Let's see... January was the month of Galettes, February the month of crepes, so what would be more natural than that March should be the month of some other interesting and typically french custom, like, well, Easter? Mimi's teacher asked me the other day whether Easter is something we celebrate in the US, and whether Mimi's ever had easter eggs. I guess someone who's never had galette des rois might never have heard of Easter (although poor Mimi who is basically addicted to candy, found lent (with no chocolates and candy) pretty long, and was asking every day whether it was easter yet). As it turns out, though, Easter here uses pretty much the same imagery as in the US, eggs, chickens, rabbits... also bells (the story is that for easter, all the bells of all the churches fly to Rome, and on their way back, they drop eggs into people's yards. Funny enough, because Mimi has been insisting that the easter candy she found at her place on the dining room table on Easter morning had been left there by the easter bunny, and when we asked her where she had heard of such a thing (he doesn't seem to exist here), she said she figured out he existed when she saw père noël at her school before christmas... I guess she reasoned that if santa claus exists when we had told her he doesn't, then what's to prevent the easter bunny existing when we were too happy to take responsibility for all the treats he left behind. She does have a special thing for bunnies, too, because of papou). On the other hand, Easter seems to be a much smaller deal here than it is in the States: the only signs of it are all the $80+ eggs in bakery windows. But on the whole, there's not a huge build-up like there is for Christmas. And then, though Monday is a holiday too, both Sunday and Monday shops are open, and churches are pretty much as empty as they always are. Yes, Matthias, I'm sorry I had us leave a half and hour early to go to church to be sure to get seats. There were seats aplenty throughout.

In the long time since I last wrote, we have done many things: this here is the 'alignements de Carnac', fields and fields of menhirs and dolmens just sitting there with no supervision so that bad little boys like Matthias can climb all over them and make it so that stones that have stood there for 5000 years slowly becoming more and more exotic and incomprehensible, will crumble to dust tomorrow. We visited all these prehistoric sites with Simeon's best friend Matteo's family (who is lending us their house in Northern Brittany for a week during the spring break--we seem to be becoming moochers, people who get

lent other people's houses). Apparently, prehistoric people in the golfe du Morbihan (about an hour north of us) had already figured out how to dry salt out of the sea, and so got rich by trading it. As a consequence, they had money to spare and leisure time to spend it, and they built monuments (whose meaning is lost to us) that lasted. All along the coast to the north of here there are tumuluses (burial mounds), dolmens (one large stone resting on two others) and menhirs (large oblong standing stones). One of the dolmens we explored had carvings slightly reminiscent of Mayan motifs (something that looked like a sun with a face inside it). The architectural remains (all the stones) are pretty amazing, but the carving really hit me more forcefully with the feeling that there had indeed been minds, people with complex rationality and meaningfulness building these things out of a fairly intense feeling. We've been reading the kids the Philip Pullman trilogy (The Golden Compass) and if he were writing about it, he'd say the carving had more dust surrounding it than the rest of the stuff. One of the problems with the lack of supervision of these sites is that with the lack of supervision goes a lack of guidance--no explanatory signs anywhere. So I am reduced to talking about my children's science fiction literature to express my views on these monuments. Pathetic.

In any case, the one with the most dust on her is me after turning 40. I think it's the first time I think of myself as an adult. Before, I could always think, 'oh, I'm young still, that's why I'm screwing up so badly.' But now I'm forced to think, 'wait a minute, I'm an adult now, I'm 40, I can't keep on doing this.' We'll have to see how long this change of attitude lasts, but I have been more patient with my children and more circumspect about what I say all around (ahem, except for right here, this will be my one childish thing that I have not set aside now that I am a grownup). Sean was at a conference in Barcelona the week before my birthday and only came home in the late afternoon, so the hike I had asked for was delayed to the next week-end (Easter week-end). We went to Tiffauges, the castle of Gilles de Rais (a contemporary and companion of Joan of Arc, but also a man who was tried and executed in a celebrity trial in Nantes on charges of massacring and eating children) and took a beautiful walk along the Sevre river (the same one that runs into the Loire in Nantes. It's definitely my favorite of the rivers here, from Nantes to Clisson (where we went very early on in our stay) to Tiffauges: it's beautiful everywhere).

Here's the castle, blurry in the background of my crying child. This is about one minute into the walk. Still to come were the famous March giboulées (in April, no less), where the sky is perfectly blue, and then, suddenly, before the easter bunny can take even the tiniest hop, it's hailing on you. The cheerful part of it is that the sun never stops shining and the birds never stop singing, and the cows never seem to notice. But Mimi notices and cries and demands to be carried, and when no one will do it, she throws her papou into the mud and sits down her own bottom into the same mud. Okay, so though it was beautiful, historic, brilliant green with the

spring, all in all lovely, it was a bit whiny too.

