In which Rebekah blathers on. . .

The problem with having a slow weekend is that it does not provide any material for blogging the following week. But certain members of my family are expecting a blog post today, so I'll have to put something together.

It appears that I may have a couple of opportunities for some very part time work while we're here. I've had a couple of people approach me about either tutoring their child in English, or in having a one on one conversation class. Unfortunately, I doubt that I would be able to do that in the morning while Cherry was at school, but it would likely only be a few hours a month commitment, so not too bad. Also, there is some chance that I might have the opportunity to do some translation work with the team that Blaise is working with this year. That would be something I could do in the mornings, which would certainly be more convenient. In any case, neither of these things is definite, so I'll have to see what happens.

Ezio had some issues at the end of last week with being picked on by one of the other kids in his class. Evidently Emmanuel decided that it was lots of fun to pick Ezio up and carry him around the playground, which Ezio absolutely hated. I sent a note in to the teacher on Friday, and things seem to have gotten better. Also, Ezio has begun to take matters into his own hands. Emmanuel picked him up once yesterday, and got slapped. He hasn't tried it since.

Cherry has gone from being the kid in her class who cries the entire morning to being the kid in her class who doesn't cry at all, even at drop off. Apparently she just needed a little bit of time to get accustomed to the whole school thing. I'm still working on getting her to leave her stuffed bunny at home, since I think that it's really just sitting in the "doudou" (lovey) basket all day at school. She's still not sure she likes recess very much, but perhaps she'll come around to that as well. At this point her expressive French vocabulary is around 30 words, including most of the social niceties (please, thank you, hello, goodbye), several action words (jump, stop, run, climb, etc), yes and no, a bunch of colors, and most of the numbers up to 10. Bizarrely, in English she skips five and six, and in French she skips cinq and six (5 and 6).

Sapphire is being very social at school, which ought to be good for her French. I suspect that she will be the child that has to work the hardest to learn French, since she is the oldest, so additional incentive for her to master French is only a good thing. I did meet a family at the grocery store yesterday whose oldest child went through CLIN (French as a second language) when he was 8, and who now, at 10, speaks English with a French(!) accent, so I have high hopes. I noticed that when she and Blanche were playing on Sunday that I didn't get called upon for translation, so that's definitely a good sign.

Blaise is writing and researching and all the other stuff that he's here to do. On Saturday he met with the daughter of a friend of a friend who wants to go to the US to do a college/masters degree, and stopped at the bakery that I went to every day we were in France two years ago. So we had fruit and nut bread with breakfast on Sunday, which was delicious. Although the bakery here makes very nice baguettes in several varieties, they don't make much else in the way of bread, and I kind of miss some of the other options. Not enough, of course, to make a regular habit of a 45 minute train ride each direction, but it was nice to have special bread for once.