Here is our house for the next year.  It's a beautiful apartment (although with all the work we did--ahem, if you're reading this, Steve, you'll be charitable and assume that the 'we' includes you--before we left, it's hard not to notice all the imperfections in the baseboards, the way the light fixtures hang, the tiles and grout, and all the holes in the walls that were not filled and painted over) that surrounds this little courtyard on three sides.  On my left is the kitchen, and on my right is Mimi's room, with many bathrooms and other rooms in between (we have 5 bathrooms, 3 showers, one fancy bathtub...  quite a change from the one bathroom we lived with most of the summer).

Okay, that's the roof over our heads.  The first few days here were occupied primarily with a search for food that the children would eat.  We got here on a holiday (the sacrosanct middle of the August vacation holiday, when half the country returns from vacation and the other half leaves), so all the stores were closed, the next day was a Sunday, so all the stores were closed.  We ate lots of bread.  Later we discovered that there are 'depaneurs,' little stores that stay open when the rest of France is enjoying its leisure (they're usually held by foreigners like us).

Anyway, after many trips to many stores (in basements, so the stroller couldn't get there, or with cranky cashiers who wouldn't work to make our card work, and so made the line huge behind us) and many hand breaking miles carrying lots of groceries, we seem to have a fairly full pantry.  Although I have to say that there is always the threat of running out of bread, a threat that in the US, I deal with by freezing, but here, it's just not done!  I guess my anxieties about running out of food will just have to be tamed, somehow, in this country where paradoxically, it is so possible to run out of food.  We do eat smaller portions.  And when the children ask for more I bark at them: "don't you know how far I have to walk to get milk, and how heavy it is to carry?  How can you ask for more, the very blood and sweat of your mother!"

So, with food and shelter accounted for, what else?  Entertainment, I guess.  We went to see these interesting and fun carved machines (they are powered by human legs on bicycle pedals and steam engines), but the fun was a bit spoiled by the typically French attitude of the woman showing us the exhibit--yelling at us to get with the program (i.e., remain in a herd to witness the intensely interesting and staged demonstration of the lurefish machine, when Mimi wanted to go see the tree of herons, another interesting machine).  This is art, madame, not fun, a word that, for good reason, does not exist in the French language.

Then we rented a boat and puttered up the Erdre river (not an easy word to say with all french r's) where I finally found a running route, that will go over this bridge (tomorrow, if I'm lucky).  There's a path that goes up both sides of the river, and a guy at the running store told me you can do a 10 km loop up on and down the other side.  Exciting.

Also, we have found 2 playgrounds, where finally our children have seemed happy.  Until we found the playgrounds, all I heard was 'what can we do here?  Can we watch a movie?  There's nothing to do.'  What's true is that there aren't parks like there are in Bellingham.  We've only found two very small parks, and you cannot walk on the grass (a reason for which Matthias and Simeon asked me for about 25 times, clearly american children).  Still, we're planning to do more exploring up the river; and then, there's still the castle to discover.  We've circumnavigated it, but not crossed the drawbridge yet (though we did go in a tourist shop right near it and look at swords and such).