Month: September 2007

La Rentrée




Today was the first day of school for 12 million children in France. But of course we don’t care about them, do we? Nope!

Our two were pros, old hands, blasé experts. We warned them last night that we weren’t going to be able to lolygag around this morning (and set two alarm clocks to make sure of it ourselves) and we were out of the gates with time to spare. The boys even came downstairs and got their shoes and backpacks on by themselves (see first picture).

Owen walked into his new classroom as though he’d done it a thousand times before, not surprising given that he’s always gone to school with Jonah every morning. He put his backpack away, and then joy of joys!, discovered that there was a new tool bench in the classroom! Heaven, for Owen, is filled with power tools, or at the very least, replicas thereof.

Owen’s class started at 8:30, and went until 10, and in yet another leap of French logistics that I am in no way capable of understanding, Jonah’s class didn’t start until 10:30, and only lasted for an hour. So, while Owen was in class, Jonah and I ran some errands, and then Owen and I hung out in the park with all the other parents while Jonah was in class.

Jonah had been a bit concerned about having a new teacher. He really loves Isabelle, his teacher from last year. He has two new teachers this year, a lead teacher Marie, and another one, Alicia. They are both young and full of energy, and seem perfectly suited to their jobs. When Jonah came out of class he was happy and smiling, so I have no worries for the year.

Grocery Update

Yesterday morning I went to the grocery store, and spent…88.76. I duly withdrew my 100€ in cash, and then spent lots of time wandering around the store in circles, trying to find everything on my list. I couldn’t, because this is France, and things like stores always being stocked with the same products are very uncertain, so I had to do some on-the-fly menu adjustments.

I did make some purchases which were not on my list, but which I won’t count as impulse buying, because they were things like toilet paper (how did that not make it onto my list? Are we suddenly going to stop using it?) or Fair trade peanut butter for Jonah, which the store almost never carries and so I stock up when it does. The only thing that I can’t count as a legitimite purchase was a can of Pringles (for the baby!!), but it turns out that they were on sale, and I got .27€ as cashback credit on my store card for next time. Score!

Update: I don’t like paying in cash. I had 11.24€ leftover from my 100€ and it’s now gotten spent on… stuff. I can’t quite remember what- 5€ to Jonah’s teacher for the CD of pictures from last year, 3€ at the local thrift store… but there’s a missing 3.24€. Call me controlling (don’t you dare, actually!), but that missing money bothers me.