will WE play in Peoria?

When Kaitlyn woke up this morning and asked to watch TV, our new plan to help her speak French went into action. Bill turned on the same movie she just watched last night with her friends… but this time in French.

I don’t know that Kaitlyn is a fan of this new plan, although she didn’t complain.

I tried watching for a while. The movie was Nos Voisins Sont Les Hommes … Over the Hedge. (the literal translation is “Our Neighbors are Men”) They talk fast. Really fast. You don’t realize when you watch a movie in English just how fast they are talking. I caught a word here and there, but I only understood one sentence. Qu’est-ce que tu fais? What are you doing? It’s a handy sentence to know with a small child. Or husband.

I think we’re going to have to find something slower that we can watch to help our French.

We invited friends over to have une petite degustation du vin (a little wine tasting). And dinner.

The first bottle was the one our guests brought. He bought it because of the label: it says it’s a Les Crapons. He thought it would be funny to drink something called crap. We all agreed, the label didn’t lie. Bill and I poured ours out. (that’s the appropriate way to dispose of unwanted wine at a tasting)

Then we opened each of Bill’s randomly selected bottles. (none had labels indicating crap) It turns out, Bill is a pretty good guesser. They were all good. Now I have to go back to Carrefour and try to find them again and buy more. In just a matter of a couple of weeks, we’ve managed to build a decent little cave. We bought a 72 bottle wine rack, which Bill put together in the basement. Now we can wander down there to pick out what wine to serve with dinner.

Speaking of dinner, making ours was quite a task. It wasn’t hard. It’s just that our kitchen is so dang small that really only one person at a time can be working in there. I ran out of room on the counters just for bowls I was using. Very frustrating. I am counting the days until I can once again have a big kitchen. I have Bill convinced that we either have to build a house that I can design the kitchen for, or we have to buy a house that we want to just renovate the kitchen. He’s gonna be sorry!

Today the Foire du Vin started at Carrefour. Every fall, the grocery stores have this wine “sale” (they cannot call it a “sale”…. the state regulates sales and they are only permitted twice a year, in July and in February). The point of the fair (foire) is to get rid of the stock to make room for the new wines. Similar to the way car dealers try to rid their lots of last year’s models this time of year.

After living here nearly a year and joining a wine tasting group I still know squat about wine. Ok, I know it is made from grapes and I know that the wines here are named by the region in which those grapes are grown, rather than by grape type like in the U.S. That ends my vast wine knowledge.

I jotted down the name of a wine we like and figured I’d buy a case of that then a couple bottles of other kinds of wine to try.

Then, I went to my least favorite place: Carrefour on Saturday afternoon. The Foire du Vin was set up right at the entrance. Stockers were busy trying to replenish the shelves. One man was reading his big thick wine guide to help decide. Others had their Foire du Vin fliers and were flipping through the pages of those. I wandered up and down the rows searching for the one wine scribbled on the piece of paper stuffed in my pocket. Not there. Somehow, I thought that the Foire du Vin would cover all the wines in the store. No.

Bill and I found the section with the Cotes du Rhone wines. We know we like those. Then Bill pretty much randomly chose three to try. Four… but the fourth he went ahead and bought a case. It wasn’t expensive, there were only three left (we figured if so many other people bought it, it had to be decent) and if we hate it, we’ll make it the wine we take to other people’s houses. Hey, maybe they’ll like it.

Now the real test… the taste test.

I just left a French lesson, and all I want to do is burst into tears. It’s all I wanted to do for most of the hour and a half I was there. Not because my French is so bad… which it is. Because Kaitlyn’s is worse.

The teacher I had today was Kaitlyn’s teacher yesterday. She started my lesson by telling me she just doesn’t know what to do about Kaitlyn. (join the club) Kaitlyn seems to think the lessons are great fun and play time… but she doesn’t seem to take it seriously. But I don’t know how much any four year old really takes seriously. The teacher said she thinks Kaitlyn isn’t learning much of anything. But she said when she reviews the previous week’s lesson, Kaitlyn knows the answers.

