I've had company this week (my mother Christine has been visiting), so no time to write, though we have encountered many interesting bits of French culture. Let's see, on Saturday, Sean decided to take a night-time walk to see all the christmas lights, decorations, and shop windows with automated animals in them. We left Christine at home and took our four kids, the dog, and Magdalene's friend Clara along. The walk went fine, but we ended up at the christmas market, next to... you guessed it, a very large carousel. So the two big girls went off on their own in search of adequately sweet and greasy food, and Sean went off to buy carousel tickets for the little ones, and I stayed perched on the fountain with Miriam, Matthias, Simeon and the dog. After about five minutes, Sean reappeared dragging his leg behind him and looking like he was going to faint and throw up at the same time. He sometimes plays practical jokes, and I did for a split second, hope that this was one of those times. But only for a split second. It was too obvious that it wasn't, as soon as he collapsed near us. He had fallen off the little platform where you buy tickets and heard his ankle crack as all his weight came down right on top of it. And now, even after the first moments of chock and unbearable pain, he couldn't move at all.

So there we were, 9 pm, in the middle of a Christmas fair, in a pedestrian area with all these kids (who were asking in increasingly whining tones about sweets, now that they could see the two big girls with their nutella churros) and this dog (who is not allowed on buses or trams, even in France) and an injured Sean. I have to say that I really didn't know what to do--call an ambulance? try to walk him home? try to get him to the tram so he could take the tram home, or to the emergency room? Every time he would stand up all the blood would drain from his face and he would look like he was going to faint again.

Well, I don't know why I was worried about what to do, because of course, he was going to decide. He dragged himself to the tram stop (refusing my help, after Mimi started howling like a stuck pig when I told her she would have to hold Magdalene's hand rather than mine) while I dragged five sugar-high children home through the darkened streets of Nantes. Sean spent a sleepless night in pain, and then I called a woman I know who's a doctor (really, I wasn't asking for help, I just wanted to know where to go) and her husband, who's a surgeon took Sean to the emergency room and navigated him through the system of he University Hospital (where he works). Sean was diagnosed with a sprain, and spent 3 days in bed recovering. Now he hobbles about with a brace on his foot. Unfortunately, he's figured out how to get his brace into his hiking boot, so he has been going back to work. And then, tonight is the Institute's Christmas party, complete with a christmas tree, presents for the children and a little exchange of presents among the fellows. Oh, I so wish we might have been forced to miss that. Funny too, that in an institute devoted to the study of cultural relations between North and South, there should be such an ostentatiously Christian party. But I guess this is France, where it is impossible to find even the slightest little Hanukah candle or dreidle or anything of the sort (we had to use birthday candles stuck in a plate, it was highly dangerous and fun), and where every school has a christmas tree, a christmas lunch and many highly christmassy activities for the children.

That was the main event of the last week. Otherwise, I've been going on school outings with the children (so far, I've accompanied Miriam's class (2 1/2-3 years old) to the movies, and Matthias's to the art museum. I'm going to the pool for a pre-sailing swimming test with Simeon's class in January). Boy, I guess I was mistaken early on when I kept going on and on about how well-behaved French children are. As it turns out, some are quite well-behaved, and some are horribly rude and unmanageable, just like american children. And then, I always think that I'm a crabby and bad teacher, but the lady that led the class around the museum was a lot worse than me. She was annoyed with the children before we even went into the rooms with paintings. Then, the first painting she shows them is a still life (funny, because in French it's called a 'nature morte' and her whole speech was about how everything was dead in it, it hadn't struck me until now that the english name is so much better), which of course, though it's one of my favorite forms of representational painting, is boring for children. And then, anything they had to say about the painting that wasn't a direct answer to her question or the exact answer she was looking for, she positively sneered at. We must have spent 10 minutes trying to guess what fruit the monkey was eating, which, of course, is completely stupid, since there is no correct answer. If the fruit is ambiguous, then the monkey is eating an 'apple-pear-peach-like fruit' and there is no correct answer to the question which one he is eating. I should have asked that stupid woman what color underwear Picasso was wearing in his self-portrait, maybe we could have tried to guess the answer to that unanswerable question too. Meanwhile, as the well-behaved children were trying to decide what fruit it was, and what insects were on it, there were two or three boys just climbing the walls, and answering me rudely when I tried to calm them down. It was complicated since one of the perpetrators' mother was with us and did nothing, and tough young guards from the museum kept having to reprimand all of us for being so loud and unruly.

Mimi's class, on the other hand, though they were a bit noisy and difficult to hold on to on the tram and bus (we were told NOT to let go of their hands, but it's hard to hold three hands with your two, especially when one of them really wants to get free), were completely spell-bound during the movie (a set of very beautiful, but not very action-packed animated movies from china). It was lovely to see them gasp because the little hedgehog's mother had disappeared into the watermelon she was trying to carry, or laugh when the little panda found the right size red boots for the little dancing squirrel.

Another foray into the depth of French culture: the kids and I went to get our vaccines for the H1N1 flu. I don't know how they are handling this minor epidemic in the States, but here, where everything is centralized and overly managed, the feeling has been almost plague-like. They've opened three 'vaccination-centers' in Nantes (many thousands across France), and every citizen received a voucher for getting vaccinated (in order of priority). I was surprised at how easy it was for us to receive them: all it took was one phone call and not even an hour of explaining that we were living here but with a US insurance etc. Anyway, during the first weeks of the campaign, people had to wait 3-4 hours in the centers. When we went, there were only two people ahead of us. So we had only a very short wait, and even then, no time to get bored since we got requisitioned to translate their paper-work into English. The great advantage of this is that I actually read the paperwork, for once, and finally understood what the big deal has been about this vaccine. If any of you understand already, you can skip this next bit.