Here, Matthias is leaping off the terraced gardens of the castle that come down to a tributary of the Sevre, the Crume which was dammed up near the castle in the middle ages (the dam was Sean's favorite part of the structure) and then bridged over by a 6th century bridge (that's what the guide book said, but Sean, whose American spirit of rebellion is being aroused fiercer than ever by the French tendency to grumble and complain about authority, but eventually comply and believe like sheep, wondered how one could ever tell with such a small bridge, oh, and he has doubts about Gilles de Rais's guilt and any number of other things I swallow without blinking). Sorry I'm talking about all these beautiful things without including photos, but this one was too much my favorite to replace it with photos of bridges and dams without a Matthias.

One of the reasons there are not many pictures of Simeon and Magdalene here is that Simeon's been sick and opted out of these outings, and Magdalene has been too happy to stay home 'to take care of him' (but really to miss the hikes). On Sunday, Sean finally got to actualize one of his dreams since we've been here which has been to go gaze upon the house where we might have lived, out in the country, if his wife hadn't been so pig-headed and insisted on living some place where she could walk to the store, the opera, the movie theatre, the schools, the park, etc. No, no, this here is not the house. Actually I didn't go see the house because Sean dropped me off by this chateau so I could go running on a path by the Erdre... the continuation of the path that I usually catch right by the house, but much to the North. The Chateau is beautiful, as are all the others that line the banks of that river. It seemed not to be inhabited, but nor was it falling into ruins. I don't know who it belongs to or what it's used for. But Magdalene and I wished we lived there, that we could come out on our terrace in the morning and look out on our green lawns and our horses grazing below. Then we asked Tipomme why she wasn't a horse.

On that same Easter run/visit to Sean's dream-house that I deprived him of (Matthias, upon seeing the house in the middle of cow pastures, complained that if we had lived there he wouldn't be addicted to TV and other electronics as he is in town, because he could play in the countryside, which is so much healthier! On the other hand, the run there, on that part of the Erdre, is too short for me, I can do much longer ones from downtown), Matthias gallantly picked a bouquet of flowers for Magdalene (actually, he picked it for himself and then was persuaded by his big sister to gallantly give them to her).

Then on Easter Monday, which is a holiday here, we went up to visit our friends Muriel and Emmanuel (the doctors) at La Turballe. Here is Sean posing for the picture, but the second before I bugged him to take it he was in deep conversation with Emmanuel about something or other (the neurons that line the intestinal tract, or wind surfing, or the beauties of this area our Maine (they're spending a year in Boston next year) or Washington (they've promised to visit us there), or fixing the roof on their shed, any of a number of things those two men are interested in in common). And here below is

Matthias being mauled on the beach by his friend Anna (their middle daughter) while they played house in some kind of old bunker thing from the second world war that had been disturbed by the recent storms that battered that area.

Speaking of WW2, Magdalene has been complaining bitterly about the anti-American sentiment coming out in her history class now that they are studying the post war reconstruction of Europe. She reports that according to her teacher, the US and the USSR have their good and bad points, in approximately equal amounts, except that since the US makes it

out that they're the champions of freedom and the USSR the champions of oppression, while the US are in reality witch-hunting communists and ruthlessly seeking after world domination, the US is hypocritical in addition to all its other faults, which might make it worse overall. The Marshall plan? A nefarious tool of American domination and hegemony. No doubt the American-led invasion of German-occupied France is a piece of the same policy, a policy designed to wrest power away from their only real competitors, France, when it was down, something they could never have achieved if they had faced them in a fair fight. Every day, when she comes home from school, she proves that the rebellious American spirit is strong in her too, not just in her father. Don't mess with her or her country!

February vacation is upon us, which means that contrary to my last entry, I am on full motherhood duty... well, today and half of yesterday, that is, last week we were all at the beach (our friends lent us their house at La Turballe and so we were able to visit all the places we missed last time) until Tuesday, and then on last Thursday, I went to Paris ALONE. Let me quickly disculpate myself here. I was supposed to bring Mimi to see a surgeon recommended by the surgeon we see in Seattle, so I already had (non-refundable, non-changeable because cheapest) train tickets... and then they changed my appointment. Of course, I protested and acted outraged in my most American wronged customer persona, but they didn't buy it, and then, machiavellian mother that I am, I began to see how I might turn this to my advantage..., you know, you can't let a perfectly good train ticket go to waste, and then, well, there's an exhibit I really want to see that doesn't start until the middle of March, so, well, good opportunity to make sure I can go when I bring the girl to her doctor.