Do we keep the lessons? Drop the lessons? Maybe it’s all just too much for her? I mean, sometimes I think it is too much for me, and I don’t have to spend all day immersed in French.

While mulling all this over, I went to pick Kaitlyn up for lunch. She hopped up from the table where she was playing with play doh and started telling me all about what she’d been making. The teacher stopped her conversation with another parent to tell me the obvious: Kaitlyn parle beaucoup. Mais, en anglais. Yes, yes. I told her that Kaitlyn has been taking French lessons and she seemed happy to hear that… but there’s no denying it doesn’t seem to be doing much.

I don’t want to push her so hard that it becomes a battle I can never, ever win.

This whole canteen thing is getting completely out of control.

Today while eating lunch at home, Kaitlyn announced that she is afraid to go to school. I asked her what she is afraid of. Because I have no problem dropping her off… she kisses me good-bye and goes to play. When I pick her up she is always smiling and happy. Then out of the blue, she told me two times today (lunch and this morning) that she is afraid. So when I probed for some details, which are always sketchy when she tells a tale, she said she is afraid of the canteen. She has eaten there fairly regularly for months now. Generally when you ask her favorite thing about school, she says “eating upstairs.” Which is how she has always referred to the canteen. Until now.

The first thing that changed is she no longer says she eats upstairs. She calls it the canteen and she pronounces it like she’s French. If you say it with an American accent, she looks at you like she has no idea what word you’ve just uttered. Just like a French person will do to you.

The only other thing that seems to have changed is one of her little friends is eating there every day. And hates it. The other American mothers have taken to trying to drop our kids off without being seen, because this child will grab you and hold you and cry for her mommy or daddy. It is heartbreaking. And there’s nothing you can do about it. I’ve hesitated to tel l her mom because I was so peeved last year when someone told me that Kaitlyn was “seen crying” in the canteen. Further investigation with the teacher revealed she was just having normal 4 year old moments. And maybe this little girl is going through some normal 4 year old reactions to having her day completely changed… from spending all summer at Grandma’s to spending all day at school. But I feel caught in the middle. Do I be a butt-in-ski? Would it help? Or is this just something she has to go through then she’ll be over it and all fine? No way to know.

Kaitlyn said this other little girl is sad all day… because she hates the canteen. That was actually the conversation that sparked Kaitlyn’s declaration of fear. So I think that the fear may be that she’ll end up sad, too. Or that she will have to sit next to someone who cries through the meal all the time. Neither sound appealing to me, either.

When I took Kaitlyn back to school after lunch she was fine. She kissed me goodbye and went to play as long as she could get away with before nap time. The kids were already being ushered through the potty with a “tu vas faire du pee pee?” from the teaching assistant. (yes, luckily for the little ones, pee pee is the same in French.)

I thought I’d left the canteen drama behind for a while and headed to the store. While there I got a call on my cell phone from a friend whose daughters go to a different school. She wanted to talk about her own canteen drama… and the trouble she is having getting her girls adjusted to eating there.

Now, here’s the question I really cannot answer in the face of all this canteen hubub.

France is big on this whole idea of equalite. Everything is equal, especially in education. (especially in theory, mind you) So if everything is equal, then how come some of the kids eat lunch at school and some go home to eat with their mommies? And if so many women work in France (well over 50%), who do those kids eat lunch with? I’ve seen some that go “home” to eat lunch with their babysitter. Is that really any better than just eating a 4 course meal and getting some recess time?

The canteen fuss must come to a swift end. It is giving me heartburn.

Today I drove by a school and saw what appeared to be a middle school P.E. Class. There were pissed off looking kids in a clump all running at an escargot’s pace around the track, while some goodie-deux-chaussers were up ahead actually trying. They weren’t wearing uniforms… or P.E. Uniforms are very free-form here. Otherwise, it looked just like the hell I remember gym being at that (or any) age. Nice to see some things are universal.

Tiger Woods can sleep easy tonight. He has nothing to worry about.

We took Kaitlyn for her first golf game today. Well, mini golf.

