La Vie en Rose

Gastronome - a person devoted to refined sensuous enjoyment (especially good food and drink),

a.k.a. - Cole

Tuesday at the Crèche Cole had a Roulé de Saussice (a sausage roll) and Soufflé de Fois for lunch. When I asked him about the Roulé de Saucisse and how he liked it, he said that is was a mild sausage in a light and flaky pastry, and quite enjoyable. Likewise about the soufflé he said that the liver had a nice flavor and the soufflé had not fallen. Yesterday, he had paella, which I am sure had real saffron in it as we are so close to the Mediterranean. Again, he eats better than we do! That is all we have from here.

Apologies again for the mass quanity of pictures in France Round 8 but we have to get current soon as we have limited time! Enjoy new pics to the left.

Workingman's Blues #2

Grève!

Our time in France would not have been complete without experiencing at least one grève -- that is, a strike.  Earlier in the week upon picking Ellie up from school, her teacher, the long-aforementioned Tattoo Lady, handed us a small printed note.  At the top was the word "Grève" and below it were several demands.  After a moment's pause, we realized that these demands and their underlying grievance were with the town... or the Department... or Sarkozy... it wasn't exactly clear... but at least they weren't with us.

  

As you may have seen on the news, yesterday some two million French took to the streets in a nationwide strike to champion any number of causes... and then happily returned to work today. As far as I can tell, the only true purpose of such mass uprisings is to provide the opportunity for every interested citizen to pull out their bright-colored banners, use up those old flares just sitting in the trunk, and play Jean Valjean for the day:

To the Barricades!

Rescue Me

Anyone who has talked to me over the last week knows what a challenge it has been for us to try to change our airline tickets so we can come home early. The issue was that we came over on frequent flyer miles, which at the time was AWESOME, but now that we have “commenced our travel” and are in the middle of it they "CAN NOT change anything." Lance's Aunt said very nonchallantly to me, "you'll get it done, you don't take no for an answer." Ya, that is what I thought too. 

After spending five hours on the phone on Saturday only to stop the process for Ellie's hospital trip, I was starting to realize this was not likely to happen. And, even if they did make the change they were going to charge us $1000.00 to change the tickets. Seeing the writing on the wall, yesterday I started to look into one way tickets as it really was not looking like we were going to get anywhere.

In one last ditch attempt I had sent an email to US Airways Customer Relations on Sunday and pretty much begged. Two days later Mavis Bailow responded and she is now our hero. Not only did she get us home, she did it free of charge. Now, our itinerary is not pretty, but it gets us home Friday, March 6, 2009. We fly from Paris to Philly (right over Boston), then take a 45 minute flight to D.C., then back up to Boston. But WHATEVER, we’ll be home!

It's worth acknowledging US Airways' willingness to be a company with a heart, even in these tough times. That does not happen enough these days and when it does, it deserves credit.

We made sure to thank Mavis for her help and this was her response:

"I was happy to help you out. I would only hope if I was in your shoes someone would show my family the same kindness."

Do unto others...

Amen.

Bittersweet Symphony

So the title of this posting says it all (although it could have been called "Free Falling" and you see why at the end.)

Last week was an amazing week and a crappy week all in one. The Inauguration was just thrilling to see. But as many of you already know, on that historic day we received the news that Lance was going to be a part of the next round of layoffs at his company. This was not entirely surprising given the state of the global economy and the fact that he has survived some half dozen of these in the past three years. And, it's not terrible that Lance will be leaving this company, as it was a very different company than it was when he joined and we've had many conversations about when to think about looking elsewhere, but the timing could have been better for sure (I guess no one ever thinks the timing on this type of thing is ever good). So, the "sweet" part of the equation is that we are heading home early (March instead of June)! With this comes a mixture of emotions as we are excited to be coming home to our friends, family, home, neighborhood, etc., but we are sad to be leaving under these circumstances. We will have been here about seven months and it has been an adventure that we will never forget. We are very lucky and thankful that LPS (my employer) has a spot open for me to return to work and the kids to return to day care due to the excellent timing of my good friend Jen's pregnancy (guess someone was looking out for us, somewhere)!

In addition, a few days after finding out Lance is being laid off, we received some news about a close friend who is going through a tough time and I wonder if this is one of the many reasons why we are coming home (we are needed elsewhere). I am very thankful that I will be home to help her get through this latest challenge. The week ended with us playing a five hour game of "it's not our problem call the other company" with both US Airways and Lufthansa, trying to plead with them to change our ticket (as we have already commenced travel, they are both refusing and we're looking at having to buy new one-way tickets home), which only ended because we had to take a trip to the Nimes hospital once more (for those keeping score at home, that's now Cole: 1, Ellie: 1). Ellie took a tumble on a set of 400 year old stone stairs that put a nice little cut on her chin. We hemmed and hawed about how bad the cut was but in the end took her to the hospital so they could put a stitch in her chin and hopefully avoid a bad scar. She'll always have a little scar by which to remember France and her free falling escapade.

