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Published: September 10th 2007
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Paris 1
Hanging with cousin Dorothee I Hate Castles
September 10, 2007
We have been in Paris now for 10 days. The last week was a good combination of getting into a routine, starting home-schooling, learning about our neighborhood, and of course sight-seeing! I think we accomplished a lot, learned a lot, saw a lot and of course as this is France, ate a lot.
Monday September 3rd was the first day back to school for French kids, the “reentre” as they say. We felt it was a good enough day for us to start our kids on their school. As we are here only for a month (not long enough by my standards I must say!!!) there was no point to putting them in school. I brought everything necessary for home lessons. We had decided we would do 3-4 hours each morning and then get out in the afternoon. The first day I had my lesson plans all ready to go…was coffeed-up and enthusiastic for school! The kids were less so…never-the-less we raced through the lessons in like 90 minutes. They started whining for a break and after the break…Will whined some more 3 minutes into his 20 minutes of reading. We stopped
Paris 2
At the Bois de Vincennes and went out! We spent the day wandering the Marais neighborhood, went to an English bookstore for the kids to pick up some new books, walked down the Champs-Elysees again, made dinner and crashed. We spent a lot of time watching Parisians and how they made their way around their city.
The rest of the week saw less and less school. We didn’t give up but it just never seemed to take that much time. We got lots done but still an hour later we were ready to move on. It makes me wonder what they do all day at school. I seriously felt I did more in one hour than I saw coming home after 6 hours in a US public school…I was concerned that I was too fast, not doing enough or/and our schools suck! I’m sure it is a little of both quite frankly. Today being Monday again we started off with a full ½ day of school and good intentions…we did some lessons on Sunday as well as we plan to skip school tomorrow for Euro-Disney!
Other exciting things that our first week in Paris brought were a trip to Aqua Blvd. for Scott
Paris 3
Rowing at the lake and the kids. Aqua Blvd. you ask? Is that a new work of art in the Louvre? No…it is the Paris’ waterslide park. In true French style it is Speedo type swimsuits only for boys and men….sounds appealing doesn’t it ladies? Yikes…my only regret for not going was the view! We took in a movie as well…saw the new Pixar movie Ratatouille, set in Paris. How great to see it from Paris! Plus it was nice to see my first movie in over 3 months. I usually get 2-3 movies in a month and many more on DVD at home…so while kid movies I can usually do without after all these months of no movies it was a treat! I even read the French sub-titles for practice. Will didn’t understand the point of sub-titles but after many explanations...he seemed to understand! We also visited the Jardin du Luxembourg where Will sailed a model sailboat in the lake. While in the park, Justin had a pigeon nearly land in his hair. It was really rather disgusting.
This weekend brought glorious weather and we headed to Bois de Vincennes, a huge park like Golden Gate Park. As we were walking by
Paris 4
The gorgeous Seine the Château Vincennes, Will took one look and said, “oh no…I hate castles. Do we have to go?” Kids hating castles….perhaps we saw too many. Luckily the castle was not on our agenda just the beautiful park where we rowed a boat in the lake and sat in the grass just relaxing and playing. We actually walked so much that by the time we got home our plan to eat out was thwarted for take-out Chinese and watching French TV, we were so tired. The great weather sent us to our local park Sunday, Champs de Mars, where we sat with all the other French families hanging out before we had a great Greek dinner in the 5th arrondissement.
One highlight this last week was climbing to the top of le Tour Eiffel. I have been to Paris twice before and never have gone into the Eiffel Tower. Never wanted to…just was enough to see it especially at night when it is all lit up and shiny. We had decided the boys would love it and we would walk up…not ride the lift. It was actually quite fun. Most tourists do not walk…they take the lift…so it is peaceful.
Paris 5
oh la la The views of Paris from all three levels are increasingly more magnificent. The best level is by far the second…it is over 860 stairs to the second level and there are very few people there. The views are to die for. We joined the throngs of tourists at the top…only to quickly return to the second level for the more majestic views. While at the top, however I came across an interesting fact, that Paris to LA is 9105 km or 5691 miles. We drove this summer between June 25 and September 1, 8900 km or 5562 miles. That is from San Francisco to NY and back to Nevada or almost from Paris to Los Angeles. I can’t believe it!! There were long drives but never did I imagine we were driving across the USA or the Atlantic Ocean for that matter.
On top of all we saw and did this week, nothing matched trying to assimilate into French life. We watched and watched our Parisian neighbors. We walked all over our neighborhood getting to know our merchants. We went to the market and bought fresh (alive the day before) chicken and produce…plus some fabulous cookies. We took the
Paris 6
Buying Root Beer at an American store metro every where we didn’t walk. Justin is our metro expert. He knows every line and how to get anywhere in the city quickly and with the least number of transfers. Scott even went to a French doctor for his asthma, after I made the appointment for him, totally frustrating the doctors receptionist with my very lame French! The weekend brought a real French flea market to our block where we got a few trinkets, though the shopper in me was held at bay due to lack of space and oh…no job! Nous aimons Paris!
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ashley lewman
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je vous aime
Ah, mes chers. merci a dieu, on est finalement a paris. J'espere que je y sois avec les sornbergers. Mais non, je reste toujours a Atlanta