She loved the idea of holding a big club. And swinging at the ball.

At the first hole, she actually let Bill play and then let me take a turn when she was done. The idea of a game disolved quickly from there. Pretty soon, we were just chasing Kaitlyn around as she randomly went from hole to hole. She wasn’t bothered by the fact that she may swat two dozen times at the ball before it would finally drop into the hole. Or if the hole was too challenging… maybe had a big hill or a small hole you had to get the ball into on its way to its final destination… she would just roll it over or drop it in with her hands.

She thought it was great. She threw her arms up in the air and cheered when the ball went in the hole. Even if she’d just plopped it in there.

I think we’ll wait a while before we try that one again.

I am determined to find a marche worth going to. For weeks, our town has been advertising a marche des artisans (art market) going on today. Naturally, I went. I even talked friends into meeting us there.

I was expecting the park to be packed with people selling their artistic endeavors. What I found was a few booths (a dozen at most) with people selling stuff I really didn’t want to buy. Like the candy booth. That’s not art. That’s sugar. Much of it on a stick. I tried a sample of the lavender candy; I’ve wanted to know what it tastes like. It tasted like, well, sugar.

Still, that was better than the booth next door. The honey booth. It’s proprietors had brought along part of their hive to share. No, thank you. Not my idea of entertainment.

I thought maybe some lunch would make up for the crummy art sale.

After watching Kaitlyn ride the carousel a couple of times, we went to a fondue restaurant across the street from the park. Turns out that one of our friends had never had fondue before. He was a fondue debutant. I think the melted cheese served over potatoes and cocktail wieners was a hit. Definitely made up for the marche.

During dessert, our meal turned to a massacre. A bee that had been coveting our food landed on the remnants of Bill’s jam filled crepe. The bee thought it had found a feast. Not so. First, Bill mashed it with his fork. (his excuse is that it was trapped in the jelly anyway) Then the fondue newcomer took his knife and chopped the bee in half. I was disgusted. Kaitlyn thought it was a thrilling finale to the meal. I may never get over it.

It seems that everyone here has a “cave.” (pronounced cah-ve… it’s a wine cellar). When we were here looking at houses, the relocation woman was always sure to point out if the house had a cave. Sometimes it’s a basement. Sometimes it’s more of a hole in the wall in a basement. Whatever form it takes, it’s something of a necessity.

Having a cave is one thing. Stocking one’s cave is another. It’s just not that easy. Or, it’s not that easy to do it well.

So far, I pretty much just go to Carrefour and guess at what to buy. If I get lucky and guess well (and remember to write down what it was that we liked), I buy it again.

This week a big annual wine sale starts at all the supermarkets. I am not sure just what I’m going to buy. I guess I’ll buy a couple of cases of the few things that I know we like, then pick up some other bottles on sale to guess some more.

Last night, we got our cave off to a slightly better start than my original plan. We were invited to a wine tasting party. Unlike all the others we’ve been to, we didn’t have to bring anything. Luckily, I had happened to bring our checkbook.

The hosts had their favorite wine guy (how do you get one of those?) come with samples of four different kinds of wine that he either makes or distributes or something (I missed that part). Like it a lot? He had a few cases in his van he could sell. It was like a tupperware party for wine. But it worked. We bought two cases plus one magnum. A lot of people followed this guy out to his van at the end of the night to load up.

So now we have the beginnings of our little cave. I need to buy some wine racks. And this week, I’ll head to Carrefour to play the guessing game at the sale.

Roller skating is not easy.

When we got home, Kaitlyn just had to try out her new skates.

Even though we’d bought the smallest kind they had, they are a little too big. Bill did his best to strap them on so they’ll stay. The pads are all kind of big, too, but they were the smallest ones at the store.

Kaitlyn took her new skates for a spin on the patio outside. She did pretty well. She fell a couple of times on her bottom… which fortunately comes with its own built-in padding.

Maybe if she gets the hang of it Mommy and Daddy can buy some skates. Then we’ll just have to find a flat place to go skating.