will WE play in Peoria?

Bill works 11 hour days all week and is content to sit at home and play the Wii all weekend. He can go all weekend and never step outside. I think there are weekends he doesn’t even open the shutters.

I stay at home all week and look forward to the weekends for the chance to get out.

These two philosophies sometimes clash. To the point that Bill has instructed me to make more plans to do things with my friends on the weekends. Not exactly what I’m after, but, still, better than sitting at home.

Today, I lured Bill away from the Wii with a road trip I thought he’d really enjoy. We drove about an hour away to a place with an outdoor model railway display. Honestly, I didn’t know what to expect. Even after seeing the website. I didn’t care. It wasn’t especially at the top of my list of places to go… but at least it was out of the house.

The model railway was big, but not huge. What struck me as so funny about it was how typical French the towns around the railway were that this guy had built. There was laundry hanging out to dry… livestock in the yards… each little town had a fountain…. there was a bakery… a poste… a man peeing between two buildings… bikers blocking the roads… hitchhikers… cows in the road… all just a day in the life of a typical small French village. He had built some of the models to replicate local towns. I recognized one from pictures I’ve seen of the houses built into cliffs along a river. Behind that he had the bubbles from Grenoble. Cute.

We spent more time on the road driving there and back than we spent looking at the trains. But it was still pretty worth it. And maybe now I’ve started a trend… of seeing things other than Mario Cart race tracks on the weekends.

We’ve lived here just days short of two years, and it never gets any easier. I mean, things that should be completely simple tasks turn out to be ordeals. Always.

I invited a friend and her two daughters over for dinner last night. I ended up feeling so sick that I postponed it till tonight. (Note to self: skip Chinese buffet at mall from now on.) When I extended the invitation originally, I had plenty of food to back it up. Then Bill added another friend and her two boys… and a trip for more food became necessary. On Saturday. The day from Hell at the stores here (because they aren’t open on Sunday.)

I’d planned on serving raclette, because I stopped at the cheese truck the other day at the smoked raclette looked good. Yes, I buy cheese out of a truck. Yes, I now look at French cheese and think some of it looks appealing. For those who don’t know, raclette is a cheese that you melt then pour or scrape onto your plate of potatoes, bread and meats. It’s fondue’s lesser-known cousin. I’d bought a chunk of raclette for four people. I needed more.

Bill suggested we go to Carrefour. I’d rather walk on hot coals than go to Carrefour on Saturday. I said we could get everything we needed at the market that specializes in fruits and veggies. We got there and Bill stayed in the car with Kaitlyn while she napped. I walked in and couldn’t believe what I saw. There were so many people you could barely get up to the produce to stuff it in your plastic bags. Even worse: the cheese aisle did not include any raclette. Not one tiny morsel.

Annoyed, I got back in the car and announced we’d have to stop at the fromagerie (cheese shop) in Uriage. He’s overpriced, but he’ll have it. Bill dropped me off, I walked in and couldn’t believe what I saw. He had a sign on the door saying he’s going on vacation from Monday till the end of October… and inside he had two wheels of cheese left. Stinky cheese with a crust of mold that looked impenetrable. No raclette.

Now I was beyond annoyed. People were set to arrive in two hours. Had we just gone to Carrefour, we’d have had everything done already. I hate to admit that. So I stomped down the street to the Petit Casino (small grocery store… bigger than a 7/11 but only by a smidge) and bought two packs of pre-packaged, pre-sliced raclette. I could have just gone to the stupid Petit Casino and gotten everything I’d ended up buying.

It was a good thing I did buy the extra. We plowed through what we had. You’d think none of us had eaten in a week. What can I say? Raclette is good. And the raclette from the cheese truck… is better. I gotta figure out where that guy takes his truck on Saturdays.

