minus side, skis and poles are heavy and hard to carry in her little arms, the shoes are super heavy and do not bend like what she is used to. The very first day Teah couldn't keep up with her sister because of the challenge of walking in the shoes and she was separated from her within minutes of arriving. She spent the entire afternoon alone with kids she didn't know and with still only a very basic french. We decided to head up into the mountains again on the weekend to give the girls a little more practice and to see if we couldn't salvage Teah's enthusiasm.

After about an hour of practicing, it was time to play in the amazing soft (seriously, cloud-like) snow. That certainly helped seal the deal for Teah to try it again the next week.

The next time was better. Lola walked slower and stayed with Teah. This time they got to ride up the lift together and actually Teah did so well in her group that she got moved up to Lola's group. Theoretically this was fantastic except now she had to navigate a steeper slope and without having a solid stopping skill yet, kept running into the snow bank.  Lots of convincing this weekend to give it another try this week. Let's just say that this little one is having to grow up really fast, but hey, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, right? Or at least that's what we keep telling ourselves.

Holiday Festivities

Just to bring everyone up to speed I wanted to share some highlights from our winter break.  Aside from Christmas we were able to enjoy some of the regional traditions during the holiday break. Back home we always spend a day in San Francisco to go ice skating and see all the Christmas decorations. This has become an annual tradition and admittedly I was a bit sad to be missing it this year.  So we decided to go to our closest big city, Geneva, and take in the Christmas sights there.  It was spectacular!!  For the last 3 years, Geneva has hosted a beautiful festival of lights, called Geneva Lux. A display of 17 works of lights by Swiss and International Artists situated throughout the city. Most of them were in and around Old Town Geneva and along the water.  We had a lovely afternoon and evening strolling through town and enjoying the lights.

One of many chocolate shops!  Yummy!!

The "bubble man" let Lola and I take a go at it.

This was actually an 8 minute light show set to music on the front of the Four Seasons. 

Definitely the most impressive of all that we saw.

We ended the evening at Starbucks for coffee and hot chocolate.  This was actually the first Starbucks I had seen since arriving in France last August.  I have to admit it was pretty exciting to see that familiar mermaid logo.  But when we got inside to order our drinks I just had to take a photo of the prices!!!

Seriously?!?!  You know you're in Geneva, Switzerland when your small "classic hot chocolate" costs almost $7.00.  It was a splurge we all enjoyed and won't be doing again anytime soon.

We also got to head up into the mountains to enjoy some ice skating in Morzine with some friends from school.  Was at first going to tackle the outdoor rink but was way too cold so we headed to the indoor rink.

Teah getting her ice skating legs back.  It's been a whole year since we were last on the ice.

Lola skating with Papa and her friend Lison.

Lola with her friends posing for one last shot before packing up the skates and heading to the closest bar for hot chocolates and vin chaud (hot wine)!

November and December have been very dry here so we didn't get to enjoy the snow or do some skiing over the break. Typically this time of year we would have been able to do both.  But apparently this is the driest winter on record for the last 60 years!!  I sort of feel like the drought is following us. For the last 3 years in California we've been living with a drought, we leave and it's been non-stop rain and snow there. We arrive in France and it's been the driest winter in 60 years!  Was starting to feel a bit jinxed but then this last week have seen lots of snow.  Perhaps January and February will still be snow filled.

Another really cool thing we got to do over the holidays was visit Le fabuleux village ou la legende des flottins in Evian.  (click on the link to read more about the village) Evian has been hosting this village for the last 10 years during the holidays. It was originally created as an alternative to the traditional Christmas Markets hosted by different villages throughout the region.  It's totally magical and amazing.  All the "flottins" are made entirely from driftwood and they're placed throughout the entire city.  We had so much fun walking around and exploring all of them.

Some other highlights of the holiday.....finishing a 1000 piece puzzle from Santa with Papa.....and the girls getting their very first haircuts from a salon.  It was Mamie's gift to them plus new dresses for New Year's Eve.

Of course doing the puzzle in our new bear jammies and ear muffs!!

Marc was determined to finish this puzzle before school started.  

Many hours were spent in that corner.

And it happened!  Literally the night before.

Teah was so excited for the hair cut, up until she was actually sitting in that chair.  

Second thoughts?!?!  And don't you just love that hilarious princess cape she's wearing!

Not one smile until it was all said and done.  She was so excited with her new cut that the next morning the first thing she asked me when she woke up was if her hair was still short?  She was afraid it had grown back over night.

Lola on the other hand was definitely more into it.  Big smiles from the beginning.

Finished product...and with "frange" (bangs in French).  Not my choice but she really wanted them, so....who was I to cramp her style.

 And then we got to round everything out with New Year's Eve.  Holy cow!  Another food orgy is all I can say to describe it.  Except this time it was a very late food orgy.  We didn't even start appetizers until 9pm, sat down to dinner around 11pm, took a break to ring in the new year with fireworks and chinese lanters, returned to the table for bread and cheese around 1am, followed by dessert around 2am!!  There are just no words to adequately describe this experience.  Of course the food was amazing, as always.

Appetizers -- oysters and champagne, sushi (that Marc made) and sake
1st Course -- salad with seared salmon
Entree -- lamb tagine with couscous
Bread and Cheese
Dessert -- citrus salad, ice cream buche de noel, and a dark chocolate cake

My sister-in-law outdid herself as always with the table setting!

The girls showing off their new dresses and haircuts.

Once dinner started I guess I was too famished to actually stop and take any photos.  Sorry about that.

Break from the table for Chinese lanterns and fireworks.

The French really do know how to end a meal!!  

Delicious, amazing desserts, which somehow you always magically make room for.

We got to bed at 3:30am and were back at Mamie and Papi's the next day at noon for lunch. Unbelievable!!  On the menu.....Braserade (a traditional Savoie specialty).  Oh boy!!  I have to say sitting down to the table with trays of raw meat staring back at me was not what I had in mind.  I honestly was still full from the night before. The girls reaction was pretty funny too.  As Mamie starts putting chunks of raw meat on their plates they look at me with that shocked expression of "are we seriously about to eat raw meat?!?!" Now of course the intent was not to eat the meat raw.  We were cooking them as we went on the table-top grill.

I ate my share (like any good French daughter-in-law would) and followed it with a lot of salad, then more bread, cheese, and dessert.  Ugh!  At this point I'm not sure the exact culprit but I was literally sick for the next 2 days.  To spare you any graphic details let's just say my body was clearly cleansing. Did I pick up the "gastro" bug that had been going around, did I get food poisoning from the raw meats that were touching my plate, or did I simply eat too much?!  Who knows, but a detox was just the doctor ordered.

Not exactly the image I had for starting off the New Year but here we are.  A New Year!!  With another 6 months to go in France and a lot of unanswered questions still in front of us.  What will this year bring?  At this point I have no idea.  But I can safely say that I'm excited to see what it will be.

Happy New Year everyone!!