Reflections after 202 days (but who's counting)

It's 48 hours from our flight home and we are reflecting on our time in Europe.   This trip was far more enriching than I ever could have imagined.  We travelled more and learned more than I expected, especially about art, medieval history, and the World Wars. We spent the most time as a family as I imagine we ever will.  The kids played with each other more, likely more than they ever will again.  Scott and I had time for real conversations.

On the down side, it rained more, I cleaned more, did more laundry, spent more time driving the kids to school, read more facebook, and washed more dishes than ever.  Also, I ate and drank more,  was fun at the time but  lousy at the end when I have to step back on the scale in Richmond. The kids would say they had fewer playdates, no TV, and difficult toilets.

For the last two weeks we have been on a wonderful vacation from sabbatical.  (My friend Colleen coined it "vacation squared")  First we had a week in the countryside in SW France.  We rented a lovely 19th century house in a very small village, with a pool.  We walked to the bakery and market, and took day trips to castles, bastides, and the beach.  My wonderful nephew Jake came with us, and conversed and tasted wine with the adults, and then played in the pool with the kids.  His presence made it one of Scott's and my best vacations ever.

We dropped Jake off at Charles De Gaulle to fly home and then headed by Eurostar to south-east England to a medieval village, Sandwich. Despite being desperately close to Lille as the crow flies, the weather has been glorious.   We took day trips to Canterbury and London by train, and saw a glorious garden today.  We have rejoiced in thai, indian and fish and chips dinners.   But already we are missing our french bakeries and cheese, and French prices.  It's also taking us a little time to adjust to the fact we don't need to speak french to buy something, ask directions, or ask a boy in the park to play soccer.

Scott and I are so grateful to have had this opportunity at this point in the kids' lives.  First, and I don't say this lightly, their legs were long enough and they had enough stamina to keep up with us as we walked many miles in a day, many, many times.  The kids complained only when they had a real reason to do so.  They appreciated art and history (not perfectly but better than I hoped).  They adjusted to a stunningly different school, where an hour most days was spent learning chinese ...in french.

Scott and  I reveled in the break from the ordinary rush of life.  We had time to contemplate where we've been and where we're going, pay closer attention to politics and world events and enjoy being a family.  As this wonderful adventure draws to a close, I encourage you to start planning that adventure you have been dreaming about.

Signing off from "Gronerts in France"

Pop-up playground on tthe wall of the Seine

Cousins

Contemplating the next move. One of forty games at a castle in SW France.












                                                              Evidence that Scott and I were here together.



Spectacular garden in Sandwich






Doesn't this cosmos look like a cupcake wrapper?

Garden in Northern France

I went to Sericourt, a garden in Pas de Calais yesterday.  It was about a 90 minute drive west on a mostly cloudy day, but I drove through tons of pretty little villages filled with roses and window boxes.  No pictures until I got out of the car in Sericourt...




I parked in a barn in front of the place and paid 10 euro for entrance and a really detailed map, with an explanation card in English.

   


















There were all sorts of paths leading from garden to woods, to grasses...


) 
I'd love to figure out how to make these paths in Richmond.  They seem to absorb water well and don't spread stones all over.






The grove above was inspired by the Terra Cotta Warriors!



The curves of this path are framed with soft Chamaecyparis




An inside view of long path between two rows of Thuja.  Below is a side view of this row- you can see it keeps going and going and going to the right.












 
These were listed as "bomb craters" in the guide



Another cool path in the trees.

These topiary were inspired by African masks.  I'm sure Scott can do this to our front yard!





See the "door" in the red hedge?




This is what the hedge door opens up to   Beautiful HUGE arbor of climbing roses.  Wonderful smell and almost deafening buzz of happy bees.



Looking up




More surprises around every corner




I am sure Scott can carve this one out of something in our yard:



Or if that's too hard he can just carve me this out of stone  and I'll be happy.



Happy gardening,

Heidi

Things in France we don't see so much in RVA

My "readers" asked for more pictures.  Ok, it was only one reader, Louisa W, and she's a friend.  Hi Louisa!  Everyone else I know seems to be following Bobby :)

Scott and I have been talking about the amount of public art we encounter everywhere we go.  The park behind our house currently has some Cristo-like installations. This weekend we went for a walk there  and suddenly noticed this interesting spider web like thing stretched across the water:

It was entitled "crise" 

And a little further on, we find "The Titanic"

Below, in the town of Arras, still in the category of what we don't see much in at home:

                                    Giants are really big here in Northern France.  ;)

Animals are much more accessible around here as well.  There are petting zoos everywhere, often in garden stores.  We see lots of donkeys and horses too. Not to mention the roosters and geese that roam our street.

