Jouer

To meet Solie (next to Eleanore) and Eva (next to Frances),

watch this video:

Do you notice how hard it is for them to say Eleanore? No one can do it. Not even adults. It's funny. Frances is easier but hard, too.

Hi. Today was Wednesday organic market and a cooking class. We made carrot cupcakes but there were also onions and sweet potatoes in it. They were so good.

Then we took Eva and Solie to the park. We made a quick stop at the candy store for caramels and chocolate olives, mmmmmmm, and then ran down to the grass and river and acres of blooming flowers. Frances and I both want to say something about the day.

Frances:

Flowers: I was making little bouquets of little yellow flowers for Eva and Solie and Solie and Eva were making flower chains. They took a flower and held it and then they took another flower and tore the top part off the stem and they stabbed the stem of the first flower through the head of the second flower. And on and on and on.

Solie teaching Frances how to make her flower chain.

Eva is happy. She touches me and she kisses me. And when she was trying to tell me something in French and I couldn't understand, she put her hands on my heart.

Today was a much better day than the day with only Solie.

My mom says, "So you all know, Frances is full of life and joy and vigor when the sun is up, but when that sun goes down, and when her belly is full, she cannot keep her brain running or her eyes open. She would talk more but she's so sound asleep on her feet that she just cannot. We should write this blog in the daytime ... for her."

Eleanore:

Before we went over to the flowers, we played some games.

First we played Lu (we're not sure how to spell it, but it sounds like "LOO"). Lu is tag.

Then we played what we call Uncle Sam but we didn't say all the speehes in English for it. The person who was "it" called out a color in French and then the game continued as it normally does.

The next game we played was "cache-cache." That is just Hide and Seek. We counted to 40 in French (yikes) and we hid in the surrounding Roman Aqueduct. Instead of saying, "here I come," Solie and Eva said, "J'arrive!"

We do "inky-binky-bonkie" to decide who is "it."

They do this (watch the video):

(Eva hiding on a tree trunk)

(Frances hiding in the aqueduct)

(Eva's turn to "seek")

We all ran down the steep grassy hills and up the other sides.

We walked over to the posts and hopped over them. Eva wouldn't stop. When all of us were making flower bouquets and I was making a flower wreathe, she was running through the puddles and muddy grass to do them again.

I really notice that I'm getting more confident with speaking French. Especially around Eva and Solie. Today, when we were waiting for her dad outside our art class (Les Petites Mains), she said, "Salut" on top of the parking rails and I said, "Salut" back and then she said, "Comment ca va?" and it felt very good to know what to say next, and I said, "Ca va bien."

My mom wants to say something quickly, too:

It was, not to be too dramatic, the day I was waiting for.

One:

Eleanore and Frances have friends they really like to be around; they're daring to speak French; in fact, after our time with Eva and Solie, Frances said, "I want to learn more WORDS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" We made arrangements with Eva's dad to play more and when we kissed (three times in the south), Eva nearly cried, truly. Even her dad, who speaks fluent English admitted she was too sad to say goodbye. She loves our girls and they love her. And we will have Eva's family over to dinner soon. Very fun.

Two:

I met a woman on my walk today who stopped me and asked me in French how long it would take her to get to town. I answered and we chatted a moment about whether each other was from Uzes. She finally asked, in French, if I was English or French. HAHAHAHA! I said, American. She immediately started speaking English and said she had NO idea! I spoke PERFECT french! Hilarious.

Three:

when I was waiting for the girls to come out of cooking class, I passed a store and saw a friend, Danielle. I walked in, said, "Salut Danielle," and had a great, friendly conversation with her!

Four:

On our way home we ran into ANOTHER set of friends who invited us over for Pacque (Easter) for an egg hunt. She said she would pick us up. She's GREAT! How fun!!!

No matter where I am, no matter how far away I travel in order to feel the differences in every way, I also need to feel like I belong. It's ironic and it's core to me. I've done it forever...in country after country, in house after house, in town after town.  And one month into Uzes, I'm feeling like we're just beginning to belong. I've got kids who are happy with friends, I've got "friends" I see on the streets, new friends to plan dinner with, trails to run on; the woman who sells me my multiple bags of sprouts on Wednesdays and Saturdays knows my name, the music teacher whom I love has offered up his daughter to teach the girls french in our home after school on Fridays. We've got the sheep-milk man telling us it's time we start making our own yogurt because it's just too expensive for us to keep buying HIS yogurt. The crepe woman knows our names and laughs when we return to pay after leaving without paying!  Just lots of good people-energy.

Eleanore:

I've been going to bed at 2am and around that time for the past couple of nights. So I am very tired. I must go to bed. Good night.

The Family That Decided Not To Stay Home

by Eleanore and Carolyn

Once upon a time, on a cloudy, drizzly, cozy morning in France, all the french families in the village took the opportunity to have a relaxing day, at home with their books and their coffee and their little yappy dogs snuggled safe and sound in their laps. All the families...but one.