The main event of our stay at La Turballe was that we lost Magdalene in the woods. Oh, for maybe an hour and a half, it was just one of the most terrible things that have ever happened to us (Sean did lose Matthias in Cornwall park when he was 2 and a half, but I didn't know about it until later). She got mad at the boys for wanting to bushwhack through thorny bushes, what with her elegant coat and scarf and all, so she decided she would go a different way. But when we got to the parking lot, no Magdalene at all, and no amount of calling could produce her either. So Sean and Simeon went searching back through the woods (after going out to look for her along the road where she might have come out of the woods at any point) and they found her sitting where she had left us. She had found the road and gotten scared because it wasn't where we had entered the woods, and then she had some dim memory that when lost in the woods you stay where you are and wait to be found.

Aside from that awful event, and some unfriendly treatment from the baker (who sighed and rolled her eyes every time I ordered another thing), a crazy guy in a parking lot who almost killed Miriam and then yelled at me, and when I yelled back, followed us in his car for at least 10 minutes, which left me a little scared whenever we saw a black car later in our stay, and the cute little pillbugs (cloportes, in french, which is one of the few nature words my kids now know in French) that scare Magdalene and infest the house we were staying at, we had a lovely time. Sean and the boys spent a lot of time playing war-like games in the woods (the very ones Magdalene was lost in)--it helped that there are German fortifications all along the beach, built in 1945 in anticipation of the Allies invading on the coast of Brittany instead of Normandy. I went running on paths, in woods and on the beach, I covered myself in shame trying to play badminton.

We went on a long hike on bluffs and a beach (very different from our beloved Ebey's Landing, but the same general idea), and the boys, who never ever stop fighting (especially at that house which comes equipped with a game of monopoly with which the boys are obsessed but which turns them into nasty capitalists, the kind that everyone knows is thirsty for war), even were friends for a little while there, on the beach and bluffs (the photo is just there to prove that point)

We stopped in Guerande, a beautiful medieval fortified town (with its entire fortification intact). On the outside of the walls, the buildings are pretty awful, but inside the city, everything has been preserved beautiful and traditional (this is a traditional window treatment for this part of Brittany, for example), except for the tourist shops that line the main street to sell salt and its accoutrements (the main traditional agriculture around Guerande is salt marshes where the salt is harvested by hand).

We also went to the very picturesque port village of Piriac, where the famous writer Zola lived for a while, and where he set one of the short stories Magdalene had to study at the beginning of the year (for you faithful blog readers, the short story with the geese that represented human affairs, and the manure pile that symbolized power)

PARIS

The second part of my vacation... well actually, the first part of my vacation (while Sean worked hard at home) took place in Paris. I got there at 10 AM and figured the first thing to do was rectify that terrible slight that was done to me in Madrid (for those who don't remember, the slight consisted in Mimi's having a screaming fit which forced me to leave the Prado after only 30 minutes of contemplating the Bosch and Bruegel paintings I have been longing to contemplate for a lifetime). So, childless and free as the wind, I made my way to the Louvre which you can see here in my quite artistic rendering. There was only a moderately long line which gave me time to wolf down a sandwich so as not to be troubled even by hunger in my contemplations (well, they only have one Bruegel and two Bosch, there at the Louvre, but there are a few other gems), and then I braved the massive crowds making it hard to breathe in the Italian wing of the museum. There were a few positively weird things, like this huge (completely uninteresting if you ask me) painting by a contemporary guy named Soulage (ahem, the inventor of 'black') hung in a room full of early Renaissance paintings by Botticelli and Ucello. There are a bunch of interviews with the guy next to the painting where he says he wanted his painting in the First Italian renaissance room because his painting was mute and Ucello's deaf... whatever (oh, the French will think I am so American, oh, and maybe you too, Jim, if you're reading this. Feel free to educate me, anyone).

