In which we visit a friend

Sapphire has three sorts of friends: those who, like Blanche, live in our complex and who she can play with if she wants by simply ringing their buzzer; those who have parents who are friends of ours, and who she therefore sees when their parents decide that they would like to get together; and those she sees at school, either in class or on the playground. It is the third group of friends that has proved to pose the greatest problem as far as playing outside of school goes, because organizing things requires parental involvement (beyond "be home by 6:30 please"), and because her friends' parents speak French, and in the case of many of her classmates, not much of that. (I would have to be at least hexalingual to communicate with all of the parents in her class effectively.)

To make things more complicated, one of her friends, Houaria (pronounced Wahr-ee-uh), (the one she has most wanted to set up a playdate with), moved to the southern suburbs (we're in the eastern suburbs) over winter break, and so it is likely only a matter of time before she changes schools. (For the time being, there is no space in the CLIN program in her current suburb, and they don't think that she is yet ready for full immersion, so they have chosen to leave her in school here.) Last Monday after school, Sapphire and Houaria begged their respective mothers to please, please, let them have a playdate together, and so on Wednesday afternoon, the kids and I headed into Paris, and then back out on the southward RER line.

Things were a little complicated here. Normally, what people seem to do when someone new is coming to their home is to have them go to the nearest RER station (or bus stop) and then phone so that the hosts can go meet them. We, however, don't have a cell phone, so calling them wasn't going to work very well. Instead, we had agreed that they would simply meet us at the RER station at 1:30, and we would go from there. We got there a few minutes early, and figured that they would show up any minute. By 1:40, the kids were getting antsy. By 1:45 I was wondering whether I ought to go to the Tabac across the road, buy a phone card, use a pay phone to call Blaise and get Houaria's mom's phone number (which I had, but foolishly didn't think to bring with me) and then call her. Just as I was getting ready to go buy the card, Sapphire spotted Houaria's little brother, Riyadh (that's probably not how it's spelled, but it's how it sounds, so I'll go with it) coming up the street, so we all went over to meet them.

We walked perhaps a half mile back to their apartment, and rode the elevator up to their floor. (They're on the 7th, so none of us really wanted to climb steps.) Sapphire thought their elevator was really cool, because you have to pull open a metal door to get in, and she'd never seen one like that. In her experience, elevators have doors that slide out of the way. Houaria, Sapphire, Ezio, and Riyadh played in the kids' bedroom, the girls with paper and colored pencils, the boys with cars and motorcycles, Houaria's mom and I chatted (sort of) in the living room, and Cherry clung to me, limpet-like. Eventually I ended up with Cherry in the bedroom, hoping to convince her that she could stay in there and play all by herself. It didn't work, so we ended up kind of bouncing back and forth between the living room and the bedroom.

At some point the kids decided that they wanted to play outside, so we all headed out to the complex playground, where Sapphire and Ezio spun themselves in a tiny little cup shaped merry-go-round until they could hardly stand up, much less walk. Cherry bounced back and forth between the climber and the bouncy horses until she decided to climb into the merry-go-round, pulled her arms and legs inside, and found herself spinning so fast her head was jerked around. (And no, nobody was pushing it. She must have managed to get in just right to get it started, and she wasn't able to stop it by herself.) By the time I stopped it, she was sobbing hysterically, and refused to have anything to do with anything else on the playground. Fortunately, it was almost time for us to go anyway since I still needed to make dinner. We headed inside for a few minutes so that Sapphire and Houaria could do one last thing together, so that we could collect our coats (which we hadn't needed on the playground), and so that everyone (read Cherry) could use the bathroom.

On the way out, Houaria's mom pressed boxes of granola bars into the kids' hands, and so we got to have a discussion about cultural differences on our way back to the train station. (Houaria's family is Algerian.) Then Cherry pointed out that they didn't have any toilet paper in the bathroom, so we got to talk about some other cultural differences, which Sapphire thought were somewhat less nice.