will WE play in Peoria?

Yes, this morning I had my French teacher call the guy at VW. (Sometimes, the most important lesson of all is knowing when you can’t do something yourself.) Turns out he had ordered a part for the steering wheel… which I think was a recall item… and I think the other French teacher who read me the letter about the recall said something about a danger of the steering wheel catching fire. Ok, that sounds important. So we made an appointment. For when Bill is back. So he can enjoy some of this fun.

So on my way to the ski resort this morning, my cell phone rang. Normally, I wouldn’t answer the phone while driving (especially on a potentially slippery mountain road), but I was expecting a call from my fellow skier, so I had on my hands-free thingie. As soon as I answered, I knew I’d made a terrible mistake. It was not my friend, Carol. It was the man from the VW dealership talking to me in French.

He kept telling me he was calling about my car and wanted to make an appointment for me to bring it in. Now, I didn’t know which car dealership he was calling from. I only caught that he was calling from blah-blah-blah in Grenoble about my voiture. Now, my car is begging me to take it in for what it calls “service c.” It’s a trip I’ve been putting off until I get back from London next week. As this man is babbling on to me about my voiture and making a rendez-vous, I’m thinking “did my car show up in some computer at the Mercedes dealership and they knew to call me because I’m neglecting to tend to this matter?” About when that stupid thought crossed my mind, the man said “Golf.” Oh… he’s calling about Bill’s car.

I had taken Bill’s car to the dealership in December. When I picked it up, they told me they’d had to order a part for the backup alarm and to come back in a week. I ended up canceling that appointment because it was just too hard without Bill around to take the car to the not-very-close dealership for an entire day. I couldn’t reschedule at the time because their computer was down. Bill and I decided to just not worry about it. This guy isn’t going to let it drop. He told me I had to bring in the car. I told him I cannot do it right now because it’s too hard without Bill here and I could do it in February. February! Oh, no no no! Then he said the magic word: guarantee. Guarantee? Ok, I am sure that Bill backing into something and breaking his sensor is not covered by a guarantee. I am confused but also convinced this is important. I tell him I don’t have my calendar with me (true) and that I’ll have to call him back. Or I said words close enough to that that he understood.

There’s no way I’m calling this guy back. Sounds like a good French lesson tomorrow.

The members of my Monday group French lesson decided that skiing would be more fun than our lesson. So today we went to Chamrousse. Two of us did… the third got sick and stayed home.

After skiing in Switzerland… this was easy. Ok, we just skied the same couple of runs all day, but it was still fun.

It was freezing cold (yes, you’d expect it to be that cold on a mountain covered in snow) and I couldn’t figure out how to close the vent on my helmet. It was only open on one side so just my right ear was cold. My left ear was toasty warm.

I managed to find my season pass for Chamrousse. Thank goodness it’s getting at least a little use (without Bill around I was afraid it wouldn’t get any use at all). Carol bought the pass that just gets you on one lift… so we took that one lift over and over. Now, to get to it, you have to ride a crazy conveyor belt up a slope. It makes you feel a little like a can of peas slowly going up the mountain. But this morning it wasn’t working. So we had to walk on it… in our skis because if you get on it in just your boots it’s too slippery and you fall. (This I know from experience… just trust me.) We felt less like cans of peas than like mermaids out of water. The one chair lift we could use involves riding another conveyor that moves you into place so that the chair can just swoop up behind you and whisk you away. It times it correctly by releasing you onto the conveyor with little starting gates; to make you feel more like an Olympian than a jar of olives. One time, Carol went through the starting gate before I was ready… she turned around and I hollered not to try to wait for me. But she thought I said to wait for me. Problem is, there’s no getting off that conveyor once you are on. (No, I have not tried that, thank you very much.) She got hit by the chair rocketing toward her, swept onto it, minus one ski. Did the operator stop the thing? No. He just calmly put down his cigarette, picked up her ski and gave it to the people behind me to ferry up to her. The operator at the top tried asking her if she wanted him to stop the lift for her to get off (on one ski) but she didn’t understand his French quickly enough to answer, so he just slowed it down and she hobbled off. We are a little like Lucy and Ethel on the slopes.

On our way down after that, uh, experience someone yelled at us from another lift. It was another ISE taking her kids skiing for the day. (The truth about home schoolers: they do whatever they feel like!) At least she didn’t see the aforementioned lift mishap.

After lunch, it started to snow. Not only did my ear get even colder, but it was getting hard to see. So we stopped for hot chocolate then hit the road. I’m a chicken driving on our road if there’s a flurry that isn’t even sticking to the road. Here I was, driving down the mountain in what was a fairly heavy snow that was certainly sticking. And not a plow in sight. At first, I got in a line of cars stuck behind a rickety old camper limping along at 10 kilometers an hour. After about ten minutes of that, even I had to pass… it was just too ridiculous. As I passed, I noticed the chains on the camper’s tires looked as questionable as the rest of it, so it was probably best not to be behind it… because I didn’t want to be anywhere near it when parts started flying off. Turns out, I can drive down the mountain in the snow just fine.

So we made fools of ourselves and my ear froze. It was still fun. I may have to go up there again! Maybe even by myself.

I woke up just before 6 this morning to the delightful sound of appliances and transformers and battery back-ups beeping. The cacophony could only mean the power had gone out and come back on. (I know the time because I found one thing not flashing 12:00 at me)

Once the house quieted down again, I still couldn’t get back to sleep… and then I heard a big truck drive by. Not many cars drive all the way up here. And a big truck at 6am on a Saturday? No French person is going to work at 6am on a Saturday. Unless… it is a snow plow driver.