Let's see, otherwise, among a host of other things (I stopped my visit when I reached the 17th century, everything becomes a bit too monstrous at that point) there's a quite amazing portrait of Cleopatra killing herself (she holds a snake to her breast, and if you've just spent five months reading Freud, I can tell you, you can't stop standing in front of that painting staring--well, especially if you don't have young children with you--oh, and she happens to look just like an actress in the HBO TV show Rome!), there's the beautiful 'deaf' Ucello battle scene that's captured in the heat of battle, with the front horse rearing and showing his teeth, and the sky so black. Anyway, I guess I'm not going to describe all my favorite paintings, but just a bit of trivia, in case any of you are planning to visit the Louvre: you can't walk for the crowds in the Italian wing, and then the German/Netherlandish wing is completely empty, despite the glorious presence of the aforementioned Bosch and Bruegels and two Vermeers that you can sit and contemplate as long as you want. Oh, and once you finish your visit, don't forget to rent a little sailboat in the Tuileries park for your children to push around a pond with a stick. I wish I'd had them there for that, and also to try out all the merry go rounds (I saw at least 15 in my five days in Paris).

This is the Church of Saint Etienne du Mont, right near the enormous and hideous Pantheon. I used to walk past it on my way to my piano lesson every week and think philosophical thoughts (I was only 14 or so, my goodness, Magdalene's age) like 'God must exist if humans create so much beauty to honor him'.

This is the Hotel de Sens, a 16th century remnant in the flamboyant gothic style of architecture--the museum of the middle ages (where I had a very pleasant conversation about J.P. Satre and the weight of freedom with someone who was turning the pages of the manuscript presenter with me, we were looking at an illuminated manuscript page from from a law book about how to resolve disputes between neighbors about cutting trees whose roots are one one side of the fence while its branches are on the other--have you been thinking of cutting any part of our Japanese plum tree, Steve?) is in the exact same style.

Ok, if I'm getting bored with my own travel writing at this point, I can't imagine what any of my readers must be feeling, so I probably should take a break. But I must at least comment on the photos I've loaded onto this page, so bear with me for another 3 minutes. Here is the chapel from the castle at St Germain en Laye, close to where I was staying during this stay (with good friends of my mother's). It houses the museum of archeology which would normally not interest me at all (in fact, it didn't interest me when I visited it with my class as a child so much so that I had not a single memory of the place other than boredom) except that it houses some Gaulish objects which, when I was interested in early Irish history (when I was writing a novel about that, many years ago), kept coming up in books I consulted then. It's funny how a past desire that doesn't really have anything left to do with your present life can still motivate you. I went to see the objects I remembered, but because the novel is long finished, and all the history I learned while working on it long forgotten, the visit was quite a waste of my time. I think maybe this is the case with all past tense desire that you have only because you were once interested in something. Like if my ears prick up because I hear people talking about philosophy, which was once part of my life. If I really pay attention, I always feel annoyed afterwards.

I once thought Notre Dame was huge and grey and oppressive, but not this time. First of all, there are these carvings all around the altar area, the life of Christ as a child on one side, and scenes from his resurrected life on the other (the scenes from childhood are the best, but the light on that side is too dim and the photos didn't come out. Too bad. There's a beautiful carving of the massacre of the holy innocents, with details like a mother shoving her fingers into the eyes of the soldier who is trying to kill her baby. This one is the resurrected Christ meeting with the holy women. Magdalene has a collection of Mary Magdalene representations, and I assume the one with the red cloak is the right one. But there's more in the cathedral. They seem to be renovating some of the side chapels, so some of them are fully painted and their stained glass has been restored, and the glorious dance of colors just can't not lift your spirits. Add to this that when I went to visit, I happened right in the middle of an adoration of the crown of thorns (St Louis brought it back from the Holy Land in the 13th century and had the Sainte chapelle built to house it). It's sealed in glass, but you can actually see it. Even if it has nothing to do with Jesus, still, even a crown of thorns from the 13th century that was adored by Thomas Aquinas and Saint Louis is worth a few emotions, in a colorful chapel, with candles and incenses and berobed priests.

On my last day there, I made a pilgrimage to the old suburb where I grew up. This is my high school, the Lycée Lakanal, just around the corner is a beautiful park where I used to walk my dogs every day after school. I walked all around it (it took me close to an hour and a half) and I must say, perhaps under the influence of my upcoming 40th birthday, I felt quite nostalgic on this walk. Somewhat disconnected from the person I was when I used to walk past that church and think deep thoughts, or walk the halls of this beautiful school. Maybe that's what's sad, when you don't feel connected with the other parts of your life, then it's really as if you're continually losing parts of yourself.

So I will now sign off and take my children to the library and the grocery store. I have to steel myself. 5 days away may have rested me and made me more patient, but it definitely dis-habituated me from the habitual state of chaos and conflict that reigns among my children. And that's with one missing: Magdalene has gone on the train on her own to visit her 'internet friend' Maggie in Angers.