And that was not the only time that day that one of our kids bled from the face. Earlier in the day Cole was standing on a chair and tipped it over backward.  He broke his fall with his face/nose for a nice little nose bleed in the library (a very dangerous place, of course). Man it was a bad week!

At the end of the day, while we're disappointed to be leaving a bit early, we can certainly look back and appreciate everything that we've seen and learned during this adventure. We sat down the other day to make a list of things we want to do/see before we leave and it wasn't that big a list. There are many things we would have enjoyed, certainly, but we've already packed so much into this short time that we'll have very few regrets. Of course, the adventure is not over yet and I'm sure there will be many more stories to tell (so stay tuned!).

Pride

It's a moment that we'll take with us.  One of those few that, when we're gray and old and tired, we'll draw back... pull out from the depths of our lives, set in a frame of history and stand back and say, "yeah.  That was... something."

We planned ahead for the historic event, last weekend, as Sunday happened to be the "Journee de la Truffe" in Uzes, a city whose history is closely tied to the elusive tuber.  The Truffle Festival was in itself quite an event.  Set in the Place aux Herbes where the Wednesday and Saturday market is staged, the scene was a study in contrast, between the black clad, chapeau-ed patrons, dressed to the nines for this annual worship of the odiferous fungus and the leather-skinned, oil skin clad, massive dry, worn, rough handed vendors, hawking their black diamonds for princely sums that would stoke their kitchen fires well into the year.

We took in the festive day, browsing the truffle seller's tables, watching a bit of the auction where some sort of "Truffle Society" in oddly Moorish ceremonial garb oversaw the sale of the season's grandest harvest, and watched in wonder as four men worked tirelessly over a massive log fire heating the largest iron pan we'd ever seen as it was strategically moved over and then away from the ten-foot diameter smoldering fire by a forklift.  We figured out finally that it was eggs, and truffles of course.  We promplty amended our lunch pans and happily laid down seven euro fifty each for a heaping pile of scrambled truffle eggs, a hunk of baguette, and your choice of vin rouge ou blanc (bien sur).  Ellie declined the opportunity but Cole enthusiatically helped Amy polish off her plate.  He couldn't sign "more" quick enough to get another bite to his mouth.

After lunch we sauntered over to a ring at the edge of the square that had been filled with sand, planted strategically with tree cuttings, and emceed by a man introducing a series of crusty, charicatured, dog-handling truffle hunters who led their canine accomplices through the makeshift beach in a demonstration of how one comes into possession of a truffle.  The finale of the demonstration was when a small man with hands the size of Montana emerged from an egg-shaped micro-trailer with a swine that would take the prize at any county fair and proceeded to plow through the demonstration area as though it was the simplest paint-by-numbers, snuffing one truffle after another in abject mockery of his canine adversaries.

Not to let this moment pass, we bought our very own tuber melanosporum... with the help of a three year old, self-declared expert, rather than a giant hog, of course.  We planned out an entire truffle based menu for the evening -- enough to get us through the preliminary proceedings, the oath, the helicopter, the parade, and maybe even one or two of the Inaugural Balls before we would roll off to bed, ready for Change to Come.  We even splurged on a fine champagne to wash it all down.

Tuesday brought mixed news to us but the events that will transcend the small challenges that life brings were not to be overlooked.  We watched with joy and wonder and amazement as America and the World saw the light of a new tomorrow shine bright from the Capitol steps.  The vignettes that I will pull out and observe those many years along will be of both kids hopping down from their chairs, inches from the screen, to dance as the Queen of Soul sang My Country 'Tis of Thee, Ellie turning and telling me, "Barack Obama is my friend" and Cole, impromptu, waving and saying "bye bye" as Executive One carried its occupants on their way out of Washington.

 

Signed, Sealed, Delivered, I'm Yours

I should start out by saying “Sorry again.” I did it again...again! Quite a number of pictures in this posting. But in my defense I blame it on the photographer - tough to keep the picture postings to a minimum when he takes almost 400 pictures in one weekend! So these pictures bring you up to Christmas Eve and include our trip to Basel, Switzerland and Strasbourg, France for the Christmas Markets. Ohhhhh the glühwein! So...enjoy the pictures and the song. We are!  Take a look at "France Round 7" to the left.

