This Friday, we had our first visitors for goûter (that wonderful french meal around 4:30-5:00 where you get to eat all the bad things you're not allowed to eat at other times, like pain au chocolat, croissant aux amandes, or, in this case, because we are Americans in France, brownies). Mimi is definitely being 'socialized' by her school experience (socialization is the great virtue everyone touts here when they start to feel a little guilty that their three month olds are in school from 8-6:30), as you can see in this picture. She played with Oonagh for 2h without screaming, and she even shared some of her toys with her!!! Matti, meanwhile, played with Elijah, a boy in his class who is fluent in English. I don't know why, though, after playing non-stop for two hours and then showing the greatest difficulty in parting, Matti still doesn't consider Elijah his friend. I asked if this was because Elijah had once told him he could not play with him in the school yard, but Matthias said no, that he'd forgiven him for that. So... I don't really get it, I thought boy friendships were supposed to be simple. You kick a ball around together for 10 minutes, that makes you friends. Anyway, I had a nice time myself hanging out with the children's mother (the same one I've had coffee with a few times whose husband is Irish).

On Saturday, we had an eventful day: we went to a used bike fair that was a complete and utter mess. You had to get a number to get in, but then there was no way of knowing what numbers were allowed in, and then it was taking eons, with all of us crushed in this enormous crowd and in constant danger of being hit by the tramway. Anyway, after getting there at 11am and then leaving at 11:45 when they had only called # 35 and I had # 178, we went back around 4:00 and found bikes for both boys--fancy mountain bikes with all kinds of gears and all kinds of suspensions all over the place. Matthias is already scheming to bring his back to Bellingham. We had thought we might find bikes for the three adult-sized persons in the family, but all the money was spent on the boys, they're the ones whose happiness most depends on being bike-enabled, I guess. I also benefit from their being mounted: on Sunday, I got to go for a run accompanied by my two boys on their mountain bikes. It makes for pretty crowded tiny sidewalks, but we got pretty far, and they didn't have any trouble going to sleep that night. You can just see a bit of Simeon's bike on the side of the picture there.

The really tragic thing that happened on Saturday, however, was the definitive loss of papou. He fell out of the stroller (we assume) in the middle of some huge garage sale on the banks of the river, and though we have gone back now three times, there has been no sign of him. Mimi periodically remembers and cries for an hour or so. She especially misses him at night. I took her to a toy store to find some kind of new friend (I know, it's a stupid idea, no one can replace papou, but she's so sad, and, as a matter of fact, I'm so sad) and she kept saying no, she didn't want any of the animals there. We did finally settle on a kind of long limbed black and white goat that's made of the same soft velveteen, but she's had a very conflicted relationship with it since. She did take it to bed last night, and was rubbing it under her nose as she used to do with papou, and then she said to Sean: "This is soft like papou... is it papou?" and when he said no, she said she didn't want it, not even anywhere near her bed. However, she did take it to school as her doudou this morning (all french children are hugely encouraged to treasure a doudou, and they get to take them to school, and everyone understands immediately the tragic nature of the situation when I tell them Mimi has lost her doudou). Anyway, this morning, as she was getting ready for school she told me the goat (which she has decided to call horsie) doesn't smell right. It smells like the girl at the store where we bought it. Hopefully, after a few trips to the sandbox and after she agrees to take it to bed, horsie will start smelling good.

On Saturday night, we had some people for dinner (the woman works for Sean's Institute, and she came with her partner and her 13 year old and their 1 year old). I was pretty apprehensive, because I have no cookbooks and few cooking utensils, but we managed quite a feast. The fun part of the dinner, though, was the two thirteen year old girls stayed at the table while the other kids took off, and then they really participated in the conversation--in French, no less. It was amazing to hear Magdalene hold her own completely fluently, intelligently and forcibly against Sean, and the mother of the other 13 year old. I wasn't just proud, either, I was really enjoying the experience of having a genuine social gathering with Magdalene included. We had a great debate over whether the french way of teaching history (by making the kids memorize hundreds of dates) is better than the American way (where you learn the big picture). On the picture, Magdalene looks mad because Sean and I have curtailed her use of the computer and she's been trying really hard to make us change our mind without succeeding. This picture was taken just after she had made one more try. If anyone has advice about how much computer time is appropriate for a girl who needs to spend more time than usual on her homework this year, please let me know.