If January is Galette month, then February is crepe month (only I'm feeling rather American this February, so though I have made crepes once, I have been making pancakes instead, one time for a crowd of 10 people!) I gather (but I'm a bit suspicious of this explanation) that the feast of chandeleur (the presentation of Jesus in the temple) was somehow connected with some celtic feast of the sun, with the outcome that to celebrate the feast of the presentation, people make crepes which are round like the sun (is anyone else joining me in my suspicions?) Anyway, since the chandeleur was on Feb 2, there are crepes being sold absolutely everywhere all month, and not just crepes either, some fried things that look like they could be fried crepes, which the baker explained were also for chandeleur (though he did not attempt to explain the connection, maybe something about the oil they're fried in and the oil that Simeon used to anoint Jesus in the temple--an apocryphal story created by me on the spot for the sake of the explanation). I suppose they're more justified in drawing the crepes out than they were the galettes, since crepes are also traditional for Mardi Gras, as they use up all the things that are not permitted during lent (well, were not permitted in the middle ages, now everything is permitted!)--milk, butter, eggs.

It's been another long period without writing. I hate to admit it, because of course I like to complain so much, but things must be getting better. Actually, we have made friends with several families that we really enjoy seeing and doing things with, and I think all the children feel the same (even Magdalene who will deny it, but who today, for the very first time since we've been here, said something positive about Nantes, albeit something small: "It's nice to be in a big city so when you want to go shopping you can just walk downtown and you have lots of shops.") Simeon had his birthday party last Saturday. He missed the traditional Mt Baker expedition and his friends, but he took two friends to see Invictus (you can see the edge of Anais's face here), and then he had his friend Mateo's whole family (the photo is missing his father and older brother) over for lunch and for a game of soccer (which unfortunately didn't last very long because Matthias and Simeon crashed and Simeon looked for a few hours as if his nose was broken).

Anyway, we had had a great soccer game with that same family a few weeks before (the kids beat the adults, and my legs were sore for a week, despite all the running I do, how lame), complete with rolling in the mud clutching at our shins and such sillinesses.

Right after the party, a cousin I have not seen in at least 25 years came for a short visit. He's turned into a very interesting man, but it's odd when you don't see someone in so long, it doesn't really feel like you're seeing them again, more like you're just meeting them for the first time. I guess it takes a store of shared memories, or sharing memories that you can both remember to get the sense of seeing someone again, rather than just meeting them for the first time. I think we don't have quite enough shared memories to really do it. But I was glad that I still liked him a lot, after all those years (I did remember liking him a lot as a child). His girlfriend (no one gets married here, and they get mad if you say wife) is from Nantes, so I hope we get to see him again, and maybe meet the girlfriend and also the brand new baby (one or two months old, I think).

Let's see, I think only two more items of news for today.

(1) Mimi is once again wearing dresses, after going for months wearing only jeans (like papa). Once

day she discovered all the tights her cousin Josephine passed down to her, and that seemed like an exciting new bit of dress up. In fact, for the last few months she has refused to let me pick her clothes (to my great chagrin, I was having such a nice time making up for dressing Magdalene in overalls and turtlenecks by dressing Mimi in dresses and white embroidered shirts), and she gets dressed (in rather outlandish stuff, sometimes) all by herself and gets in a great rage if I try to help her, even with a difficult zipper. Even for the school picture she refused to let me pick.

(2) The garbage pickup company is on strike. It's the first strike to affect us since we've been here, although I hear about them every day on the radio (the Paris metro was on strike, then all the Paris museums, then the train company, then someone connected with airplanes...) Ok, what you see here is one week's worth of recycling (and Mimi seems very proud of herself for putting it there!). Everybody knows the trash people are on strike, but no one will take the least bit of charge for themselves

(oh, here I am sounding like a republican again, I cringe that it is so, but really, it does happen to you when you come from America to a place where if people think it's something the government does, then there is no way, no matter what the circumstances, that they will do it themselves (like cleaning up after their dogs, or keeping their recycling at home until the end of the strike, i.e., what we good, well-behaved and highly civilized Americans would (and do) do.)

There is trash everywhere, people keep piling it on and animals get into it and strew it about, there is broken glass everywhere from the thousands and thousands of wine bottles that get kicked around all over the place and run over by cars. I tried to go for a walk today with the dog and the stroller and I was forced to walk in the street 80% of the time, and then the whole time I was worried about the stroller getting a flat tire from the broken glass, or the dog getting hurt (for another 100 euros at the vet!)

