The ‘chick’ from Versailles

My niece and her friend visited us for the weekend. A relaxed, happy time spend with them. Young people. They woke up late, played monopoly and spend time on computers. : )

On Saturday we did the tourist thing and went to Château de Versailles. A lovely sunshine day, but only 5 degrees. So, geared with gloves and scarves we went.

The buildings are beautiful, gold, marble, and more. The gardens are so big you can call them parks. A four hour walk and we didn’t see all of the gardens. We will have to go back in summer. I am sure it will be covered with flowers then and the fountains will be giving their displays.

And to quote my young niece, Marleen: “This is the chick who lived here.” : )
(aka Marie Antoinette…)

Let’s tackle 2012.

It feels strange to start a new year, but all activities are actually halfway already. Obviously, because the school year in France starts in September and finish end of June. The schools reopened again yesterday after a two week break over Christmas. The school calender in France has three terms, with a two week break in the middle of the first two terms. That means 4 two week holidays and two months in July and August. Not too bad.

We are still waiting for the snow. It would be unfair to let us be so cold and you don’t even see snow! : ) It is the coldest month now, I’ve heard, and can feel! Mostly about 5 or 6 degrees in the day, but we do get a lot of sunshine. At least then it does not ‘feel’ so cold, as when it is a grey day. But we know that spring is coming next! I have daffodils flowering in my garden already!

The first gymnastic competition for the girls is end of January and another one beginning of February. And the competitions carry on till June when it is the France finals, but that’s for later. The girls had to learn a whole lot of new elements in their routines. Mandi said that she’s probably one level up and Franci almost two, so we will see how it goes. It will still be exciting to see how things work here.

We also want to move closer to Danie’s work end of June. Where, we still don’t know, but we’ve started to look around over week-ends. The girls would love to stay at their gym, the boys want to stay at their school, and Danie has to stay at his work : ) The only problem is that those three things are in three different directions. I think in the end we will just consider the travel to work and start in new schools and a new gym. But, that also, we will see what happens.

And, I am trying to be really organised in the house. : ) There will always be bread (baguettes) in the morning to pack for the boys and Danie, never run out of milk, and I won’t have to go to Carrefour every day for whatever is needed… ok… So, I did my first ‘drive’ shopping at LeClerc. Buy on the internet and say what time you want to pick it up, then you just park at a ‘scanner box’, scan your bar code and in a minute or two someone comes and load your shopping in the car. Nice. That’s for all the boring things you have to buy every month, toilet paper, washing powder, and so on. Now, my weekly list is much shorter. First week went well, so let’s see!

…and just some interesting things…

parking in Paris…

you mess, you clean up…

‘traffic’ signs in the river for the boats…

pictures made from post-it cards in office blocks…

graffiti is everywhere in Paris…

and for those of you that watch 7de laan, a bookshop with this name…

2012

Thank you for enjoying our first six months in France with me. It was good to share our experience with you.

May 2012 be a wonderful year to everyone.
Hopefully with some trips to France. : )

Christmas day in Paris

We thought that on Christmas day everyone stays at home, and we will have Paris for ourselves. : ) Maybe they do, but there are enough tourists to fill the streets. Traffic was quiet, so we went by car and parked around the corner from the Arc de Triomphe. We had sunshine and a mild day at 10 degrees. Nice to walk around in Paris. We walked to the Eiffel Tower and strolled through the Christmas Market. For the winter period there is an Ice rink at the Eiffel Tower, but too many people and too long qeues.

We tried the ice rink at the ‘Hotel de Ville’ also, but there were even more people. As it is dark at 5pm already, we could appreciate the Christmas lights.

and decided to go on the big wheel at the bottom of the Champs-Élysées. A christmas treat!

 

Christmas eve

We had a lovely family Christmas. Everything inside this year, and no swimming with temperatures of about 5 degrees, but nice and cosy inside the house. I bought extra surprise gifts this year to make up for having no family around. I ordered something for Jaco on the internet and was still holding thumbs for it to come on Saturday. I know the postman deliver the parcels at home, because I’ve received some for the neighbor when he is at work. Just before twelve he still wasn’t here, so I opened the postbox with the hope that perhaps there is a slip to say I must fetch it at the ‘La Poste’, but to my surprise there is the box in our ‘locked’ postbox. Still need to figure this out, I assume the postman has a key to open all boxes as they all look the same. Well, all the gifts were here and we were ready for Christmas eve.

We played our new World edition monopoly, the one with credit cards. ‘Vorder tot by Roeland straat, as jy by begin verbygaan, vorder R200 in : ) only now it is 2 million rand : ) and Paris and Cape Town are part of the green cards.   …you can see who won!

…leg of lamb for dinner… no foie gras! Maybe next year.

Its Christmas!

To everyone from Koegas to Paris (and everywhere inbetween) may you have a blessed Christmas!

Small differences

The christmas lights along the streets are on. Very pretty, but mostly white and blue. No red father christmas, red nose reindeer, green christmas tree or angels! Only patterns in white and maybe some blue added, well this is what it looks like here in our town. It is pretty, but different. One evening I will be brave and put on my scarf, jacket, etc. and take some photographs.