On Sunday, we had a bit of a Bellingham day with me running ahead with the boys on bikes, and Sean following on foot and stroller with the two girls. We had agreed to meet... you guessed it, at the merry-go-round in the large beautiful parc of Procé, the very same where the boys first experienced the savage nature of the french playground when they tried to ride the babybobs. Simeon has now decided he is too big for merry-go-rounds (which is quite true), but not Matthias, and Mimi is definitely hooked. French parks are funny that way, they always have urban things to do like merry-go-rounds, little cafés in little gazebos where you can have delicious treats (I really don't know why French women don't get fat, because they sure eat an amazing quantity of fattening stuff. I guess they must eat less of the other stuff? I'll have to read that book to discover the secret).

Now, a new week is dawning. This week, Sean starts his 'professional activities' at the Institute For Advanced Studies (IEA), the place that's paid for our trip, rented us our apartment and furnished it, and generally helps us with any trouble we have. So far, they consist in lunch on Monday, dinner on Tuesday, Lunch on Thursday, and occasionally, a seminar on Thursday. It should be pretty fun for him to meet all these different 'chercheurs' from all over the world. It will be interesting to hear whether he gets any professional or academic benefit from it, or whether the lengthy and heavy meals interfere with his work, either by eating up his time, or by diverting all the blood from his brain to his digestive track. For the rest of us, it should be an ordinary week, although I have to go meet Magdalene's French teacher this afternoon, and I will probably get weighed down with more homework to do with her.

I don't know whether this has been coming across, but things have been seeming a little better lately.  Simeon and Matthias aren't fighting quite as much, Magdalene isn't breaking down in despair quite as often, and I'm not damaging my vocal chords yelling at those poor kids because I'm so culture-shocked quite as severely.  (Mimi is continuing to yell and have fits all the time, especially in stores, where, as Matthias has pointed out, she always gets given something by the both disapproving and compassionate store keeper--she's scored bread, a stuffed mole, chouquettes (a kind of pastry) and who knows what besides.  I've taken to bribing her with lollipops just for going to the store--in Bellingham it's only for going running, as Anna knows well.)  Anyway, last night was another setback, or if not a setback, a sign that things are not really there yet.  Matti (contrary to his non-representational pictures here) was crying because when he asks others if he can play with them at recess, they say no, that their games are too hard for him.  Magdalene had a complete breakdown at dinner because (a) they put her in a class with all students who are not interested in studying and so are not her kind of people and so are not her friends, and (b) everybody treats her as if she's a complete idiot, which she assured us she is not (as if we don't know).  
Then, to top it all off, I completely lost my temper with her when, after doing 2 hours of homework with her (it was 10:00 pm), I discovered that her french binder was in a complete mess, with sheets strewn all over the place, and I accused her of not doing her best (that was my breakdown, in case you are all wondering how this fits with the previous descriptions of breakdowns).  I went to sulk in my room after that, just like a teenager, and then I woke Magdalene early this morning to finish doing physics homework and French homework.  It's a grueling schedule, and I am learning a lot of stuff never knew (or had forgotten) about the first world war, the russian revolution, the weight of electrons, the shape of chromosomes, and the nature of metaphors and similes.  I'd just rather be reading my own books at 10:00 pm.  

Oh, and then, to top it all off, when I got back from my little urban walk with Tipomme, after dropping the boys off at school, I was locked out of the house.  The little flap that covers the lock on the courtyard door had covered the lock which prevented my key from functioning.  I had removed a piece of rolled up paper from that flap a week or so ago, wondering why the former tenants, clearly slobs, had left it there.  Well, after twenty minutes of trying to push the flap up with various thicknesses and various species of pieces of wood, I finally succeeded in getting in (I did consider breaking a window, and I did check that they were all securely locked).  So, the first thing I did was roll up a bit of paper to secure the flap up and away from the lock.  And then I took out the computer to tell someone my story, since there is no one here I get to talk to.  Aside from my children's unhappiness, and my own occasional lapses of calm, I do lead a very silent life here.  I miss all my little chatting sessions with all my friends around Parkview and in the neighborhood.  A year really is a long time.

