Back to School (for one week anyway).

Check-in at CIA-Antibes; Samuels said,
"mom it looks like summer camp."
All of the counselors had yellow t-shirts
and welcomed the kids as we came in.

Getting this post up from last week a little late- 

This week was simply great. The kids were in language school, so I had my mornings free. But I promise, that’s only part of the reason we had a great week!

School this week was night and day from our experience in Sancerre. First of all, there were other people!  It was the first week of their Juniors program, which features language lessons each morning, lunch at the school cafeteria (served up by a crazy italian guy who has declared war on butter— it is not healthy! but then serves nutty buddies for dessert), and then afternoon activities and tours. There were 90 kids at the school the week! My extroverted children were in heaven! 

Samuel went to the Junior program and the littles just had a course in the mornings. After the first day of testing, they decided that Bennett was a little more advanced that the others, so they offered him to go into the Juniors program for the mornings. It was so much more flexible than the other school. When I asked them if they decided about Bennett moving up, they said to me, “no, it is your decision if you want him to move up!” Customer Service? In FRANCE? At a language school? 

Americans v. Swiss
boys in table tennis!

Anyway, enough of that. The kids loved the school and loved being with so many kids from all over. At the end of the week, Cooper asked if they could do it again! Alas, it is not in the budget, so they’ll have to settle for homeschool with mom (maybe that’s why they liked it so much— no homeschool this week!).

Aside from learning a lot of French, their eyes were opened to the culture of European kids— and not just the 12 year olds smoking. Samuel was amazed that many of them speak really good English, in addition to learning French. “How is it that they already speak three languages?” Like it was unfair to him or something. He was also surprised at the amount of American culture that they share and yet he knows very little about French pop culture. “Why don’t we have French songs on our radio like they have English songs on theirs?” And he was amazed at how much traveling they do and he has vowed to make traveling a priority (oh- I better go back to work, and FAST! next blog post: Carrie’s resume!).

Meanwhile, in the mornings, I got to do some shopping (more of that in a later post), I settled some more travel arrangements and visited some little coffee shops. One morning I met my crazy neighbor friends for coffee. I bought them coffee and they spoke french with me— seemed like a good deal— 6 euros an hour is the cheapest deal yet for French conversation lessons! They told me more crazy French history lessons (they love that we are studying French history!) and I battled it out with using etre with passe compose and clarified the difference between the word for boring (ennuyeux) and the word for annoying (ennuyeux)- yeah, it still gets me when I try to tell people that while we liked Sancerre, my boys thought it was boring- or was it annoyingly boring? Anyway- luckily I am fluent in crazy, so we got along swimmingly. With all of the time I spent shopping and coffeeing and speaking with the boys’ teachers, I think my French got better this week too! 

Samuel had evening activities as well, so we spent a lot of time going back and forth between our house and the school and one of the dorms, and back to school. The activity and and socializing was good for all of us. The boys were in separate classes, so they enjoyed some time apart as well.

To celebrate our successful week, we decided to try a sushi place Samuel and I had seen. It’s not fancy, in other words, perfect for me and the boys at night. No risk of ruining anyone’s romantic dinner. Just when it appeared we were the loudest table in the place, a large group of people showed up and took the large farm table down the center of the restaurant. They ordered a bunch of sushi and beer, then I noticed some of them were drinking red wine. I heard that French people ate bread with everything, including sushi in particular, but red wine? Not sure about that. Then I realized that they were crew members and not even French people! When in France… uh— no! 

Nevertheless, we ended our week pretty well— overall I feel like things have been a success here in Antibes. My thoughts are already turning to the next phase of our trip— when we turn in our house keys, put on our backpacks and go. Given some of the little mishaps and behavior issues, I have to admit, I am getting a little nervous. If things get really bad, I’ll look back at this week and smile!