France 4

It has come to my attention that my posts about our trip thus far have come off sounding rather grim. This is assuredly not the case. It is true that my days in a foreign country with a one and three-year-old and no toys (to speak of), playgroups, fenced yard or preschool are a little like juggling a goose and an octopus (the octopus is pretty unaware, but that goose gets fed-up and mean). This is only somewhat more difficult than I expected (perhaps a puppy and a garden snake). All the new and so very French things we have seen and done more than make up for the labor of my days. Happy Mother’s Day to me!

There is a pizzeria in Charbonnieres-les-Bains, the town in between Marcy l’Etoile, where we are staying, and Ecully, where David works. There are pizzerias in most small towns; they are more general restaurants than American pizzerias. We pick David up at work at 6pm in the rental Renault (of course). Twice we have eaten at this pizzeria on the way home. It faces onto the town square where there is a large fountain that goes through a program of variations of central spout height and encircling, circle-of-spouts height. Mo loves to sit and stare at it, which looks very introspective. There’s no introspection going on, though; he loves to watch the water. If you sit down next to him, he’ll tell you when the “good” part in the fountain rotation is coming. We drink wine and wait for our food and Mo plants himself on a bench right next to the fountain – within easy shouting distance, but not near us. The owner of the pizzeria is the only one who speaks much English, so he waits on us in-person. Conveying David’s wheat intolerance has been an ongoing challenge, but this place has been receptive and accomodating. This pizzeria cheerfully substitutes green beans for the usual spaghetti that comes with a steak. Helpful, but ironic, since David hates cooked green beans. The owner asked David what les haricots vertes were in English and David told him green beans. He knew that I spoke incrementally more French than David so came to me for verification. I’ve found this a couple of times – people on both sides are surprised when the translation is literal.

The last time we were at this pizzeria (Friday), I met a man, and his 15-month-old daughter, Anna. They were Danish and he spoke less French than I did (though he pronounced Freya in a beautifully Scandinavian way). After some awkward mucking about, we established that we both spoke English (when someone is speaking a language you don’t know well, you don’t recognize accents, so it’s hard to know where to go). It turned out he and his family were in Charbonnieres for a backgammon tournament, of all things. He is a gambler, primarily backgammon, but some poker, and this is what they do – travel around to various sites where events are taking place or spend time at the homes of industry-involved friends. He mentioned that they had spent much of the winter in Vegas. I spoke to him as our children were running around the fountain then returned to my table without saying anything. When we left, I felt it would be nice to properly say goodbye, so I went up to their table (of four or five people). They had started a card game and the man I had spoken to didn’t look up from his cards when I addressed the table. A woman who had been primarily handling the baby (who was, by that time, asleep in her stroller with a tiny down comforter over her – I’m guessing this is how she goes to sleep much of the time – oh to have encouraged such flexibility) spoke to me; I think she was the girl’s mother but she could as easily have been the nanny. There are lifestyles far more removed from ours than those of suburban Lyonnites.

France 3

We’re currently staying in an apartment/hotel in a little village east of Lyon called Marcy l’Etoile. That’s Marcy the Star. I don’t know the history behind the name. We are kitty-corner from the park I mentioned before. You can view this Google map with us, the airport and Itasca France marked on it. I put the marker for Chez Russell exactly on the building we are staying in. Aren't satellite maps amazing?

Marcy has the requisite bakery, pharmacy, pizzeria, grocery and hair salon. They’re within walking-distance, as is the little park and tot lot in the center of town. The population of Marcy is about 3000. Everything closes from 12:30 to 3pm each day and all day on Sundays and holidays. This is somewhat less the case in Lyon. People have been pleasant and patient with us in all of our interactions.

I’ve had few opportunities to try to converse with people in French. Our friends from Itasca speak English, and our adventures haven’t turned up many people interested in having slow and difficult conversations with me. I have, with varying degrees of success, shopped, read signs, apologized and responded to compliments on my children. One of my more successful encounters was asking for salt at the grocery, one of the less successful was buying what I thought was lotion and having it turn out to be very pleasantly scented soap. Emory has not progressed beyond the hello, please and thank you he knew when we arrived, though he enjoys using those.