This picture doesn't at all represent reality.  In reality, there are at least 30 other people trying to walk by me, some on bikes, some with strollers, some who are afraid of dogs and some who have scary dogs off their leashes, etc.  I think this is more a feature of big cities than of France in general and even Nantes in particular, but every time I try to go and exercise, it's like hell out there (if you accept the very French view that hell is others).  I mean, I went swimming with three other mothers from the boys' school.  We met at 9:30pm, and got in the water about 10:00pm.  And it wasn't just hard to swim, it was so crowded it was hard to see the water.  I think there were maybe 7 lanes for swimming, and every one had about 20 people in it.  Now, of course, this would never happen in Bellingham.  And the last time I lived in a big city I wasn't interested in exercising, so I can't compare.  But at least in Bellingham, the lanes have designated speeds, so that the extremely slow swimmers are not in the same lane with the aggressive males who were swimming, not around me, but in fact over me, so obnoxiously that I had to change lanes to get away from them (although the guy who was swimming breast stroke by crossing his legs over one another, and therefore was hardly moving at all did not seem bothered by these other males).  Anyway, although the swimming was a complete nightmare (added to the terrible overcrowding was the fact that there's a wave machine that pushes you to one side, so that you're always ending up getting kicked or scraping your knuckles in the wall) the social side of things was nice.  The three women each have three children (and each child has three cats, and each cat has three kittens, etc.  How many were driving to the Petit Port Pool?) in various classes with my three younger ones, interesting jobs and lives, and are quite friendly (aside from being fiercely competitive in their swimming, which is something I remember between friends from my youth, but have gotten less used to in the states, I don't know why, since competition is supposed to be at the very heart of American society, but it's frowned upon, say, in school, whereas here it's absolutely everywhere, at the Judo class, in school where some mothers were explaining that they want their children to get grades so they will know where they stand compared to the others in the class).  One of the mothers, in particular, is married to an Irish guy so they speak English at home, and we've been doing more things together.  Yesterday, for instance, she saw me with my embarrassingly big shopping bags and then joined me at the market, where she showed me the best merchants, and then we had coffee together again.  I'm a little tentative, since I'm rusty about French social clues, but it looks promising.

Anyway, running is almost as bad as swimming.  I usually go around 4:00pm, and I have to pass several boulevards with cafés on them to get to the Erdre river (the one in the non-representational photo up there), and those cafés are so packed at that time, I can barely get by with Tipomme, and often have to run in the street.  And then, I don't know if this is a big city thing again or a Nantes thing or a French thing, but people walk in groups on the tiny sidewalks and the tiny running path by the river, and even though I'm huffing and puffing behind them, I have to actually tap them on the shoulder before they will make way for me (unless they are afraid of dogs, thank you Tipomme), and then they give me such looks!  Anyway, exercising here is such a pain, I might have to give it up.

The photo above, there, is the Mediatheque (it's a library, only because it has things other than books, like DVDs and CDs, it gets called this very fancy name).  I am proud to say that, so far, my two Wednesdays entertaining my children alone have passed very educationally.  Last Wed. we went to the museum of natural history (where Matthias and Mimi ran around the balcony where all the birds and shells are displayed and squealed while a very very serious class of high school students were being taught some obscure points of evolutionary theory that I'd never heard before).  This week, we went to the Mediatheque and got cards, and took out books!  And why didn't I think of that sooner, stupid me, they've been so much happier this afternoon, now that they have books to look forward to (most of them in English, but some in French... the comic books).

Now, the biggest news of all, which I was not going to talk about because I was so annoyed that I couldn't put in a picture, is that we went to visit my brother and his wife and 2 children in Poitiers this week end (I did figure out how to download my sister in law Ramona's pictures from her web-album, though, so this entry is extra-long).  They are looking very cousin-like on this picture, which they were (I guess this is a picture that does represent the reality of that day) especially the younger ones.  Matthias and Josephine (5) got along famously, both because they were such serious horse chestnut collectors (they filled many of the freely dispensed poop bags in the lovely park near my brother's house), and because they are both a little zany (hopping and singing down the sidewalks of downtown, holding hands).  Mimi and Josephine got along well, until Mimi got less shy and started protesting Josephine treating her like a doll.  And both Matthias and Magdalene read to Gabriel (who is 2 months younger than Mimi, and told me he is a queen in the pink dress on the picture).  