The eldest of the two daughters in this family, having ascended the stairs to their top at approximately 11:00, announced to her charming father, "Father Dearest, I look so forward to having a lovely day at home with tea and my slippers." With outstretched arms, she reacquainted him with the misery of the weather outside and awaited his response.

"Well, Eldest Daughter, your mother and I have been plotting the day's possibilities and we have decided upon A Walk."

"A what?"

"A Walk."

"To where does one walk in this weather?"

The youngest of the daughters raised her pinky and replied, "Eldest Sister, they are leading us to the nearby village St. Maximin for lunch at a reputable cafe."

The Eldest Daughter's mouth dropped. "St. Max-i-min. Is. 6. Kilometers. Away. There are plenty of lovely cafes in our civilized village." At which point the Eldest daughter looked out, once again, at the miserable weather and wept.

"Daughters, why don't you run along and prepare the pack with provisions," said the daughters' mother.

"Dearest Father?"

"Yes, Frances, my youngest daughter."

"Are we there yet?" she asked as they stepped off the front porch into the drizzling rain.

Their promenade took them through dastardly muddy forests. "Does anybody manage these hills?" asked the mother of the daughters.

They past slimy, moss-covered rock walls. "Oh, Honorable Mum, I'm not trying mean or anything, but this is an, um, awful walk that you've instructed us to do."

They examined their maps at V's in the paths. "Father, I mean, Lovely, Charming, Navigationally Gifted Father, um, are you sure we're going the right way?"

Along the way, they spoke of important topics. The younger daughter asked her father, "Father, what are you going to be when you grow up?"

And right in this moment the father expressed his deepest longings, "I'd love to be a sailor and sail the 7 seas."

They saw the local plantlife, the vineyards and the neighborhoods of the countryside,and at each spectacle, the youngest daughter asked, "Dearest Father?" and the father recited, "Yes, Frances my youngest daughter," and the daughter asked, "Are we there yet?"

"Oh, Dearest Mother, I could die right now of hunger," moaned the eldest daughter.

"Well, let's walk in the cemetery and pay our respects to Great Great Great Great Great Grandfather Edward," said Father, completely ignoring Eleanore's near-death comment.

"Oh, dear. It looks like Great Great Great Great Great Grandfather Edward ran away," whispered the befuddled mother.

"Well, he was always was a restless one," the eldest daughter Eleanore muttered.

After a strenuous walk, all hopes were dashed when they found the restaurant....CLOSED. Without even stopping to take a breath (or a photo), the family with blistered feet and rumbling stomachs, turned bravely back around to whence they came.

"Dearest Father?"

"Yes, Frances my Youngest Daughter."

"Are we there yet?"

"We were. But now we're not."

"WHAT!"

After a bit of the walk back, the family sat on the gravel driveway into someone else's vineyard and ate their provisions, as soggy and unapetizing as they were: corncakes with creamed cheese, old cashews, yellow sawdust-tasting raisins, one bruised banana, and a measely chunk of chocolate.

"Father Dearest. Is that a drop of rain I feel on the tip of my nose?" asked the eldest of the daughters.

"Yes. Wipe it off with your hanky and let's get moving."

As quick as a flash of lightning, rain poured upon them.

A film crew came along to document the pouring rain for the weather show. They took great footage of Mother Dearest and Younger Sister. Watch the interview here:

After hours of traveling overland, not one, not two, not three, four or five, but six kilometers back to their home, the fearless family was exhausted and starving.

The depressed Eldest Daughter, said, "Dearest Father, I have found something good to eat. May I?"

"What is it?"

"Why it's a larvae. It looks so awfully scrumptuous and juicy and perfectly fleshy. I can feel my mouth watering now."

"Dearest Daughter, my eldest you and your sister have surpassed my expecations in courage and determination. I am taking you both straight away to eat a crepe. I shall put that larvae back where you found it on the path."

But the eldest daughter had such a heart, even in her weariest moments, she begged her father to set the poor, dear larvae down in the bush on the side of the trail so it would not get stepped on by fellow walkers.

Fighting delirium in the center of town, each daughter was given by their beloved father 2 euros to buy a crepe. They each asked Beatrice the Crepe Maker, "Je voudrais le crepe sucre avec chantilly, s'il vous plait."

And the family sat down and started to eat and lived happily ever after.

The End

Moral of the story: Ice cream is for hot days, crepes are for cold days, but actually, crepes are good on any day.

See the movie here:

This story is dedicated to the ones who made us take the walk, Mother and Father Dearest

And We Thought Nothing Happened?

This photo is totally random and has no reason for being here. It's just cool and we saw it on our walk today.

We were walking home from music lessons today and my mom said, "What do you think we should write on the blog tonight?" And I said, "We can't decide now; the day's not over." And it really wasn't.

