Tag: French Sabbatical

And by that I mean shutters, but not what most Americans think of when they picture shutters. Yes, here in France there are shutters like you find in the United States, door-like devices on hinges that one can pull shut in front of windows. But there are also these more elaborate things that most houses have. Called “volets,” these are lowered in front of one’s windows in a way that resembles enclosing a tank or something. Modern volets are handled electronically by flipping a switch near the windows. You hear a humming sound and this partition lowers, enclosing you inside a dark room by basically eliminating the function of a window. Older volets are hand-cranked. In our house, the volets in the kitchen have been modernized and are quite slick. All the others in the house are of the hand-crank variety. Oh, I should say, that some doors have volets, too.

So why am I telling you all of this and what does this have to do with today’s picture? Simple. Last fall I was hand-cranking the ancient volet associated with our dining room doors to the backyard. As I was cranking it, it broke. Ugh! We’ve been unable to close it since. I mentioned this to our landlord and he called a repairperson to come take a look. That’s his truck parked outside our house in today’s photo. I liked the truck’s color and got a kick out of the words across the top. Fenêtres is windows. Isolation is insulation. And services is, yes, services.

Anyway, the repairman, Bertrand, looked over our broken volet and will be back next week to fix it.

I’ve mentioned some of my sabbatical projects, including the online kindness classes I’m facilitating (Anonymous Kindness & Undivided Kindness right now), reading all of Kurt Vonnegut’s novels, and things like organizing my iTunes library. I have other projects, too, but enough about me, right?! Let’s talk about Melinda!

If you know Melinda, you are aware she has this creation itch and is always looking for ways to scratch it. When we are in Seattle, this is most visibly done through work on our house. Since we bought it and moved in back in 1998, she has transformed the place. The first time inside she envisioned a way to move stairs and create more space and better flow. I couldn’t conceptualize it but was smart enough to know just to trust her. In short, our house just keeps getting better and better. One of the best parts, she figures out ways to do things we can afford.

One of her friends here in Nantes, Nathalie, has asked Melinda to help her come up with some remodeling ideas for her kitchen. After she visited Nathalie’s house last week, I found Melinda at our dining room table busy drawing. She had put a table lamp under the table, which is made of glass, by the way, in order to be able to trace ideas from one page to another. A homemade light table, of course!

I took today’s photo earlier this afternoon inside a store in the center of Nantes that has become one of Melinda’s favorites. It’s a crafts store and Melinda likes it because she has started making bracelets and necklaces. I liked the rows and rows of these jars of beads and rather than succumb to the temptation of sticking my fingers in them while waiting for Melinda to finish, I took some pictures.

A profile of Melinda was created for our school’s new website. I think it captures her pretty well. Take a look.

Americans have their groundhogs. But the French have their foods. And while Americans are busy watching groundhogs to see if they see their shadows, the French are busy making crêpes! And with that introduction, a happy Crêpe Day to you all!

I just learned about this celebration a week or so ago, as Frédérique was explaining it to us. I can’t say that I understood much more than people in France eat a lot of crêpes in February, and that February 2nd has some kind of religious significance. So using the trusty Internet, I googled “Chandeleur” and came up with this link. I’m not clear on the connection between eating crêpes and the purification of the Virgin Mary, other than the feast portion, I suppose. But who can explain Groundhog Day to foreigners? Who wants to?

Anyway, we joined in by eating crêpes for lunch today and we are looking forward to more crêpes throughout the month. Chloe told me I Americanized mine when I put on maple syrup and cashew butter. This was after she filled hers with chocolate chips my mom brought to us from the U.S. in November (since we can’t find the kind we like here). I will say that my crêpe did not see its shadow, which means either there will be 6 more weeks of crêpe eating, a cold spring, or the Virgin Mary is not being properly purified.

Today’s photo is another from yesterday’s shopping excursion at Leclerc. Many things are on sale in support of La Chandeleur including the delicious Bonne Maman jams. For you Americans, that 0,62€ translates into less than 90 cents for a huge jar, a heck of a deal!