We took a long walk in the city which is beautiful (but Sean's camera died, so you do not get to see any pictures).  There were medieval buildings everywhere to console us of the desperately 18th century Nantes, both government buildings (like the city hall and the Courthouse) and incredible romanesque churches.  The Cathedral has a large stained glass window of the crucifixion dating from the 11th century, and on the central square in the town (where the market is and lots of little cafés) is a small 12th century church called Notre Dame La Grande which looks like its roofs are pinecones.  The whole inside of the church is painted in bright colors (only since most of the paint dates back to the 12th century, it HAS faded a bit)  it looked so joyful when I peeked in, but had to go back out after about 2 minutes because there was a wedding taking place, and Mimi on my back was beginning to scream.   In any case, aside from Magdalene's being sick and so missing the walk and so missing the fact that her favorite accessories store (Claire's) is smack in the middle of downtown Poitiers, the day was just wonderful.

Now the children have two more days of school before the week-end, when we hope to find bikes for the whole family at a used bike fair in our neighborhood (actually, everything that happens in Nantes happens in our neighborhood).  If we do, we will explore the Sevre river more fully...  with many more photos to show for it.

Last Saturday, we spent the day at the beach in the town of Pornic, on the south side of the Loire estuary.  It's a little touristy town, but since it's been touristy since the 13th century, the present day tourist shops aren't too disturbing: there's still the castle, houses from the 16th century, and countless incredible mansions with towers from the 18th.  On the beach, the sand was very yellow, the water crystal clear, the people not too numerous (though numerous enough to look askance at us, because their children didn't make a quarter of the noise ours did).  We spent hours in the water and both parents got sunburned (but we did put sun screen on the children!).

Look at that, as soon as you take my sons out of our apartment and out of the confines of the small car we rent from time to time, they actually love each other.  That warms my heart, as they have been tormenting each other with their unhappiness since we've been here.  Matthias prevents Simeon going to sleep at night with his tossing and crying and whisperings (last night it was because today Simeon was going on an outing with his class and wouldn't be at school all day, and Matthias was punishing him by complaining loudly that the only good moment in the day, the moment he waits for while bored in class, is seeing Simeon at recess, which he wasn't going to get to do today.)

I have now been to both boys' 'reunion' (I don't know what to call it in English, the teacher

 holds a meeting with the parents to describe, with great seriousness, the stringent curriculum they're going to try to teach the kids that year, and they're just as serious and concerned about math and French as about the arts and gym--the education of french children into high culture, including the culture of eating a huge number of different cheeses is of the utmost importance.)  Although this is the first time that I have thought, upon being presented with such things, 'Oh, my goodness, how can my poor children ever master all this?', I also found those meetings highly amusing.  They consisted mainly of the teacher railing against the 'education nationale', the ministry of education, which sets curricula in detail for all of France.  Every time he (both boys' teachers are men) would raise a new point about something the children have to learn this year, either he or one of the parents would say, 'but how is this possible, without Saturdays?' (the children used to go to school on Saturday mornings, but this was changed last year).  Every time the teacher would describe some reform or other that he found obnoxious, or something the 'education nationale' told him to do last year that he REFUSED to do, everybody would rail against the government and how they are trying to run education as if it's a private business etc.  Me?  I just wanted to know when they did gym, so I could hold that in store to tell Matthias which days he would like.  But basic practical information like that was not forthcoming.

One fun part of having the four kids at such different levels of schooling is that I get to see what they teach them here about basic school procedure that they don't teach in America.   For instance, even Mimi has a cahier de correspondence, where the teacher writes down informations about outings, vacations, whatever goes in the Panda pocket at home.  By the time the kids get to Matthias's age, they know never to forget these cahiers, and they know to get them signed whenever there's something new in there.  But my poor Magdalene hasn't been properly trained, so she regularly forgets about it.  Same for the cahier de texte, where the children write their homework.  Matthias is being taught to do this, then to use a ruler to neatly separate homework he's already done from ones that are still to do (nobody crosses out stuff here, they  use their pen erasers, which they keep in their trousse, another bit of school procedure that my children are having to learn).  Anyway, Simeon is struggling with that one, and has been weeping and wailing because he can't tell what his homework is, or when it's due or what kind of test he's having.  If nothing else, this year will teach them to learn in a few days what the other children have had a lifetime of school to learn.

