Loisirs (Leisure time activities)

While it's fun to post all the pictures of our adventures in history, culture and food, another aspect of living away from your regular home, especially if you aren't the one with the Fulbright,  is a VAST amount of leisure time.  Right now, the kids and I have a rainy Saturday before we head to London tonight on Eurostar.  The cheap tickets were for the 8:30 PM train but we miraculously (hour  time change) arrive at 9:04.

Scott is on his way to Richmond, but missed his plane because the airport workers at Charles de Gaulle were having a slowdown.  They would stamp a passport and then read a magazine for a while, then stamp another passport.  He missed the plane by 5 minutes and texted that it is really stressful to miss a plane so slowly.  His replacement plane was delayed for mechanical reasons so he will head home via Chicago and probably a hotel there.

Back to leisure time: We let the kids decide what they wanted to pack for France, and rolled our eyes when Amelia packed 23 (smallish) stuffed animals leaving only 4 at home.  ( She said those four didn't want to come.) Now I am feeling like the kids  couldn't live without those 23 "stuffies"  They play with them every day for hours.  They (the stuffies) are currently campaigning for Stuffy President, and the candidates have posters, platforms and polls.  They get loud and silly and even violent so I sometimes wish they stayed in VA. The Stuffies that is.

In Richmond, we all read at the breakfast table, adna lot of the rest of the day.  After about a month of breakfasts here reading the back of french cereal boxes we were finally able get the International NY Times, which  is delivered 6 days a week before 7 am!   We also subscribed to the Washington Post and RTD on line, and I read them all to some extent every day.  Bobby loves the links in the WP to videos (like best superbowl commercials etc) and he's reading up on politics a lot.  It may replace sports for him, until November at least.  I have learned to limit the links, as they have lead to some adult humor sites.

The kids still have "screentime"around sunset, and I've been more lax about it over this never-ending school break.  They do minecraft and other online games.  Movies are harder, as copyright laws don't allow us to use Amazon Prime.  We can watch the movies we already own, and can use netflix, but all on small screens.  (We make the kids use headphones in our small living area)

I would love to see a real movie but have not found a sitter yet.   American movies are just subtitled so it would be a delight.  Family and kid movies are dubbed over :(  Here is one I might sneak off to with Amelia:

Our life-saver is Henrico County library e-book loans.  Every day I thank them (and our fellow taxpayers) for this amazing gift.  I can search for ("Newberry prize winners" for example) borrow and download a book through overdrive/kindle.  The book will immediately appear on all three of our e-readers.  (We have a Kindle paperwhite, 5 year old IPAD and a Kindle Fire.)  Bobby, Amelia and I can all read the same book at the same time at our own pace!  And they return themselves!!!  There is a waitlist for popular books but heck, we have 7 months, so I am fine with that. And it is automatically borrowed when it becomes available. You can borrow up to 28 books and wait for 24 more.  They have a very good selection.  I can't say enough about how much it adds to our quality of life.

Tourism update:  Last weekend we visited the beautiful city of Ghent.  Climbing the stairs of a very large, very old castle:

Saw this on the castle tour.  Do you know what it is and what the bag is for?

A few more pictures:
A rampart in the castle in Ghent, 



a snack AMELIA had one afternoon.Yes that is a slab o' cheese.


Dessert  from one of the nearby bakeries (the orange is passionfruit mousse)


It's nice to be near Belgium on Valentine's day.  Look what my honey left me:



OK off to put the stuffies in time out.  They were yelling  "crap" but Bobby claims that they were talking about crepes.   Hmm, the castle in Ghent might be have just the place for them!