Melinda and I stopped in at the giant grocery store Leclerc, the one on the other side of town from where we live. It’s bigger than “our” Leclerc at the end of Line 2. Walking to the back of the store I was captivated by the meat department and especially the retro look of these round signs promoting the different meats one can buy. Perhaps most intriguing to Americans is the easy availability of horse meat (cheval). I tried some last August and it pretty much tasted like a lean cut of beef, at least the piece I tried. The rest of the family refuses to try it, along with rabbit. Me, I’m pretty much willing to try anything.

Another interesting meat item, of course, is steak tartare (raw beef). I’ve had this a couple of times in restaurants and loved it each time. What a surprise it was when I discovered I could buy steak tartare at Leclerc. It comes in a foil package with a seasoning packet. I add finely sliced onion and cornichons (small pickles). I last had it in December when Melinda’s family was visiting. Although I made it available to everyone, only Greg and I ate it. I find it delicious. Perhaps it’s my Nebraskan roots.

On a separate subject, Chloe just shared with me a link to a music video directed by one of our PSCS graduates, Jostin Darlington. We are very proud of him and want to share the joy. Check out the video at this link. And speaking of PSCS, the school just launched an updated version of its website. Look how productive the rest of the staff can be with Melinda and me gone!

Now some of you are likely saying “Alice,” like the housekeeper on the Brady Bunch. But this beautiful young French girl is not Alice. She is Alice! If you haven’t figured this out yet, in French you pronounce her name like this – A Lease!

So here’s the deal. A Lease comes to our house every Monday afternoon at 5:30 to eat Pain au Chocolat and drink hot chocolate. What a great situation for Melinda and me. We have a wonderful French girl coming over to eat at our house. In exchange for her presence, we not only provide the food and beverage, we encourage her to speak English while kind of forcing her to listen to the two of us speak English. A Lease doesn’t seem to mind having to put up with us. Today I used the blog as a conversation starter. We reviewed several of the entries, starting with my favorite bakery post from July. You see, A Lease lives near that bakery. She does not have any clues as to the whereabouts of my baker-woman. I still think she is looking for me in other parts of the world.

Chloe arrived in the midst of this blog review and felt sorry for A Lease. She has had to put up with Melinda and me speaking English to her for nearly 18 years so her having empathy makes sense.

I have upwards of 40,000 items in my iTunes Library, a crazy amount, I know. Just before leaving for France I started organizing this massive amount of digital information, beginning with getting everything moved over to an easy-to-transport external hard drive. I brought it all with me, both because I love having access to my audio library and because I had designs on getting it super-organized while on sabbatical. And beginning in late November, that’s what I started doing. I am proud to announce that as of this afternoon, after literally spending all day on the task, I finished organizing my thousands of songs. I feel like someone has come along and taken some weight from me, so wonderful does it feel to have my library organized. It has me inspired to organize all my other “collections” once we are back in Seattle.

This is not to say I’ve finished organizing my iTunes library. I just have the music files organized. I also have quite a bit of educational material, from books on tape to audio lectures and the like. I also have a collection of old time radio programs and stories still to organize. But the bulk of it has been my chaotic music files, which included hundreds of duplicate songs which have been purged from the library.

For those of you who know me and like statistics, here are some interesting numbers. Searching the following names yields the following number of unique items in my iTunes library:
Elvis Costello – 1322
Tom Waits – 1439
Kurt Vonnegut – 203
Air Supply – 0

Sounds about right…

One tram stop away from our stop is one named “Recteur Schmitt.” Chloe, Melinda and I just returned from there, having made a dash for it in order to transfer to Bus #72 which would have taken us to Manon’s volleyball game tonight. But as our tram was pulling in to the stop on time, there went the 72 pulling away, two minutes early. As a result, we weren’t able to see Manon’s game. The next 72 didn’t arrive for another 35 minutes which would have caused us to miss too much of the game to make the bus ride worthwhile. Bummer!

Heading back home, Chloe and Melinda both commented how much they miss having a car. Melinda mentioned how she’d like to just hop in a car, turn up the heat, and cruise around Nantes tonight. Chloe, who was brought home by car from a Saturday afternoon babysitting job, said how different the city feels from the perspective of a car. Me, I’m not so much missing a car although I do understand what both were saying. It’s so funny to not have driven since before leaving Seattle. That’s almost 7 months!