Ok, now I'm done with my little American outburst. I'll try another video, though I hear the last one was a dud. This is Matthias's entry into French school culture proper (aside from being invited so far to two birthday parties--to Simeon's one), every single French child learns this poem at some time or other:

Oh, and one more thing: I think, just while I'm in France, I will wear a burka. This will do two things: protest against the xenophobic French government that wants to outlaw the burka in public places, and hide myself from the overly prying eyes of french people. In fact, that's probably why they want to outlaw it, they can't stand the idea that a woman might be walking among them whose beauty and therefore only possible criterion of worth they couldn't measure. In the States, I'm rather against.

January is Galette month here. When I was a kid, the bakeries all sold 'galette des rois' for epiphany, on the 6th of January; and all the galettes were the same: frangipane filling, and a christmas-themed 'feve', (the small porcelain figurine that you break your tooth on as you eat the cake, and your compensation prize is that you become king or queen for the day, which possibly used to mean something in the middle ages, but now, with my unruly children, really doesn't mean more than that you get a gold cardboard crown--and each galette used to come with two crowns, now it's just one). Now, not only do they sell the galettes for the entire month of January (and more, who knows?), but they sell themed ones (Matthias got a Garfield 'feve' at a birthday party, Simeon got a blue whale, Matthias got an apple pie when we did it at home, and Mimi got a bus). I've seen Hello Kitty ones advertised, various comic book characters like Asterix and Lucky Luke, and they also have different flavors: pear chocolate, chocolate, apple, etc. Also, people just celebrate epiphany all month long: the boys had a galette at lunch close to the 6th, but then they had one at Judo last week, Magdalene and Miriam both had it last week at school, and because the one we got for epiphany at home was lousy, we did it again this sunday. So, I guess french epiphany has gone the way of American halloween, lost its cultural origin, expanded and diversified. Look, Mimi even learned a galette song at school:

My father gave Magdalene a digital camera for christmas, and I've been trying to find something she really wants to convince her to trade it to me. It's one of those tiny things that is completely simple, you just push a button or two, and then it plugs right into your computer and you can download things right into Youtube. She's so with it! (I have so far been unsuccessful in my trade attempts, but she does let me use it sometimes.)

Speaking of technology, that's also what explains my finally writing a new blog entry. My father gave Matthias a digital cameral, and Matthias is taking it everywhere he goes. He never stops fiddling with it, finding new ways in which the thing is amazing (not only does it play music, but it can tie his shoes and memorize his poems for him). So, since we haven't been doing anything very interesting the last few weeks, I haven't been taking any pictures. And writing a blog without illustrating it just seems too dull. Now, however, thanks to Mr. Matti (who continues to be a hero in our family. The other day, Mimi got a RC plane that the boys got for Christmas caught in a tree, and Matthias climbed something like 30 feet to get it loose), I now have photos of things related to our ordinary week-ends: for example, the above picture is taken on a run-bike ride we took up the Erdre and then down the Gesvres (Mimi loves the Gesvres, she always wants me to run further than I want to so that we can take that path). I was running, of course, pushing the jogger, and Matthias was on his bike, and Sean was on my bike. It was the nicest run I've has for months.

This is taken during the same run, only at the end of it, on the bridge that goes over the Erdre unto the Ile de Versailles, where I wash all the grime from the run off Tipomme by making her swim in the stinking filthy river (where she catches the parasites that send us to the vet and cost us hundreds of Euros, but we don't have a hose, and it's really hard to wash a dog's tail and belly with a bucket). The Ile de Versailles is also where Mimi lost her beloved Papou several months ago, in a bamboo forest, she says.

What else has happened in the three weeks since I last wrote?

Magdalene has had a seemingly serious fight with her best friend here.

The only reason I report this is because of the reason for the fight. I don't think anyone could guess it: Haiti! The media

coverage of Haiti on French radio (the distant equivalent of NPR) has been positively obscene. After the first day of just reporting on the disaster, the central question reporters started focusing on was whether the Americans were usurping the French's right to be the stars in organizing aid. They'd interview government officials, people who'd suffered terrible loss, Haitian expatriates, and the first question was invariably something along the lines of "and don't you think the Americans are being overbearing in providing so much aid, and wouldn't you feel more comfortable with us, the French, who speak your language, helping you?" To which the answer was invariably "We don't care who helps us, but please do help us." But this didn't deter the French reporters and the French government officials from continuing their middle school drama about who got to be the main organizers, even though the amount of aid proposed by the entire European union was a tenth of the amount of aid provided by the Americans. Ok, that's the context. Well, Magda's friend Clara started parroting some of that silliness, and Magdalene, who has been complaining since we got here that all her school-mates continuously and uncritically stereotype and criticize Americans, finally got mad and resisted Clara. So we haven't seen her here since (whereas she almost always came home with Magda for gouter before). It's too bad, because I also liked her a lot. But even Magda's teachers, who I got to see on Tuesday, reported to me that Clara was a bit overbearing, and that it would be good if Magda stood her ground. Funny.