At that point, it felt like we had done nothing today. Nothing really cool. But now I  realize we actually did a lot of exciting stuff.

My mom says, "The great thing about blogging is that no day can go by without us examining it for its 'blog-a-bility.' It's a formality that makes us peer into our days and we hunt for the good stuff.  And it works. We're always finding the good stuff.  Sure, without this blog we might have all been in bed early tonight...but we'd have been thinking we'd done nothing. Instead, we're all awake past midnight (well, Francie's asleep on Jeff's lap), stragegizing how to explain on this blog all we did on this 'nothing' day!"

Because I'm up late blogging and Frances is snoozing, I sleep in really late and Frances is an early bird, reading books in the morning sipping her steamed milk. 

Normally, in the morning we write our stories, play our music, do a little math and take it slow. Today, we did pretty much the same thing but instead of walking in the afternoon when Daddy rides his bike, at 11:30 we all went for a walk on a new trail.

Here are some pictures of what we saw.

My New York City t-shirt is one my cousin Mallory let me have for the trip and I gave her one of my shirts, the one I sewed with Heather. We did that to have a piece of each other.  

After few dead-ends and trails through pastures, we ended up on this walled path.  My dad says, "I love the way there's open trail space in between private property. Walls on both sides but an old path to allow people to be a part of every part of town."

We turned into racoons when we saw this cool gate. We saw someone's backyard with enough olive trees to make their own olive oil, a nice place for a garden and clothes drying on the line.

Frances and I balanced on a chain outside of a hospital. Good thing. If we fell we could be taken right in!

My mom says, "The sneaky thing about Jeff is he holds the girls' hands for the first few spans of chain and then, with no prep, he'll just punch out the line, 'Okay now let go!' And his burst of enthusiasm is enough for the girls to trust him and let go...without even thinking. They love it. Just love it."

More balance tricks.

Just can't resist this shot.  Most of the time I'm around Frances, I'm giggling at her silly moves or the funny things she says, or like tonight, I was laughing when she had her plastic (surgical) gloves on, picking dead flower petals off their stems and putting them in a plastic bag. She never throws anything away.

I know my smile looks really weird in this picture but my mom loves it and so she made me put it on the blog. 

This is a typical -- and cool -- garbage receptacle station...just on a random street corner in town. Instead of ugly dumpsters, they have little garbage receptacles that drop down to underground dumpsters.  Each one is for different kinds of garbage: plastic, glass, food, etc.

Close-up of the garbage cans.

Now, back home for lunch...Ahhhhhhh, Ahi.

BEFORE....

After #1 (Frances wanted "tuna like in Truckee" so Daddy squashed hers)

After #2  (My After: seared ahi sandwich)

Mommy's lunch (Daddy had the same as me):

After music, we came home to Skype Addy and Maia. This is France's BEFORE skype photo...

and this is her DURING Skype photo...Addy had said, "Hey, Francie, you wanna make funny faces?" And Frances said, "Sure, I got one."

The soft, baked potato did it. 

I put the potato in my mouth and it moved the tooth into a stuck position and I could NOT get it out.  So my dad offered to put back in position, but everyone knows him, and of course he shoved it further in the wrong direction and it fell onto my tongue. 

Ta-daaaaaaaa! I set my tooth nicely on the counter.

...but then, five minutes later, while Mommy was quickly rinsing just one more dish before she came back to the table, I heard her suck in her breath and I saw her put her hand to her chest. Daddy said, "What's wrong, what's wrong?" And then she said, "Eleanore, I'm so sorry. I accidently swept your tooth into the drain."

I cried and ,yet again, my Dad came to the rescue...

My dad thinks the tooth fairy is going to leave me US dollars because "just like the oil market, US dollar is still the reserve currency for the tooth market."  I completely disagree. If I'm in France, the tooth fairy will give me Euros.

Frances made up a little game after dinner. She told us all to draw the milk carton with only three colored pencils. I won.

While we were all sitting around the table, my dad asked us what we thought the French did better than the US did.  Here's a small list we came up with:

1. They have huge open markets where most people do most of their shopping.

2.  The put their nouns before their adjectives so we know exactly what they're talking about.

4. Underground garbage dispensers.

5. Big Office of Tourisms in every village.

6. Great street direction signs.

7. Frances says that the kids here know how to speak french so well! Her comment was, "How do they DO it?"

8. Village maps at the entrance of every village.

9. Fewer plastic things.

10. Time: they lock up their shops every Sunday and Monday and between 12-2 all the other days of the week.

11.  France has a lot of ancient, really historical things.  America has historical places but not 2,000 year old Roman Aqueducts.

For the next couple of days, we're going to think what the US does better than the french. My mom will already say, COFFEE.

We finished off the night by climbing out onto the roof to get the place mat that flew off the clothesline.

GOOD NIGHT, ALREADY!

Eleanore