Back to Recteur Schmitt. Today’s photo was taken from inside the tram as we were pulling into the stop a couple of days ago. It’s an interesting stop. There is a park and ride here, and many connections to various bus lines. There is also a trade school right next to the stop, meaning lots of young men are typically hanging out here. In other words, there’s a fair amount of smoking and spitting happening. Chloe and I think a group of these guys would make a good-looking band. We call them “Recteur Schmitt & the Drop-Out Boys” and think their first album should be called “Expectorate.”

So here’s Ella, seconds after having taken over the cooking duties from me. She’s sautéing some meatballs with onions, in preparation for the lentils and rice that are about to be added. Such was tonight’s main dinner course, complemented with our favorite baguette (and butter), sliced avocado and a salad.

On the subject of avocado, the word in French is avocat. Interestingly enough, avocat is also French for lawyer. There are no single or double s’s to trip me up, and no r’s for me to roll over. Still, if I’m at the grocery store in France and ask for an avocado, I’m likely going to get some legal advice. And man, there must be some great French jokes about this. I tried translating one from English but it just doesn’t seem to be working. What do you think?

What’s the difference between a good avocado and a great avocado?
A good avocado knows the law. A great avocado knows the judge.

See what I mean?

Ah, anyway… Ella and I made the dinner, and Laura, whose English lesson had just finished, stayed. Chloe is babysitting so we saw it as a kind of trade. I’m not going to say who got the best end of that deal as doing so may incriminate me. And we ate all the lawyers in the house with our dinner.

This picture was taken just a few minutes ago as Ella and I were walking home after her school day. She gets out at 5:10 on most days, including Thursdays, and my schedule allows me to meet her at the school gate. We considered whether to ride the tram home or walk. Ella wanted to walk, although I admit to having been willing to take the tram. It’s very cold today, with a significant wind blowing. It’s the kind of wind that cuts right through you. We were just entering the park next to the Hippodrome when I took this picture, about a third of the way home. Surrounded by trees, the wind wasn’t so bad here, thank goodness.

On the walk, Ella told me about parts of her day. Her “relaxed” class continued to watch the movie “Twilight.” She had a hamburger, something resembling french fries, and a chocolate cream something-or-other for lunch. It was very cold on the water for her rowing, so much so that when a friend’s hands got cold the teacher suggested putting them in the river to warm them. At the rowing club one of the instructors couldn’t remember Ella’s name and just called her “Washington,” a reference to the University of Washington sweatshirt she was wearing.

In a class tomorrow Ella will be reading “The Little Prince.” We picked up a copy in French and another in English so she is well-prepared. Add in that she was in a class at PSCS last year in which the French version was read out loud and then explained in English, she is feeling even more ready. Thanks, Judy!

Father forgive me. I have a problem similar to one many young American students have, the one having to do with confusing the spelling of desert and dessert. Well, actually, I can do that just fine in English. In fact, I can do it just fine in French (get this, it’s “désert” and “dessert”). My problem has to do with PRONOUNCING the two words in French. Apparently, I often am referring to the hot, sandy place when what I really want is some kind of delicious French chocolate pudding… If I could, I’d try some funny way to demonstrate the sound of the two words but I just don’t think Mr T can pronounce them correctly, either.

Now that I’ve made my confession I can move on.

Wednesday afternoons could be a nice family affair over the next couple of months. As you may remember, Ella gets out of school at noon for the day. And now Chloe, who resumed classes at the University of Nantes on Monday, also gets out at noon on Wednesdays. To celebrate the occasion today, we went into town for a family lunch. The girls enjoyed pizzas. By the way, Chloe loves the thin European crust while Ella is adjusting (she misses Zeke’s in our neighborhood back home in Seattle). And it’s interesting that pizzas are brought to your table unsliced, just a plate of uncut pizza. The girls also ordered dessert (the sweet treat, not the hot, sandy place). No surprise there. What was surprising is they (read: Chloe) let me take their picture to post on the blog.

PS – One more confession. At lunch today I wanted to order a bottle of bubbly water, Pellegrino, in fact. On the menu they listed two choices, 50cl and 100cl. Since Chloe wanted some, too, I thought I’d order the 100cl bottle. The server kind of giggled at me after I ordered and then explained that what I actually requested was 100 bottles. Thankfully, she only brought one. That didn’t stop the girls from singing 100 bottles of Pellegrino on the wall…