Cute chevre!

One of my favorite parts of our Saturday excursions is our leisurely lunches.  Below, Bobby and Scott having a discussion in a square in Arras.  The building in the background has the tourist office, the belfry, the entrance to the underground quarries, and the giants.   This is one of my favorite squares in Northern France because there are no cars.



OK, more of what we see here a lot in France-broken stuff.  We will leave a recycle bin's worth of glasses we have broken.  I would guess 20.    Is the glass more delicate here?  Je ne sais pas.  Also DARNED CLOTHESPINS! They spontaneously burst apart when I come near.





Speaking of broken things ...  I tripped on a sidewalk while jogging last Sunday.  The bang when my head hit the pavement was so loud I grabbed for my phone to call Scott because I was sure I'd fall unconscious or at least have the french knocked out of me




Oddly,  my head doesn't even hurt, but of course I get a lot of sympathy.  And let me tell you,  I   need this because I also cracked some ribs, and they REALLY hurt.   Coughing, sneezing, getting out of bed, putting on a seatbelt, yelling at Bobby, all are excruciating.

So the other day I googled "how to prevent sneezing with broken ribs" and discovered an entire community of people with injured ribs who, like me,  are trying to figure out how to stop a sneeze. One guy commented "I'd rather have my [private parts] stomped on, than sneeze again."  


OK I am going to post some more pictures in another post.  This one seems long.

 Au revoir

Bisous, Beffroi and Boves

Most things I was worried about in regard to living in France have turned out just fine.

Living in much smaller quarters then we are used to has been mostly good.  We can always hear what the kids are playing, and it's less annoying than we expected.  Except when they end up wrestling and someone, usually A, is yelling "get off, get off!"  In fact, it's kind of fun to eavesdrop.  I love how closely their play reflects what is going on around us.  Right now Amelia is calling for "more bandages" because their stuffed animals were caught in a  lightning storm.   Last week, the "stuffies" were taking SOLs.  (I had just made the kids take a practice test online.)  There are also Stuffie campaigns,  primaries,  peace treaties, and attacks on ISIS.

Our  unheated toilet room (on a different floor from the bedrooms) has also worked just fine. As Scott pointed out, no one wants to linger in there, so there is rarely a line.   The thing I miss most about our house is our patio in the summer and fireplace in the winter.  Meaning being able to have a glass of wine and a conversation away from the kids during the pre-dinner "screentime/martini-time."   We have gone outside a few times but as I may have mentioned before, it ALWAYS rainy and cool here.


Back to expectations: A silly thing I worried about, as we anticipated our move here, was the custom of kissing on the cheek (bisous).  I worried that I wouldn't know whom to kiss, but I  figured that I wouldn't get to know anyone well enough to face this situation.

Reality is much simpler.  You kiss everybody.  Yes, everybody.  At the PTA conversation group, 15 to 20 people of various nationalities meet at someone's home each week.  As each person arrives, he or she goes around the room and greets every single person with 2 quick bisous, one to each side of the face. No issues at all of whom to kiss- even if you haven't met them before.  Simple.

In fact the only awkward times are when I've been with people that you can tell would kiss you hello but they are awkwardly holding back because they know you are American.

What most surprises me is to see co-workers greeting each other with bisous as they change shifts.  I've seen this at the grocery and at the train ticket office.  It kind of makes sense, "Yay I am so excited to get off work I am going to kiss you!"  And they all do it without fail.  Scott says his co-workers don't kiss hello at the lab where he works, but each person greets everyone as they come in. And as they enter the communal lunch room, everyone, without fail, says "bon appétit!"

I had hoped to learn more french than I have.  As I've said, I turn into a quivering bowl of mousse at the idea of answering the door, or calling a repairman, or rsvping by phone.  I usually start with "Je suis desolé, mon francais est mauvais" which works pretty well.  Often the second I say "bonjour" the person will launch into english.  This actually hurts my feelings if I am trying, but if I am brave. or annoyed I will just continue speaking in my mauvais french as they go on in their usually perfect english.

Now of course the other possible reaction, less insulting but with worse consequence is when the person assumes I understand everything they are saying and starts rattling away in french.  For example, last week I went to to the nearby town of Arras and I asked for a ticket to tour a belfry. Most towns in our area of Northern France and Belgium have Belfry, or beffroi, towers with bells that were designed to protect the town.  You can often climb these, when they aren't closed for lunch.  (Bonus points for anyone who remembers why Arras was in the news last year-think american heros.)