Despite the feeling of out-of-the-ordinary emergency about this flu, lots of people have chosen not to get vaccinated because of the 'adjuvants' (not a word I knew before, but I guess it means additives) they have put into this vaccine to boost people's immune reaction to it. I guess the controversy is justified by the fact that the adjuvants are only necessary because of the small quantity of viral particles that they've included in the vaccine for economic reasons. I guess viral particles are more expensive than shark oil (one of the main additives)--clearly a case of a messed up market. Anyway, the adjuvants in this vaccine are not fully tested, and whatever else they do, they do cause a nasty reaction in the poor vaccinated (Magdalene and I really felt it for a few days, the others got the no adjuvant version, lucky them, but they do have to get a second dose in a few weeks).

We got the feeling, coming out of our vaccination center, that this was really a drill. This is a fairly benign flu, for the most part, though when it gets into the lungs it can be dangerous. But the time felt right to test the earth's governments' response to a pandemic, and so they put their protocols in place and are studying them closely, to see what can be improved and how, what they did right, etc. Interesting to be part of that in a country that's not yours. For some reason, feeling like this government was still going to vaccinate us (for free) though we weren't part of the social structure, made me feel more of a stranger here than I've felt even until now.

Sorry about the lack of pictures, I'll try to sneak one of Sean's brace in here for next time.

We rented a car this week-end and went to visit the city of Angers, which is about 100 km up the Loire river (when I saw how close it was, I immediately conceived the project of going there on a bike some day, maybe when the rain stops, in 6 months... anyone out there want to come with me? Annette?). The visit was motivated by a variety of reasons, strong among which is that Angers is where Magdalene's 'internet friend' Maggie lives with her family (we made friends with them when they came to visit us in Nantes a month ago, and were eager to see them again).

But we had wanted to visit Angers even before we met the McDowells, because the castle there (which, as you can see, is older and more beautiful than our castle in Nantes) houses an incredible tapestry representation of the Apocalypse; a huge tapestry (140 meters long and 850 square meters of surface area) with lovely naive and expressive representations. For each scene there is a witness (St. John, a handsome blonde curly-haired guy stuck on a church porch) and his facial expressions change in each scene: he seems shocked and upset when the angels kill the seven-headed dragon with their spears, for instance, and quite eager when an angel guides him off his porch to go get a closer look of the "great whore on the waters" as she gazes at herself in a mirror that reflects a green monster instead of her lovely chubby face. As if these were not sufficient reasons to go, there was also an exhibit of medieval illuminated manuscripts at the castle, which both Sean and I couldn't wait to see.

The manuscripts were incredible. Some were done in brilliant colors with gold decorations all over the page, but some were different from any illuminations I've seen before, they looked like watercolors with black ink outlines. When you see all these books, you realize that the illuminations were not just paintings in their own right, they belong to the art of the book, where each page, with its decorated writing and its illustrations placed just so, is a work of art and design, and then the book as a whole is also a work of art. It made me want to get back into book-binding and making children's books (since that seems to be where that art has found a home in our time).

Ok, enough French pedantry. You can see Maggie, who saved Magdalene by being her only friend in France on the picture above. They are so alike in their interests and reactions to France that they even look a little bit alike (though Maggie is very tall). Below, you can see that carousels are still part of every visit we make in France. This is a two story 'christmas carousel' (we have the same in Nantes) surrounded by little booths selling various trinkets and food. All the children had fun on it, even Simeon who would absolutely deny it if you asked him). The photo above the one of Magdalene and Maggie is one of many medieval houses remaining in Angers. They are crooked, leaning, and beautiful, with wooden carvings of sacred and profane things, very short front doors (some of them looked like even I would bump my head going in--people in the middle ages must have been very short, or else their defective architectural skills forced them to adopt the ritual of bending over when going into a house; it was probably rude not to).

Despite all this cheerful talk, we really had a terrible week-end. The children fought among themselves and with us all of Saturday (there was the obligatory car-seat fight between Magdalene and Simeon, then the gift shop fight between me and Simeon, then the 'you gave Magdalene 10 euros to go walking around Angers with her friend and you wouldn't buy me a 5 euro notebook at the museum' fight between me and Simeon, then Matthias ran away into the botanical garden where he had been told there were playgrounds, but where we didn't have time to stop, and then Miriam was hungry in the car on the way back and wailed almost the whole way. Maggie's family have only Maggie (16) and her brother Paul (14). They welcomed us to Angers and fed us and showed us around in the most generous way, but I was ashamed the whole time of being completely unable to handle our four children in their fights with each other and in my own fights with them. I felt like such a failure on Saturday night I was ready to split them up. I thought the only way to continue raising them was to take two of them and have Sean take the other two (I didn't really care which ones went where) so that there were only two sets of needs and desires to manage at a time. Unfortunately, I'm quite sure I'm deceiving myself that that would have made any difference.

So, that's it for now. Sean and the boys took advantage of the car on Sunday (and of the exceptional opening of some stores on Sunday as we approach Christmas) and went to IKEA to buy us a few christmas decorations. They were supposed to buy a tree (20 euros at IKEA, refunded if you bring the tree back in January) but they were out. We'll have to buy a tiny expensive tree on the place Viarme just up from Mimi's school, and then carry it down a few blocks to our house. How old fashioned.