We bought our christmas tree just before 1 December. It was new for us to see the whole ‘christmas tree selling’ thing. So many trees and they are geared for ‘packing’ your tree. The shops are filled with so many decorations to choose from, but our french tree stands here with all our old decorations, collected over the years…  no new french ornaments. : )

…homemade, LinkLadies craft evenings, Edgemead Market, one from Germany, etc…

As the lights are different, there are other things in France that are not the same as what we’re used to. Little things, for example: Q20 is called WD40, but it works the same! : )
One big difference that took me a while to realise and cost me a few euros was the fact that airtime expires. Yes, Use By… really. : ) When we came here I just bought 5 euros airtime for everyone and then a few days later we were out of airtime and knew we did not phone that much, but its finished! The kids thought that Mixt is really expensive in France, because that is all they used their phones for.
It does say on the recharge card that you buy at the shop: ‘valable 10 jours.’ Well, I knew that ‘jours’ are days and the ‘valable‘ sounded a bit like valid, but how could that be, so I just ignored those words. Probably for two months I kept on buying 5 euros every ten days till I had to admit that perhaps airtime really has a use by date! The end of this story is that all the kids now have contracts which actually works out cheaper with some youth specials. I still buy the ‘use by’ airtime for me, only now I buy some that can last for three months.

And something else: All children (and adults) write on ‘graph’ paper. All the exercise books for school are either big or small blocks, no lines, really! Danie realized this in his first week at work. He went to get a writing block from the stationary cupboard and could only find ‘graph paper’. So he asked the assistant if they don’t have ‘cheaper’ blocks, he just want to write on it. : ) She could not understand what he meant. That was a long debate till Danie realized that this is normal scribble paper. Even the cursive writing is a bit different. The letters are more curly. But the girls are already used to this and have changed their handwriting to curly french letters. Mandi finds it rather funny that the big boys in her class also write with these curly letters.

‘Grands carreaux, Petits carreaux’

A new routine

It feels like the last few weeks were really busy, or maybe we just have to get used to the new routine… or maybe… because there is no routine.
We have to get used to getting up at six some days, or rather to remember which days to get up when!
No morning is the same. It depends on their classes when everyone has to be at school. Some days each one starts at a different time and have lunch at different times and of course finish at different times! Here if you don’t have a class you don’t have to be at school. Then it happens almost every day that one of them phones me to say that a teacher isn’t there (or have a headache…) and they can come home.

Also in the last month: I broke a tooth, Danie broke a tooth, Mandi fell on her hand and was swollen and blue for a week, but luckily didn’t break anything and then to top it all, Jaco broke his foot.
All of this would have been nothing if we were still in SA, but add french and doctors with different ways of doing things to that, and its a whole new story.
The strangest part with doctors here is probably the absence of receptionists! Danie made my appointment with the dentist, (he had to go first). So, you enter their building and there is nothing and nobody. Now you wonder what next?! Do you walk down the passage and knock on the closed doors? There was an empty waiting room. Then I saw a sign that says, ring the bell and wait: Rang the bell, sat down, and now wonder if they heard the bell. Waited a minute or two, rang the bell again and waited again. But, not strange to them, the assistant came to fetch me and at least, the ‘dentist work’ was the same. : ) Afterwards you pay at the doctor. Everything happens in his consulting room. Just him and his assistant and they do everything.

Mandi of course had to go to the doctor and go for x-rays, but we survived that.
Jaco broke his foot at 10pm, with the next day being a public holiday… now we also know where the emergency clinic is, but that was not the end for him. He needs to get an injection every day to keep the blood thin. Now we know that you can get visiting nurses at home or could see them at the medical center at certain times. In the meantime the nurse showed Jaco how to do it and he just injects himself! Still not the end of this story: there are also blood tests once a week at the laboratory. Each time I test how long I can last before I have to say: “Je parle un peu français”, when I don’t understand what’s going on anymore. My most used phrase to tell them I only speak a bit of french. I feel really good when I leave and realize I understood everything and they understood me, and I haven’t used my phrase! : )

…and crutches in french? ‘Cannes anglaises‘… English walking sticks. : )

In the meantime winter is coming closer. Day temperatures are now between 5 and 11 degrees. The sun only rise after 8am and most mornings we have thick fog.

Autumn in France

It seems like suddenly in one weeks time, all the leaves had turned into their autumn colours. Yellow, orange, red… Since yesterday it is cloudy and every time I want to go for photos, it starts to rain, but I got some. The temperature is now around 15 degrees on the warmer days.
Danie left for Lisbon today for a meeting this week. I think he will have some last summer days down there.

autumn… 

…and that means leaves to rake…

 …and fun…

Ballet shoes and games in Paris.

The ballet teacher said that Franci will be in the class that start dancing with ‘pointes’ this year. For her… the best thing ever. At the last class of the term we received the letter of what to buy and where. The address of the shop: Rue de la Paix, Paris.

For Jaco and Pieter it was ‘Paris Games Week’, all about the latest computer games in the large exhibition center at Porte de Versailles.

They were really happy to be there! Its just cameras that make them look so unhappy. : ) People were looking at us while I took the photograph… embarrasing! : )

Pieter has put some photos of the games week on facebook. We left them there and off we went to find ‘Repetto’. Situated almost next to the Opera in Paris, among shops that we will probably never enter. Even at Repetto there is a guard at the door and only a certain amount of people are allowed in the shop at the same time. : )

Cartier, Channel…

…and Repetto

Franci was also really happy about her new dancing shoes, : ) but she had a cold and by the end of the day, not feeling well at all.

Now she can’t wait for the first ballet lesson after the holiday…