France has, we’ve been told, recently climbed enthusiastically on the paranoia bandwagon, so the playgrounds we’ve encountered here have no swings and few climbing structures. Some seem to have had most of their equipment removed and nothing has been added to replace it. Picture a large rectangle of gravel, with four benches on the four sides, one small slide near one corner and one springy ride-on animal near the opposite corner and nothing in the middle. That is one of Ecully’s parks (David’s office is in Ecully). Marcy’s park is better off than that – it has a small slide and a largish web-like, rope climbing structure. We tend to visit the playgrounds during the afternoon and have generally not met many other children there. Public education begins at three here, and sometimes as early as two years old.

Our hotel is new construction. In many ways, it’s similar to American new construction, but in a few ways it’s quite different. Ceramic tile is used everywhere, which I love. Our living area and kitchen are tiled, as are the toilet rooms, the bathroom floors and the walls of the shower. The toilet room and the bathroom are separate, and there is a second toilet room downstairs (which unnerves me because the nearest sink for hand washing is the kitchen sink and I don’t like the idea of washing toilet hands in the dish sink – call me crazy, David does all the time). There are thick plastic shades that can be drawn down the outside of the windows. Think shutters done the style of horizontal blinds. All houses here seem to have some kind of outside window cover. The doors do not fit entirely inside the doorframe; the one side of the door is about 3cm (trying to use local units) larger than the doorframe and is attached to the second part of the door that fits inside the frame. The upstairs is carpeted with short Berber carpet, which our friends say is the standard in cheap floor covering here.

Emory has found a friend in our neighbor Marat, who is five-years-old. His mother is here on sabbatical for a year. They arrived last June and he and his two older sisters (eight and ten) attended the local school this year. They are from Quebec and speak both French and English, which is wonderful for Mo.

France 2

We arrived on the Sunday of a four-day holiday weekend stretching until Tuesday. No local shops or restaurants would be open until Wednesday. This posed a food problem. My stash of food from home came in handy after all. David actually went to work on Monday morning, though he, the fellow he was sent here to manage and one poor support person (who had been assigned holiday duty to support them) were the only people there. They took David to a huge Wal-Mart-like store near the office (which was open on Monday, the unofficial holiday, but would not be open on Tuesday, May Day, the official holiday – this practice of having Tuesday holidays and stretching them into a four-day-weekend is common here), so he got us some basic food items. He told his coworkers to take Tuesday off.

Tuesday had beautiful weather and we used it to sleep late and go to the large park near the hotel. The hotel has amazing blackout shades, so, after a rough night with the kids, all four of us slept in until 11am. The park, Lacroix-Laval, is on the large property that used to be the grounds and woods of an estate. I had briefly visited in on Monday afternoon with the kids, when Mo was extremely disappointed to discover that there was no playground equipment. There is an outdoor café, a fancier restaurant, lots of trails and open green area, a tourist “train” and ponies. We took advantage of the café, the trails, the train and the ponies on Tuesday.

France 1

Starting two or three weeks before we left for France, people started asking me if I was ready. I’d laugh. Other than the absolutely necessities, airline tickets, hotel & car reservations and passports, I didn’t really start getting ready until two days before we left. While we are here for month, we have laundry available (albiet pricey laundry - €2.50 to wash and €1.50 to dry, about $5.50 per load), so packing for this trip wasn’t very different from packing for a week away.

Thursday and Friday before we left around noon on Saturday, I washed every item of clothing we owned and tried to use up the perishable food in the refrigerator. I boiled eggs and cut up cheese, packed hummus, crackers, dried fruit and nuts – you’d have thought we were heading into deep wilderness, not the consumer-happy world of airports. Of course, airport food consistently makes me feel oogy, so I feel justified. I’m also constitutionally unable to waste food, so I really HAVE to bring it along. Usually I end up throwing most of my stash away when we arrive at our location. This time we ended up needing it. More on that in due time.