Another first, besides my putting a video on this blog. Last Sunday, I went to get a coffee in the middle of mass. That's our church, St Croix. Unfortunately, Matthias didn't include the important part of the Church which is the city bells at the top of the tower, but thanks to his obsession with his camera, I had this picture to illustrate my last outrageous story. The problem is, French churches have no toilets, and after 4 kids, I have a much reduced degree of bladder control. So, when I already had to pee on the walk down to church, I knew I was in trouble. I considered many options, including peeing right on the church square behind a parked car (this is when I was watching Matthias run laps around the square after he started screaming in Church and I had to take him outside to avoid the glares of the people around us). But in the end, the only plausible option seemed to be to go to a café Only you can't just go pee, you have to buy a coffee. I felt a little guilty, then, drinking my coffee there. But at least it was after communion!

Well, I always said I didn't know where Miriam came from with her straight blond hair. Now I know: she comes from IKEA!

A heartless mother I am... When all the children were crying last night (a lot less than after the all saints vacation, however) about having to go back to school the next day, I was thinking in my heart, yay for the end of the vacation! (and a little bit, 'oh, poor children have to go back into the hostile world of French schools', but I'm not sure that was the dominant feeling.)

A week before Christmas, we went to a new parish (Sainte Croix, an 18th century church that had the city bells added to its bell tower, which gives it a weird hybrid look, as if it's a cross between a city building and a church), where we were welcomed with such warmth that the two boys were enrolled, imperfect french and christianity notwithstanding, into the ranks of the altar boys. They served the Christmas mass with one of Matthias's friends from school (Roc, who was one of the most ill-behaved on that outing to the museum I described last time). I was a little worried, as was Matthias, but they all did beautifully, and want to do it again every sunday... We'll see. After Christmas mass, we went to eat the traditional 'réveillon' meal (the midnight feast on Christmas eve) at the house of one of Sean's colleagues. Everything was very proper: oysters, fois-gras, roast goose, smoked salmon, wine flowing a different color for each course--except the dessert, which we brought: pumpkin pie and pecan pie--but they had asked us to bring a traditionally American thing, and there aren't any hams at the market, whereas pumpkins are plentiful and cheap.

We spent christmas morning at home. We had a tiny tree that we had to buy for way too much money very near us and then carry home. Most of our decorations were homemade (paper garlands and popcorn garlands, and a few IKEA things). Simeon kept commenting about how much it felt like Christmas to be doing so much work to prepare, but I think it was really the smell of the gingerbread houses permeating the dining room that made him feel that way. Mimi, who had been learning about père Noël at school (in fact, she met him at a christmas goûter they had there, but she was too scared of him to go get her present), kept asking which presents were from him. She figured if there were any with no tags, those would have to be from him, but she couldn't find them.

After lunch, we drove to my brother's house in Poitiers for a second Christmas dinner (with a second tasting of fois gras and the traditional bûche de noël--a cake designed to look like a snow covered log, this one flavored with pear, salted caramel, and marzipan--and many other delicacies). This christmas dinner was an amazing feat of family unity, with my mother, my brother and me and all our children united for the first time. It was also lots of fun, with Magdalene and her cousin Josephine having a philosophical discussion on the existence of fairies that led to a discussion of how you could be sure about the existence of anything, that did not lead to a discussion about the existence or how you might know about the existence of God, which would have been interesting as Magdalene, under the influence of French anti-catholicism, has been growing more skeptical about religion, while Joséphine is being raised without religion, though she was exceedingly interested in all the creches in all the churches we saw, (it always skips a generation or two and then resurfaces, that gene).

My mother left the next day and we stayed on for a few days. We visited the abbey of St Savin which has 12th century frescoes all over its (unfortunately quite high) ceiling. Flashes are forbidden, so I couldn't take pictures of the wonderful paintings there, though for those of you who have been in our upstairs bathroom, we have a poster of Noah's ark from there. There's a hilarious picture of God speaking to Abraham with a little man climbing a tree in the corner that I was sure was a picture of Batimaeus climbing the tree to see Jesus, but the guide says no, it's all Hebrew scriptures in that part of the church, and what do I know.