Magdalene is also learning about French emotionalism and patriotism.  She had us all laughing last night at the dinner table doing an imitation, in French, of her history teacher carrying on about the life of soldiers in the trenches in the first world war: "Life for the soldiers was HORRIBLE, they were HUNGRY, they were COLD, they lived in the MUD, you all cannot IMAGINE etc."  She says all her teachers are like that, they get so excited about things and they are too involved in them, which also causes them to yell at her when she fails to do something all the others have known for 10 years how to do.  She keeps coming up against these things that everyone knows but she doesn't know how they know.  For instance, she's not allowed to have both fruit AND dessert at lunch, except when it's melon, then it's considered an appetizer (which they call entree here) and she's allowed to have it.  But to her, it looks completely random, that she gets yelled at for having orange and dessert, but not for having melon and dessert.

I'm going to end on an upbeat note: the boys have finally found something that they positively love.  We signed them up for Judo classes, and they came back just almost too excited to speak.  They've learned to knock each other down, roll over each other, and any number of other exciting things.  Oh, they can't wait till next wednesday when they get to go again.  They even have their little uniforms hanging in the closet, though they really want to wear them all the time.  I guess that's another place where they're happy to have each other and where they're learning to rely on each other.  Matthias, especially, has boundless confidence in Simeon's abilities, and this gives Simeon unlimited courage to do what he didn't know he could.  Good.  Now we need to find similar exciting things to do for the girls.

I have to say that last night, we reached a new low point in this adventure.  Mimi had lost Papou (her beloved bunny, without which she can't sleep or can't possibly face the horrors of school), Matthias was shining his flashlight in his eyes because he felt so sad (there must be a causal link there, even if it's not a logical one), Magdalene had piles of homework for me to do, and Simeon...  no, he alone was fine among the depressed and the despairing.  It was the loss of Papou, though, that symbolized the specific kind of misery that has been plaguing me since we've been here.  All the children (aside from Simeon, that is) are so miserable, so sad, and I have no comfort to give them.  I can't make friends for them, I can't make them feel at home in the alien culture of the schools, I can't make them into the exemplary students they are used to being in the states.  All I can do is listen to their wailings and feel helpless.  When Mimi lost Papou, all I could think was that now I couldn't even give her that tiny bit of comfort, of that soft pink animal that smells like home to her (it doesn't smell very good, though better than my kitchen which I suppose smells like home to me).  It sure is hard to just listen to your children's sadness and remember that it will pass quickly, that this really is good for them (why was that again?)

Anyway, though I worried that Mimi would not be able to sleep or go to school, she actually slept fine (better than all the nights with Papou) and was ready to go to school with a different stuffed animal (Flying Kitty, if you must know) this morning.  However, this morning, when I woke up Matthias, the first words out of his mouth after "did you find Papou?" were, "I think I know where he is."  He ran outside in his underwear and did find him, stuck between the fence and the bushes that line our courtyard. I guess shining the flashlight in his eyes didn't damage them too much.  Oh, Matthias, we are so grateful!  Even if he can't be the hero at school that he's used to being, at least he's a hero at home to us.  

It was nice, despite all I've said so far, to see that every one was so concerned for Mimi.  They all searched in the most unlikely places, and they all asked, both late at night and early in the morning whether Papou had been found, what we were going to do, etc.

Just an hour until Mimi comes home from school, I'd better go walk the dog.

Today is Wednesday, which means the little kids don't have school, though Magda has a half day.  They are all playing in the boys' room and I am sneaking some time on the computer.  The neglected fifth child in our family has asserted her existence by developing an infection in her rear end, caused, in all likelihood, by any numbers of parasites: fleas, worms, ticks, all of which proliferate here in such abundance, I'm starting to think we moved to Africa, not France.  Anyway, french vets are as bad as french doctors for the overmedication of their patients.  I now have to give Tipomme 3 different kinds of pills in different doses twice a day, and spray her rear end with calming medicine once a day.  She hates me.  On top of it, I have to put the cone of shame (I tried to joke about that but the vet had not seen UP) on her whenever I can't supervise her.  She looks like a little pioneer girl who's done something naughty, the way she hangs her head in shame.  Oh, and speaking of parasites, all the pharmacies have huge advertisements for lice medicine in their windows, and we've been warned that in all likelihood, the kids will get it not just once.  (Ingrid, if you're reading this, I'm sorry I was so mean at the Broadway park party before we left!)