Freya flew as a lap child. We were fortunate enough to have an extra seat next to our three seats. The young woman in the final seat in our row probably didn’t feel quite so lucky, but I think, in the end, we didn’t bother her much. I don’t recall much of the 15 hours of flying and layover time very well. We checked the larger Britax Marathon car seat and brought the smaller Britax Boulevard on the plane. Mo is still within the weight and height limits for the Boulevard, and he is the one we hoped to have sleep in it. Freya can still sleep in-arms. Freya ended up sleeping in the car seat for an hour or so and Mo for two or three hours at the end of the overseas flight. None of us got much sleep. Mo had his only real meltdown when we woke him up to get off the plane in London. I went ahead off the plane and Mo and David were the last ones off, with poor Mo crying hysterically. Like most people, he doesn’t appreciate being awakened before he’s had enough rest. Like most three-year-olds, when tired, he occasionally reacts to strange and or upsetting situations with hysteria.

We hadn’t realized (or David wouldn’t have allowed Mo quite so much leisurely hysteria time) that our just-less-than-two-hour layover in London was going to be barely enough time to get to the gate from which our London Lyon flight was scheduled to depart. We had to catch a bus, and then stand in a rush-hour security line. Near the front of this line, we were informed that our six carry-ons, two book backpacks (one normal and one Mo-sized), two laptops, David’s violin and my purse were no longer allowed. In the US, the laptops and the purse are considered freebies. Upon arrival in the UK, those three items ceased to be freebies and David’s violin became one. Go figure. This left us two bags over. We managed to cram my voluminous purse into one of the backpacks and they let us slide being one bag over.

Upon arrival in Lyon, we waited in a long customs line while poor Mo ever more urgently stated his need to use the bathroom. When we finally got through, David sprinted off to find the bathroom with Mo in his arms. They made it in time. We had too much luggage to go without a cart, but discovered that acquiring a cart required a Euro coin, of which we had none. I never get cash before going to Europe because there are always cash machines in the airport and the convenience is worth the conversion charge to me, but even if we’d acquired cash ahead of time, we would have lacked coins, so it wouldn’t have mattered. I set off to procure the needed coins. I easily found an ATM and bought a bottle of water to get change. When I attempted to return to the luggage area, however, I found that I had passed through a one-way, unmanned security gate and couldn’t get back in. I had to call a customer service person from the airline to come and lead me through the back way.

We loaded up our luggage, found our way to the rental car bus stop and procured our car only to discover that we were short one car seat. We had not collected the car seat we checked along with the rest of our luggage. We bucked Mo in and drove to the terminal where David and the kids waited in the car while I ran in to attempt to retrieve our seat. I rang the customer service people again and the same woman came out to retrieve me. I was too tired to be very embarrassed. We had initially assumed that we forgot it, though in retrospect that was virtually impossible since we were the last people to leave with our luggage (thanks to my epic coin acquisition mission) and would certainly have noticed our huge, cow-spotted, car seat going around alone on the luggage carousel. I checked the luggage area and then spoke to the representative about lost luggage. She looked in the system and immediately informed us that the seat was still in London. It would be delivered to our hotel the next day. Problem solved.

When we attempted to leave the terminal parking lot, we had exceeded the free 20-minute grace period and hadn’t realized that we had to prepay our parking at a machine in the airport. People behind us had to back up to let us out of the exit line so we could re park and I could run in and pay for the parking. This was accomplished with no further excitement. We exited the terminal and started trying to follow the directions we’d been given. This went poorly at first, then better, and then to complete hell. We left the airport around 1pm and didn’t arrive at our hotel until 4pm. It should have been a 45-minute trip. In France, road names are not very important and are poorly and infrequently marked. The signs on intersections indicate places the roads go to, rather than the names of the roads. Our directions primarily dealt in road names. It was unbelievably confusing and frustrating, especially for people who’d had no sleep in nearly 23 hours. Eventually we did locate our hotel.