Anyway I ended up with a ticket to the belfry, and a tour of "les boves."  While  I understood that I was supposed to go see the belfry and then meet the the guide in 10 minutes, I had no idea what "boves" were, or whether I wanted to see them, let alone tour them.   I hurried up the belfry and snapped a few pictures.

A view from Arras belfry.  

Then I got out my phone and and frantically and unsuccessfully tried to  translate "bove." No luck.   So I headed down and eventually caught up with the group.  As I heard the guide warn everyone to watch their heads,   I learned we were exploring quarries beneath the city, dug out in the 17th-19th centuries and used in the World War I for a hospital and a secret route to the front.

The boves beneath the city of Arras.  Those are not my children!

This is   the beffroi in Douai.  Jolie, n'est-ce pas?

 I plan to head back with Scott and the kids- it was a fascinating tour.

Winding down

 

It's Sunday morning, May 29, and we've just finished a breakfast of warm croissants, pain au chocolate and viennoise that Scott picked up from the bakery this morning.  The kids are watching our current equivalent of morning cartoons-"Full House" re-runs on the kindle with head phones.  It's raining and Scott is heading off to the grocery store before it closes at noon.  It should be very crowded because it's Mother's Day.  (Of course we celebrate both mother's days!)

Scott is eager to leave the  house, because I  threw his jeans in the washer and his work key, which was in his pocket, is now hitting the glass front every few seconds.  The machine is locked and you can't cancel or change the cycle.  We spent a few panicked moments confirming that the banging was not a cell phone or our car keys.  I rushed to start the wash because it now takes at least 24 hours to dry the clothes -because  it's warm enough that we don't have the heat on, but it's rainy so I can't hang them in the yard.   Jeans take days to dry.

Yesterday we went to a local park "Le Musée de Plein Air" which has a recreated town of 17th- 19th century buildings, and lots of farm animals.  We are not by any means in the country here, but there are farm animals everywhere we go.  A pair of roosters and a charming pair of geese (not Canada geese) roam around our street.  They make me smile very time I walk or drive by.  Yesterday one of the geese was an inch away from a parked car, staring at the driver's door.  Perhaps admiring his reflection or looking at a juicy bug crawling on it?  Here's an animal from the musée yesterday:

I wonder why people think pigs are dirty?

We have been here almost 5 months now, and we have checked off most of our to-do list.



Our remaining overnight trips are Nantes, in Brittany, and Bobby's birthday present of a weekend in Berlin.  The kids's last day of school is July 1st, and a week later my nephew Jake arrives.  We will   do day trips with him (Paris, etc) for a week, and then we leave Lille for (yes, I see the irony)  a week's vacation in Bordeaux.  Jake leaves from Paris and then we will head to England to spend a few days in Kent before we head to Heathrow for home.

In contemplating our last two months. we have been discussing why we are sad to leave, and excited to go home:

Bobby and Amelia will miss:

Being forced to invent games because we don't have all our stuff
Having a passport nearby to look at (B)
Half days of School on Wednesdays
Chocolate and Chantilly Waffles (B)
Croissant/pain au chocolat breakfasts
Their new friends

Scott and I will miss:

The food, esp. cheese.
Public transport esp. high-speed trains and the metro
The variety of places to walk and jog and bike- BIKE PATHS!
Museums and play centers all over the place, and inventive playgrounds and parks
Fresh bread every day
A weekly market  we can walk to
Mowing the lawn in 15 minutes
Being invited into people's homes for coffee
Weekend trips
The wonderful people at the EJM french/English conversation group
Our leased peugeot 308
Roundabouts
French
Really inexpensive good wine














Surprises around every corner (or at least a lot of them!)

I went to Belgium to get gas and found this fun display

A little cookie or chocolate with your coffee

parfait!

What we are eager to get back to:

Friends
Bikes
Bathrooms/bathtubs/basement
Yard and garden
Clothes dryer and dishwasher
The weather (I know, I know, it's been lousy in Richmond lately)
Eggo waffles (A and B)
Diet Coke (H)
TV/DVR (SPORTS!) and movies
English everything
Rigorous school where you know what your children are learning and how they are doing (H)
NPR
Real Sunday paper and a paper that arrives every day (see "no strikes" below)
No strikes!!
and last, but not least, our beds

Scott is a foot too long

potpourri of pictures (printemps)

Is it just me or are you craving a half moon cookie too?

Mother's day bouquet- "wildflowers" from the neighborhood.

Bobby's eye. We were arguing about "hazel."

At an amazing zoo in Belgium

Insect house I saw at a garden.

On the way to Brussels

the Loire

Moules et frites in Bruxelles

Cherry blossoms in the street.