I lept out of bed and threw open the sash (well, opened the shutter in the front room) and saw a blanket of white lit by the flashing light atop the snow plow. Yesterday when we got home it was in the low 50’s. When we went to sleep the wind was whipping up a storm outside. Turns out… it was a snowstorm.

Kaitlyn loves going to the hairdresser and getting her hair cut. She really needed one before we went to Switzerland… and given that that was a few weeks ago… she really really needed one now. So today after school, we went.

The hairdresser started by washing Kaitlyn’s hair. She’s done it before, but this time decided that Kaitlyn didn’t quite reach the bowl well enough, so she just wet it down. Then, she tried to comb it. Kaitlyn’s hair is something of, well, a mess. You brush it, she moves, it gets tangled and knotted. More often than not, you brush it, she hollers and screams, so I give up. Well, this woman couldn’t give up. She had to get those knots out to cut it. Kaitlyn was in tears. The woman told me “Elle va me deteste.” (She’s going to hate me. I told her “oh, no” but I was thinking “heck, yea!”) Finally after a bucket of tears, a bottle of de-tangling goop and a lot of “ooh la la’s”… she was ready to cut.

Normally, I do not let Kaitlyn determine how long or short her hair will be. This time, she’s been pestering me relentlessly about it. So I let her pick. Sort of. She held her hand up above her ear. I put mine just below her earlobe and told the woman “comme ca.” (You don’t need to speak a lot of French to manage getting a haircut here, although speaking more French might improve the result, I suppose.)

The scissors started cutting and big chunks of hair started falling on the floor. It made me sad. Sure, it’s hair that’s all tangled and impossible to deal with. But it was the last wisps of Kaitlyn’s blond. The woman struggled to get the two sides of Kaitlyn’s hair even and little snips here and there meant when she was done you could see Kaitlyn’s earlobes sticking out below her hair. Her earlobes!

She is so thrilled with it. She just keeps looking at herself in the mirror and smiling. She’s even brushing her hair. I didn’t tell Bill. Kaitlyn wants it to be a surprise when we see him next week. Boy, is he going to be surprised.

Today Kaitlyn ate lunch at the canteen because they had the gallette du roi. The king cake… for the Epiphany.

It’s generally an apple cake (something like a pie) and inside there’s a little charm. Whoever gets the charm (and hopefully doesn’t discover it by choking on it) is the king, or queen. They get to wear a crown and this notion was just too overwhelming for Kaitlyn to pass up.

When I picked her up this afternoon, I noticed nearly every kid had on a crown. I think the lunch lady carefully made sure every piece was a “winner.” Smart lunch lady. Kaitlyn showed me the charm she got. It looks like a tiny plastic Catholic statue. Not nearly as cute as the Disney characters you can buy at the boulangerie. I keep meaning to go in there and buy some.

When you greet a French person you know in a friendly way, you do so with a kiss. Or two. Or three. (depending on where you are in France) Always those silly air kisses by the cheek.

This morning I went to my monthly cafe of French and others… where I was promptly air-kissed by the two women in charge. And a couple others I know. I wasn’t too sure what to think, though, when an older woman who had never been to a meeting before air-kissed two other ladies on her way out, but limply shook my hand. Like an old lady forced to be friendly to those sitting around her at church. I was somewhere between offended and relieved.

This afternoon, I had a French lesson. I walked in and the teacher greeted me with the usual “Bonjour, ca va?” Then he tossed in a “Bonne Annee,” since it was the first lesson since the holidays. Then I got an air-kiss. I can only figure it was connected to the whole new year greeting. Because even though I feel to some degree like I am friends with my French teachers, this was weird. Americans don’t kiss each other as a way of saying hello. Even in the air. Unless you are some wannabe socialite on a reality show… maybe. I guess this is part of learning the French culture. Because, I guess, at some point you know a person well enough. Or not.

Bill left for his next four week stint in the UK this evening. He didn’t get to go skiing a single time the whole week he was home. Yesterday and today, he said he wanted to go and Kaitlyn looked at him and begged him to stay home with her. It was pitiful.

She is really going to miss him.

Can you survive without a stove top in your kitchen? That’s our challenge. We got back from Switzerland to find the stove top that used to work long enough to boil water now has stopped working entirely. It must be French and has gone on strike.

When it started acting up, I asked the woman at Caterpillar who oversees the ISE’s: who must pay for its repair? Me? Or the homeowner? (since we rented a house with an equipped kitchen) The answer: me. Well, I’m in no hurry to repair someone else’s appliance. Especially after Bill did a little internet searching and found message boards dedicated to unhappy owners of this same cook top. It is apparently notoriously bad… and some people have spent more than the cost of the thing in repairs. And it cost 1200 Euros. Not cheap. Not what I’d have spent in my own kitchen, that is for sure. So to have it pushed upon me to repair this thing, well that just annoys me.

It’s harder than you might think to only cook things in the oven. No eggs. No spaghetti. I can’t even bake a quiche because you’re supposed to saute the onions and bacon bits before adding them to the eggs and putting it all in the oven. Can’t steam veggies. Can only eat microwave rice. Thank goodness yesterday we got a box of Easy Mac for Christmas!

Today I’m dragging Kaitlyn to the store to buy a crock pot and maybe a crepe maker/griddle of some sort. She doesn’t like crepes but if you can fry an egg on it, then it’d be ok.