This morning Kaitlyn was whining about eating at canteen (an activity she used to like… I think her little friend who hates canteen is polluting Kaitlyn’s opinion of it). So I told her a secret: my tennis classes start today and I am terrified because they’ll be in French with people I don’t even know. And I told her that when I get scared like that, I think of how brave Kaitlyn is being at school all day in French and eating at canteen, and I know that I can try to be like Kaitlyn. She didn’t buy it. But I wasn’t just pulling her leg to try to make her stop complaining about canteen. I really woke up scared to death of that class. And I really do remind myself sometimes of all that Kaitlyn has had to adjust to here. She’s had more time spent just thrown into an entirely French environment than either Bill or I.

By the time we got to school, her anti-canteen sentiment had petered out a bit and I got my usual peck on the cheek at the gate just before she went running in. I wasted some time chatting with a couple other parents but eventually it was time to face the court.

The lessons are at the tennis club in Uriage, the picturesque town just below us… the courts are right by the carousel. I got there about 30 minutes early, so I sat in my car and wrote out a to-do list filled with things I don’t want to do because they involve talking to people on the phone in French. I’m still not good at that. I noticed some people were playing tennis, so I thought I’d go ahead and wander over. But when I got to the tennis club, I wasn’t sure what to do. So I just sorta stood around and watched a group of school children run around the park in teams looking for clues that the teacher had hidden ahead of time. Finally, at 5 minutes after the time the class was to start, I thought I’d see if there was a teacher anywhere. I stuck my head in the little “clubhouse” and said I was there for the class. The teacher asked my name then I think said to follow him. Well, if he said it or not, that’s what I did. (Thank goodness he didn’t go to the bathroom.)

We walked to the court where four women were playing, warming up for the class. They stopped and I was instantly intimidated. All four are moms at Kaitlyn’s school. They are usually hanging around outside the gate talking. They may have once said hello to me… maybe. And here they were: my partners for a year’s worth of tennis lessons. Maybe I looked nervous. They all smiled and said “bonjour.” One asked my first name. Then they all stood around and practiced saying “Mandy… Mandy…. Mandy.” It was actually a little weird. I didn’t ask their names. I wouldn’t remember anyway. The teacher launched into some explanation about I have no idea what. I was trying to make sense of that when another mom from school walked up… a Brit. Thank goodness. Then another American arrived. Not that I want to use translators forever. Just for tennis… at least for a start.

The teacher was very nice to me. He told me to ask him to slow down if I needed. He stopped and helped me out a couple of times and I even managed to ask him a question.

The lesson itself was not like a tennis lesson I’m used to. I’m used to everyone standing on one side of the net, the teacher on the other lobbing balls practically at your racket. Here, he had us pair off and volley… four people on a court at a time… all trying to play with the person either directly across or diagonally across. No easy task with everyone playing at once. Still, somehow he made sense of it and managed to point out weaknesses, give advice, even the occasional “tres bien!” compliment.

By the time we left I realized I’m really a bad tennis player. I realized I’m getting old, because my shoulder hurt from 90 minutes of swatting at the ball. And I realized I’d kinda like to actually get paired with one of those French moms to play…. eventually.

Kaitlyn convinced me this morning that she is too sick to go to school. What got me was when she agreed to stay home and not watch television and get back into bed. Ok, it’s been two hours and she’s now on the couch watching “Hong Kong Fooey.” She knew I’d fold.

I had a horrible cold last week (it’s still lingering but at least now I can pretty much breathe) so if she feels like I did, I know she’s miserable. But she doesn’t look miserable. She looks suspiciously like a little girl who used the sniffles to not have to go to school when she didn’t want to.

I don’t want to say I hope she’s sick. But I hope she’s sick. And sick or not, tomorrow she’s getting some medicine and a ride to school.

Proof that grande section really is hard. Tonight after dinner, Kaitlyn had to do homework. Homework! She’s five! Ok, so teaching her that doing your homework after dinner on Sunday night when it’s for class on Monday isn’t really the lesson I was after. But long story short, last week her English class was moved from Monday to Thursday so we had less time to get the work done. And the good news is, at least the work was in English.