I now have to spend every evening doing French homework with Magdalene, and I'm sorry to say (sorry about my own abilities, that is) that I am working at the very edge of my understanding.  We have to distinguish between possessive pronouns and possessive adjectives and demonstrative adjectives and indefinite pronouns...  Do any of you know the difference in English?  On the other hand, we're doing some pretty fun stuff with textual analysis, and I'm glad she's being made to do it.  On the social side, Magdalene made two friends both named Elliot(t), one of which is funny and the other not, one of which is good at math and the other not.  She seemed delighted with that.  She's still tentative, and thinks every friendship is a pity friendship, and she still has complete breakdowns and says everything (from laws of phonetics to the ridiculous demands of her teachers) is stupid.  But on the whole I think she's adjusting well.  Mimi still cries, but she confessed to me yesterday that she did want to go to her new school (!), that she positively LIKED one of the teachers there, the one who takes them out to recess (for recess, that is, not when she's being kicked out of the classroom for screaming).

Simeon is still thriving.  He exchanged phone numbers with a boy named Matteo, and he comes out of school mobbed by kids every day.  His teacher is very kind to him, lets him write in print (rather than cursive, which the kids learn first here, as I discovered thirty three years ago when I moved from Switzerland and got pegged as a bad student because I could not write cursive 'l' or 'e').  But Matthias is actually not doing well at all (as is counterillustrated by this photo).  I guess in Bellingham, he gets a lot of his self-worth from all his friendships and from being a good student at school.  Here he seems completely defeated by the fact that he cannot do what the teacher tells him at school, and cannot really make friends.  He only thrives during bouts of physical activity (as here) or in ball games at school.  We're trying to enroll him in Judo, but enrolling your kids in activities here seems to be harder than enrolling yourself in various social programs (which I've been trying to do without success every moment of Miriam's trials at school)

I have been invited to 'prendre un cafe' by a mother who has one child in Mimi's school and two in the boys'.  She and her husband own an Irish coffee shop a ten minutes walk away.  This is my first social success of this trip, I'll have to wear something nice!

Well, we had an uneventful week-end after so much trauma and tragedy on Thursday and Friday.  I spend my week-end reliving middle school by helping Magdalene do her homework, pages and pages of it.  She's having to work so hard, I think she can go straight to college when we get back to the states.  It's funny, actually, because when I came to the states as a Junior in high school, I was used to working really hard, and I've always thought that one and a half years of American high school were what deprived me of those life-long good habits in my later life.  But my hope is that a mere year of hard work in France will cure Magdalene of the bad habits she's acquired in American schools her whole life.  When Sean and I first met, we were in a seminar on Thomas Aquinas in which we argued about just this question: can a single act destroy a long established habit? 

On Saturday, Simeon and I spent a good hour roaming the aisles of the stationary store looking for the very precise list of school supplies he was given on Thursday.  He and Magdalene got fountain pens as well as fountain pen erasers, and then I got to give them a little lesson in how to use those emblematic implements of the french school child.  They put all their writing implements in a little pouch called a trousse, which even adults carry these around like good school-children (e.g., the man who came to fix all the things gone wrong in our apartment so far, and left, having taken his little trousse out to write down a few things, but having fixed absolutely nothing).