We also went to a small village called Savigny (I think). The church here and the carvings of cats and dogs are from there. The city is stunning, all built on cliffs with a medieval wall and ruined towers and pieces of castle left standing, and a river running way below in the valley. But it's also a little bit of a caricature, in the way it's selling itself to tourists. Every sign for everything is 'medieval'. There's a medieval crèpe restaurant, and a medieval passageway, signs for the 'medieval' town everywhere. Everyone was jokingabout the medieval black cat we saw there and the medieval toilets (although the toilet's being medieval is not that much of a joke, actually).

While in Poitiers, we got to go to mass at the Church of Notre Dame la Grande, the most beautiful Romanesque church I have ever seen. I think I've described it before, but I'm going to do it again, because I'm so enthusiastic about it. It's made of a kind of brittle yellow stone that glows buttery in the sunlight, and its towers look like pinecones. It's not very tall, which makes it much more intimate inside than the large cathedrals that were built a century or so later. And then the inside is still all painted with what must have, at the time it was built, been very bright colors. Every column has a different pattern painted on it and a different pattern carved in the capitals. There are fifteenth-century vividly painted wooden statues, one of Jesus and Mary, one of Anne, Mary, and Jesus and a bunch of other children, and one of the disciples mourning over the dead body of Jesus. I didn't think to take pictures because I bought postcards there, but I haven't figured out how to put my postcards into my blog (no, Steve, I don't have a scanner here). Outside the church was what they call a living creche, with donkeys, oxen, horses, rabbits, chickens, pigs, and who knows what other animals, all penned around a hay representation of Mary, Joseph and Jesus. I guess it was more tasteful and more medieval than the big illuminated plastic creches you see on front lawns in America.

We were lucky with the weather during our stay and managed to go on a small hike out in the country where my brother does a lot of rock climbing. There was a river, rocky cliffs, trees to climb, meadows to roll about in, sticks to throw for Tipomme and my brother's dog Lilly and to use as swords for the three boys. It couldn't have been more perfect. There was even an isolated manor house, lost in the middle of the woods, which all the children wanted to buy and move into right away. In the three days we stayed there, Matthias also got to go rock-climbing with my brother, I got to go running by the river with my sister in law, and the children got to play and fill my brother's house with noise, mess and movement.

When we got back, we had a message from some friends here who had decided that our place was really perfect for a new year's eve celebration, and would we call them to let them know what to bring. I was so panicked by this that I pleaded lack of skills and told them they could come over only as long as they made dinner, since I had no idea what to cook for yet another 'reveillon'. The one friend who is a restaurant chef came over and cooked dinner, while the other friends brought tons of wine, cheese, and, you guessed it, that necessity of french feasts, more fois gras. I made a couple of lame things, and much to my surprise, it was a great party: 6 adults and 10 kids, and we stayed up drinking and eating until 2 in the morning, and only Mimi's friend Suzy (3) fell asleep on the couch, everyone else stayed up playing games and watching movies.

After that epic party, we ended up going off to the sea-side with one of the couples (they're both doctors and helped us a lot when Sean twisted his ankle, they have a house in La Turballe, an old fishing village on the golfe du Morbihan, in the south of brittany). We had a great weekend there with them. For almost all the time we were there, all the kids got along really well: Mimi and Suzy, who are the same age, played with dolls and doudous (cherished stuffed animals that every child must have in France under penalty of having to see a psychologist if they don't get attached to any),

Magdalene got along really well with the oldest, Mathilde, who is in Simeon's class, and the two boys rotated around. They played multiple-day games of monopoly, badminton (during a game of which, my stupid dog, while chasing the birdy, did something to her foot and has been confined to the house with a limp since, and has cost me, so far, 100 euros with not much to show for it at the vet), soccer on the beach, they went horseback riding and shell-hunting, and wading in absolutely freezing weather. I went for two runs around the point of Pen-Bron, the most beautiful run I've ever done (except maybe the run around schoodic point, Marjorie and Peter if you're reading this).

Anyway, we have to go back and explore that area more. Every village is more beautiful than the last: they're old old fishing villages, and that area has produced hand-harvested sea salt for centuries (it's called salt from Guérande, and they sell it very dearly, I think, even at the Bellingham coop); every beach is different--from yellow coarse sand to grey fine sand to rocks and tide-pools, different kinds of shells can be found at the different beaches and different kinds of birds observed (the salt marshes, for instance, are full of Egrets). We didn't get to see nearly enough villages or beaches or shells or birds, so we might go up again in February, though that would be without our friends, and so not quite as fun. That family was so welcoming and tolerant that it has reconciled me a little bit with France. I did not find it as hard to leave the house this morning as I normally do. Maybe we're (or rather I'm) turning a corner, finally?

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.