She had a sheet with pictures of clowns holding balloons. Each clown had a word on its hat and she had to figure out which words on the balloons rhymed with the one on the hat. Obviously, that meant we had to be active participants, reading the words. But she’s too smart for her own good. When she got to the last clown she could not believe that every word rhymed, because with every other clown, one word didn’t.

I wish all her teachers a lot of luck. This is why I don’t home school.

I promised Kaitlyn we’d go see Wall-E today. It was showing in town last night, but I have a cold that is just making me miserable and I was in no mood to go to a movie. So thinking I’d feel better overnight (not so much), I promised we’d go today.

Several people had told us that Wall-E is a pretty good movie to see in French, since there is so little dialog in the first place. So… what the heck.

I suggested taking the tram downtown, since there’s a stop right by the movie theater where we were going. OK, so I don’t know which tram line or how to exactly get to it… I could have looked that part up. Bill didn’t want to take the tram siting an unfamiliarity with it. Which is funny for a person who’s navigated his way through the world’s busiest train station in Japan; you’d think that the tram line here with its three lines would be a snap. He was driving, though, so we skipped the tram. But when we got in the vicinity of the parking garage (which is, admittedly, attached to the movie theater) Bill panicked. He absolutely freaked out about parking there. We’d passed a sign saying the garage was full, but that sign clearly looked broken because it listed no information for any other garage in all of Grenoble. I finally convinced him to circle the block and try to park in the garage. Voila! There were lots and lots of spaces. Then we got to the ticket counter and Bill asked me how to ask for the tickets. I said, I don’t know, just say “two adults and one child.” I figured it would be pretty obvious what we were buying. So Bill said “Fine. You do the talking. “ What does he think I do all day? Uh, the talking.

The theater was small but nice. It was stadium seating and each seat had a big holder in the arm rest for popcorn boxes, not just drinks. Nice touch. Surprising touch for a place where people allegedly don’t snack.

We did enjoy the movie. And I didn’t understand every word of the limited dialog, but enough to understand what was going on. I was a little annoyed that a newspaper headline that obviously gave some important information had been changed to French and wasn’t up on the screen long enough for me to decipher. Ah, well, c’est la vie.

After the movie, I again suggested we take the tram to a spot to get dinner. Bill didn’t want to walk. Hadn’t brought a jacket (I asked him when we left if he needed one). Kaitlyn really wanted to walk and I thought the tram was a good compromise. But we settled on going to a Chinese restaurant that isn’t near a tram anyway, so we drove. Parking was awful, it took forever to find a space. Then when we got to the restaurant we discovered why I haven’t been able to get through on the phone to make a reservation: it isn’t there anymore. There are two more Chinese restaurants on that block and Kaitlyn insisted we go in the one with a fish tank she could see from outside. That isn’t usually a good way to chose a restaurant, but it was actually very good. I did think that the woman at the table next to us who got up four times to go to the bathroom seemed a little odd… and at one point they put so many diners in the room you actually couldn’t walk past the middle of it (which is where our table was)… but otherwise it was very good. Kaitlyn behaved because she knew it was vital since she was the one who had insisted we go to a restaurant in the first place.

All in all a good night. But next time… I’m taking the tram. And making Bill take along a jacket.

Getting in the car today after school, Kaitlyn said to me “I wish I could speak French.”

So do I, Kaitlyn. So do I.

Kaitlyn started gymnastics this morning. When we got there, the woman inside the gym said “bonjour, Kaitlyn.” I asked Kaitlyn if she knows that woman but Kaitlyn said she didn’t. It kinda freaked me out. Finally the woman said she’d been the roller skating teacher at school last year. At least there was an explanation. And it’s good to know that Kaitlyn is as good at remembering people as her dad is.