All week, we have been watching people setting up, first an enormous ferris wheel (the biggest one any of us have seen) and then an entire fair the size of the NW fair in Lynden, on two courtyards the size of Broadway park (except here they don't even pretend like there's any other motive to have the fair, like showing animals or tomato contests or quilt displays, it's all rides and games).  It's really striking, you have the cathedral, and the old city wall with its gate, and then this garish fair right smack at the foot of it all.  Not only that, but the booths at the fair all seem to be x-rated, not just for nudity (the whole country is x-rated for that, all you have to do is walk by a newsstand to be shocked), but for much more shocking things.  Magdalene covered both boys' eyes every time, but it was useless, they saw anyway.  Funny, because French children seem so much more innocent and younger than American ones, and yet they have this sort of thing to gaze upon at every street corner.  This very tightly packed fair, then, and very inappropriate, was also exorbitantly expensive.  No bracelets allowing all rides for our poor children.  They all got to go on the ferris wheel, from which you could see all of Nantes, with its rivers, its grey slate roofs and its churches, and then they got to pick one ride each (although Matthias had to accompany Mimi on her ride, to keep her safe from the yucky bee, which she is deathly afraid of at school), and they each got a barbapapa (cotton candy) bigger than their heads.  I don't think I've ever seen anything cuter than Mimi biting at this enormous wad of sugar, and ending up with bright pink shininess all over her eyebrows and hair.

And now it's back to the weekly routine: Mimi's heartbreaking howls when we drop her off at school, Matthias's scared and reluctant little face as I kiss him goodbye at the school door, Simeon's stoic frown behind his new French 'NBA' (!) glasses, and Magdalene's anguished questions that I don't know how to answer (what if the Spanish teacher calls on her, when she's only done 2 months of Spanish to the other kid's one year, what if her lunch card doesn't work again, is she allowed to wear her gym shoes for the day, because they won't fit into her backpack crammed with 20 books, notebooks and binders--this is the day she comes out at 5:30, and what if they have swimming today, and not gym? etc.)  I bribed them all a little bit by buying these special kinds of chocolate bars (high in dairy products!!!) for their gouter (the meal every French child eats at 4:30 when she comes out of school) and sending them to school with them for their afternoon recess.  I don't know if it's the sea air, but they're all ravenous all the time, and it's hard to fit even enough food for one meal into our small refrigerator.

Sorry, no pictures today, it sure doesn't look as nice without them.  I'll try to do better next time.

Well, if anyone out there is wondering how the beginning of school was for the other three children, here is the update:

Simeon and Matthias had a great day.  As expected, Simeon loved the food, and he has at least 6 friends already.  Matthias has one friend with whom he had burping contests on the playground.  Both boys reported being very bored during class, where (according to their own internal time) they spent hours just looking at the same thing in a book and not understanding anything.  This sort of puts academics in perspective though, because they were so happy coming home, it was a balm to my heart after poor Mimi's day (she went to sleep at 9:30 after telling me for an hour that she did not want to go to sool tomorrow).

Magdalene didn't get mentioned earlier because she started at 3 (I wrote the other entry before that).  I went to pick her up at 5, and by 5:05, as soon as we had left the street where her 'college' is, she had dissolved into complete despair.  Everybody thinks she's retarded because she doesn't speak french, she doesn't understand what the teacher says, but the teacher says it's urgent, she doesn't really understand the social norms, etc.  It makes me heartsick to face tomorrow and the sending of my two girls to the emotional guillotine.  It has to get better soon, but I'm so childish myself, it's just as hard for me to remember that as it is for them.

That's all, just the little update on the children.

We had an adventurous two days with a rented car, all of us plus my mother Christine, plus Tipomme, squeezed into a middle size station wagon with two extra seats in the back.  On Tuesday, we went to this castle: the chateau de Suscinio, which was the hunting lodge of the dukes of Brittany, the very same ones who had their main castle in Nantes.  It's surrounded by bogs and on the bog are trees full of egrets and some other quite large water bird with white and black wings, storks, maybe, but I couldn't tell for sure, not having brought binoculars.  After meandering about the castle and finding climbing equipment for the boys to fight over, we continued on to the beach where Sean and I went swimming and the kids found an endless number of other things to do (like climb onto the life-guard chair that had no ladder to prevent climbing).  It was beautiful, and as, apparently, no one here does anything before two in the afternoon, we were pretty much alone.  We also saw some 'tumulus', prehistoric burial grounds (they just look like little hills, actually), one of which had been transformed into a bunker during the second world war (and for some strange reason, the usually very self-righteous french did not write, 'by the germans', so we wondered if it was the French occupation government that was responsible for this outrage to the glorious french patrimony).

