The first day of school for us here should have been the 7th of September. My girls were pretty excited to go. I was beyond-pretty-excited-and-bordering-on-ecstatic for them to go. But apparently, it wasn’t meant to be. We had flown to downtown San Francisco the week before school started in order to obtain our “long-stay” visas from the French Consulate. We were operating under the guidance of very expensive consultants, who told us if we showed up for our scheduled consulate appointment on Friday morning, we could catch a flight back to Nice on Sunday morning. Easy in, easy out. That would only give my kids a day or so to adjust to jetlag, but getting these visas was mandatory, and our paperwork hadn’t been ready any earlier than the end of September, so we decided to take our chances and go even though it was much too close to the beginning of the school year for me not to worry a little. Yes, we were told all five of us had to go. And yes, those are two very long flights to get to San Francisco.
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| Lovin' us some American food! | <>
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| Yes, do not climb on the big noodle, as the sign says |
Long story short, the two French men at the French consulate were complete jerks (the only time we have ever been treated rudely by the French was in the U.S.), and they KEPT our passports at the end of our appointment, saying, “Well, we weel mail deez pass-a-ports back to you at your home in Utah.” We explained how that wouldn’t work for us, that we needed them back immediately, and that we had a flight to France to catch in 36 hours. I asked if we could please expedite the process, pay more, whatever it took. He sniffed, looked down his nose at me, and said, “what is zee rush? Did you leave a pot of water boiling on zee stove?” I said simply and with equal disdain back at him, “no, my children start school on Tuesday.” He was not impressed, and said the visas will be issued when they are issued, but that we were obviously not going to make our flight to France on Sunday. Jason didn’t think it would help our cause to tell him we had already been living in France for six weeks under the typical tourist visa guidelines.
So we were stuck in California until we could get our passports back, passports that would have visas glued inside, making it legal for us to live in France, and legal for Jason to work there. As much as I hated the fact that the kids were going to miss the first week of school, and I worried that Jason would get behind in his work, and that we still had some uncertainty about when we could return to France, I just have to say, there are many worse places to be stuck in. As much as I love Utah, California is probably my favorite state in the U.S. overall. Though it has its flaws politically and financially, as a geographic state it has the best of everything—7 national parks, beaches, mountains, lakes, forests, nice weather, awesome cities, and Disneyland. Not that we saw much on this particular trip, what with going back and forth to the consulate and all. But even better than Disneyland was that some of our best friends, Matt and Amy Kartchner, live near Sacramento, and they were nice enough to let us crash with them until we could fly out of San Fran on Friday, September 10.
So, to make the most of it, we hit the Jelly Belly factory. Then, we tagged along with some friends of the Kartchners to Folsom lake where we jetskiied and hung out by the lake on Saturday. There were no bugs, the water was warm, and it was a fun, gorgeous day.
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| Jocelyn, Matt Kartchner, Jason, and Sterling Kartchner |
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| Maisy liked the jet skiis better than anyone else |
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| The girls playing in the beach at Folsom Lake |
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| Amy Kartchner and Maisy, who kept wanting to go out on the lake |
We attended church where I could understand every word!! We spent Labor Day swimming in Amy’s parent’s pool and having a barbecue.
I got a pedicure. I saw “Eat, Pray, Love,” which I didn’t mind at all. In fact, I kind of liked it (Jason sat this one out to “tend the kids”). Anyone who knows me knows I am a Julia fan, so it didn’t hurt she had the starring role. We rented videos (gotta love Redbox), and I got to do laundry in an American washer and dryer that can clean and dry more than three towels at a time. I forgot how nice and wide Americans build their residential roads, and I easily was able to find any store and anything I needed while the Kartchners worked and went to school and Jason holed up to work as well. Needless to say, I had to buy an extra suitcase to bring back all the things I bought, mostly books in English, lots of church books in French, oh, and TEN boxes of instant oatmeal. (that may sound weird, but I’ve looked everywhere, and I can’t find any oatmeal of any kind in France.) I took my kids to the park. They played their guts out with the Kartchner boys.
Overall, it was so much fun that I didn’t want to come back. But, then I remembered, the girls have school! We can’t miss another second of that. So, thankfully we got our visas in time to catch the Friday morning flight we wanted, we made both the not-quite-as-long-but-still-long flights back to Nice, we tried to adjust to the time change though we were all terribly jetlagged, and we got up bright and early Monday morning for school. We were efficient, had a hot breakfast (of you guessed it, oatmeal), and got in the car to go with plenty of time to make it to Mougins School, a private international British school that is about 5 miles away from our house. Here are the girls all ready to go:
Then, we hit some MAJOR, unusually-heavy traffic, so it took us an HOUR to get there! We were late by a week and 45 minutes, and it was horribly stressful to me. The twins’ class was out at PE in matching little green T-shirts, so at least we had some time to talk to their two teachers. The class they are in is fairly small, about 20 kids max, and the only other person that speaks English like they do (with an American accent, I mean) is an Italian-American boy from Florida, and then a Canadian girl, who befriended Jocelyn right away. Jeni didn’t seem to care about that because she was just happy to have homework and assignments again (imagine a 6-year-old Hermione with pigtails). The rest of the class is from all over the world: Australia, Japan, Scandinavia, Russia, but most of the kids are from France, about half I would say. They all speak English with a British accent, and they say “lovely” and “brilliant” a lot. The teacher says to me, “You have three daughters? Isn’t that lovely. Just brilliant.” A swimming suit is a “swimming costume,” sneakers are called “trainers,” their principal is called a “headmaster,” but I think I can pick up “British” a lot easier than French.
My twins will have French class 4 times a week, plus science, literacy, math, music, PE (including swimming every Wednesday), and art. Jeni came home saying how much she loved, loved, loved school, and Jocelyn simply said, “I’ll adjust, Mom.” I think she meant because she still feels so tired during the day and can’t sleep at night. She was excited to try school lunch the first day, then very nervous to eat it the second day, even cried about it on the way to school. She kept saying she would rather eat at home and was very frustrated that “they didn’t put on any cheese or gravy on the mashed potatoes.” When she got home today though, she said it was delicious—pasta. Both were in very good spirits and commented on all the fresh fruits they get. I got them all set up with everything they are supposed to have, and now they even have their own little green Mougins School T-shirts for PE.
Maisy is apparently a crack up at school. She told me today the teacher laughed at her. I asked her why and she said, “Cuz I say, ‘stop buggin’ me’ to a little girl who try take my mat for quiet time.” I asked about this little girl, and I told Maisy to just tell the teacher if someone ever tried to take her things. She said back to me, “Mom, I in the car wif you right now. How’m I gonna talk to my teacher?” She really likes it too so far though. She goes from 9-12 every morning, which seems like a lot to me for a 3-year old, but I would really like her to be exposed to French as much as possible.
So, we’re back in France. We are settled and unpacked into our permanent house. We’re in a routine, and I love being in a routine. Jason now has internet 24/7 (though it isn’t wireless yet) and feels his productivity is finally improving. We get our first visitors here in less than two weeks. I have a gym membership. My home goods will finally arrive tomorrow morning since we’ve been living with only what we brought in suitcases since July 13th. Life is good. Now to just find a new bakery (boulangerie) with pain au chocolate…