I watched a little bit of her gymnastics class through the window in the door. They were hopping on a small trampoline, walking on a very wide balance beam, then climbing on a 4 foot tall foam square and jumping off. Kaitlyn looked like she was having a blast. I think it’s the perfect activity for her. Much more physical than ballet was last year.

After the class, I was sitting outside chatting (in English) when a familiar face walked by – his daughter is Kaitlyn’s one little French friend. She’d come to Kaitlyn’s birthday party last January and I tortured her parents with my feeble attempt to speak French. Anyway, today he walked by and smiled and asked me (in French) how I’m doing. I answered then asked if his daughter is taking the judo class. He said she is, so I asked her if she likes it. Nothing terribly difficult, but I was pretty pleased with myself because it all came fairly easily. I didn’t even find myself struggling to think of the words first in English then in French. And the best part is, this French guy complimented my French! He said I’ve improved a great deal and that I speak with a good accent. I’m sure my next French speaking encounter will be a disaster… but I’ll cling to that compliment as long as I can.

This evening we had the start-of-school parent-teacher meeting. Six o’clock on a Friday night. Who schedules these things?

I made Bill meet me there. I thought it was important for him to at least see and be seen by the teacher once. I got there a few minutes late and his eyes were already glazed over from the flow of indescernable French. Kaitlyn was fairly fidgety so I sent them on home. I stayed and tried to figure out what the teacher was trying to tell us.

When it finally ended a little after 7, I waited to talk individually with the teacher. First, I told her that I can help out when she needs, but that I don’t speak French very well. Another American mom standing with me said she could put me with the Anglophones to help. Oh no! The teacher said she’ll put me with the French kids to help me learn. Nice.

Then I asked her if she thinks Kaitlyn can understand what’s going on. “Elle comprend tout.” She understands everything. Ok. But does she ever say anything in French? “Oui! Elle parle tres bien!” She speaks it well. Figures.

I asked Kaitlyn one afternoon in the car if she thinks she’ll keep speaking French (that was when I was just assuming she does) once we move back to the U.S. “No way, Mom! People in America speak English.”

This afternoon I met a friend at the fruit and vegetable store to shop. So it isn’t the most exciting thing you can think of. But she’s been telling me she’s never gone to this store and would like to go… blah blah… so I invited her along because I needed to pick some stuff up.

We got there a little after two and had to wait with a growing crowd in the parking lot for the place to reopen after lunch at 2:30. By the number of people outside when they finally opened the doors, they need to eat faster.

Turns out, everyone waiting with us in the lot shopped at the same pace (it isn’t that big a store… after all it’s mainly fruits and veggies) and we all got in line to check out at the same time. Given that this phenomenon likely happens every day at the same time, you’d expect them to have every cash register open. No way. Maybe half. Maybe. So we stood there in line waiting for all the extremely slow old people ahead of us to check out. As we were creeping toward the front, an old lady who had been in front of us came up next to us, waved two bags of rabbit-food lettuce in front of us and said something. I thought she’d paid for it and wanted to leave. (Once I was at this store and they were having a 2 for 1 sale on pineapples and the cashier MADE me go get a second pineapple which, you guessed it, we didn’t end up eating. So I figured she had been ordered to retrieve an abundance of rabbit food.) We let her ahead of us. Turns out, she just wanted to get ahead of us because she’d forgotten the rabbit food and since she’d already checked out she felt entitled to jump to the head of the line. I was annoyed. So I turned to my friend and said in French that it isn’t fair and that if I forget something which I do a lot I then just wait. My friend was completely confused, had no idea what I was saying (I really didn’t, either) and was tyring to figure out what was going on… when the old lady turned to me and started telling me how it was totally ok to cut in line in her situation. My vocabulary can’t quite keep up with an old lady, so I just kept repeating that I’d wait. Finally the man in front of her let her ahead of him, I think because he was tired of listening to us. She got her way so she didn’t care. I felt better because at least I’d spoken my mind, sort of, rather than just get walked on. Ok, so she still jumped to the head of the line. But at least she knew I thought it sucked.