On Wednesday we went to a city to the south of Nantes (the outing on Tuesday was all to the North, in Brittany) called Clisson.  We drove through miles and miles of vineyards in what appears to be old wine country (Sean was excited to go through the birthplace of Peter Abelard, Le Pallet, and to see an abbatial church, parts of which were standing when Abelard was made abbot of the monastery of St Gildas de Ruys).  This city had (a) a castle (quite a nice one, I thought, but the boys prefer the one in Nantes, which is better preserved) and (b) a playground.  I guess that's how we seem to be balancing every outing.  First a church or a castle or a walk, and then a playground.  I don't know what I was thinking in my first days here, when I complained there were no playgrounds.  They are everywhere.

One or two observations about driving in France (all of which Sean did.  I don't think I would do it even if someone's life depended on it): driving in the city is so stressful it takes years of one's life.  The French have become completely demented about these roundabouts where the people on the roundabout have the right of way.  they've almost completely replaced traffic lights, and they make finding your way extremely stressful, because every 100 meters, you have to check again what direction you want to go (out of 4 or 5 choices), and you end up going around and around the roundabout while your wife (that's me) wrestles with the map and tries to find the various options on our route.  I don't know why they give roads numbers, because they seem to completely ignore them in the signs that line the roundabouts.  And then, they tell you a city on one roundabout, e.g., Clisson, and then 400 meters later you go round and round again (to the great nausea and displeasure of the people in the way back of the car) looking for your destination, and it is nowhere to be found. 

 Okay, and then I came up with a perfect analogy for what it's been feeling like living here so far: it's been feeling like being in a car with four children and a dog for two weeks, with all of their little displeasures magnified and amplified until they are completely intolerable.  I came up with the analogy on our way home from the first outing (on Tuesday), because we got caught in a traffic jam at dinner time, so everybody was whining and complaining in pretty intolerable ways.  And then, when we got to the house, they all went to their rooms like they normally do at home, and everything was so peaceful.  It was like the trip in the car had made them so uncomfortable that the relief of finding themselves in a house trumped the fact that it was such an unfamiliar one.  Let's hope the relief lasts, and that they don't go back to their car manners.

And so that brings us to today, their first day of school.  Here they are.  The two boys seem to have dressed like twins.  They do that when they are getting along really well, which they need to be right now, since they are orphans in a strange land.  I dropped them off at 9:00.  Simeon's class has three new kids (seems like it would be pretty nice to grow up in a school where you are with all the same children in the one class for your grade, and where the arrival of a new kid is a big event).  Matthias's class had one kid who was wailing and carrying on terribly, and trying to run away every time his mother tried to leave.  She was so angry with him for embarrassing her like that, she looked and sounded like she wanted to kill him.  Anyway, Matthias was very shy, but putting on a brave face, and Simeon was very stoical.  We'll see what they have to say when they get back (at 4:45)

Mimi already got back from her first day.  I went to get her at noon.  The teachers told me she had cried the entire time (she was indeed crying, all alone in a corner, when I got to the school).  Her main teacher was pretty pissed: "Please speak french to her, she's quite lost, she didn't even stop crying when we sang our song."  All Mimi will say is that she wanted to come home because she doesn't know the name of the school.  Let's see, she also says one kid poked her, that they gave her a cracker but called it a 'little cake' and that the teacher told her shhhh (with hand gestures) when she was crying and screaming for me.  She definitely does not want to go back.

I saw one mother who, after leaving her boy at the school (in Mimi's class, he's probably the one who poked her) was saying to the man walking with her: "That was so impeccable, he was confident, curious, just perfect."  People are extremely judgmental here, whether positively or negatively.  They don't see a kid go to school confidently and rejoice that the kid will be happy, they rejoice that they have an exemplary kid.  And they don't see their kid wailing and trying to run away from school and grieve that their kid is unhappy, and hope he will get happier and that the teacher will help him overcome it, they harangue their kid for being a bad specimen of childhood (not 'confident and curious'), and they are ashamed that they have raised such a bad kid.  For now, I'm going to conclude that this is why children don't seem to carry on and fuss nearly as much here...  because they're more repressed, because stuff that is acceptable in America is just not acceptable here, not acceptable to such an extent that it is worthy of lack of love.  A very convenient conclusion, since I have been a bit embarrassed that Mimi pitches a fit in every store that sells candy when I won't buy her one, and that my kids are so boisterous and free and loud.  It will help me to overcome that.