Scenes From An Italian Restaurant

Or a French day care, as the case may be. Cole attends the Crèche two mornings a week from 9-12. They serve lunch at 11:30 so he has the privilege of a truly French toddler lunch. Now I am sure you are thinking hotdogs, chicken nuggets, mac & cheese…easy food for kids to eat, enjoy and digest. Oh no no. Kids in France do not eat those kinds of foods. Below is Cole’s menu for the week which is posted next to the door at the beginning of the week. And yes, this week on Tuesday Cole's starter was a beet salad with a vinaigrette, followed by a scallop of pork with peas and carrots (and not those perfectly square frozen carrots) and finally fruit of the season. Today he started out with an appetizer of cheese pizza. His main meal was sauted veal with broccoli flourettes, and dessert was fruit of the seaason. In the too much information category; Cole’s diapers are a different story on Crèche days.

We Three Kings

Epiphany

There is a line on the front of the church that indicates the height of the 2002 flood waters.  In front of the church is a small paved area that, based on my personal observations is designed specifically to  house a large bonfire fed exclusively of old vine wood, a choir singing carols in French, a table behind which a kind man is selling vin chaud and galette de rois, and a fireworks dislplay that would give any small American town a run for its July 4th money.  At the back of the paved square is a pedestal and an ornate iron crucifix overlooking the Gardon valley and the garrigue spreading out in front and beyond.

We only noticed the sign by chance... taking the kids on a quick swing through the village square in hopes of seeing a few more Christmas lights for Ellie to scream out... "look... I see some lights!!" There was the sign.  Tied to a signpost... promising fireworks at the church in town... with a "concert, galette de rois, and boissons."  Clearly, not to be missed.

So we drove up, and saw the bonfire in front of the church and saw the gathered crowd, and thought... "wow... we're really not going to be able to have a meaningful conversation with any of those people."  We actually thought about turning around and heading home.  Thankfully, the spirit of adventure took over and we parked the car and ventured towared the gathered mass.

Immediately, our assimilation was given a boost when Ellie spotted one of her classmates, Lucy, walking with her family towards the church.  They hugged and then proceeded to walk the rest of he way to the eglise hand-in-hand... allowing us the cover of walking in with other people.  As we walked in, the "choir" was singing some sort of carol and Ellie had already spotted another friend... or should I say, he had spotted her.   We soon found our friend Amy -- the mother of Ellie's friends Owen and Noah, had a cup of vin chaud, and were settled in for the festivities.  

This being the first Sunday after the Epiphany -- that twelfth day of Christmas, when the Magi reached Bethlehem to view the new born King -- it was a time to celebrate.  A few "Jingle Bells" and "Rudolphs" (in French) later, it was time for the fireworks.  The village spared no expense... being fortunate enough to have a Choir Director who was apparently trained in pyrotechnics and soon we were all huddled behind a metal crowd-control barrier whilst the choir director ascended the 17th century church in rock-climbing helmet and harness to queue the celebratory display.  Much... *much* to our surprise, the fireworks were legitimate professional quality and enough to send Ellie's hands to her ears and to make even the adults take a step back in awe.  Of course there might have been a slight aspect of self-preservation involved as several of the explosions seemed as though they were aimed directly at us. 

It wasn't quite the same class as a Boston 4th of July but given the imminent risk of immolation it certainly was on par in terms of excitement and adrenaline.

When the final ember had faded we said "bon soir" to Ellie's friends and headed off into the cold, bright, full moonlit night.  As we drove home and the immense orb crested the hillsides to the East, casting a noonday light over the vineyareds, Cole, looking out his East-facing window, announced, "Ball!  Ball!  Ball!"  

Yes Cole, that is like a giant ball in the sky... isn't it?  I only wish I hadn't left my camera home... so it wouldn't be left to me to remember the image of a curtain of fireworks erupting above and below the twin-belled steeple of an ancient French church on a hillside over a deep river valley, or the sight of an impossibly giant moon rising though the orange-hueing, light bending smoke of a thousand fires burning bright and warm in so many Provencal chimineys on a cool January Sunday night.

Field and fountain, moor and mountain, following yonder star.

Long As I Can See the Light

The second chapter of Peter Mayle's iconic A Year in Provence, to which this space owes both its subtitle and its spirit, begins with a description of the ho-hum daily content of Le Provençal, the local paper.  Mayle continues:

This traditional mixture was put aside, one morning in early February, for a lead story which had nothing to do with sport, crime, or politics: PROVENCE UNDER A BLANKET OF SNOW! shouted the headline with an undercurrent of glee at the promise of the follow-up stories which would undoubtedly result from Nature's unseasonable behavior.  There would be mothers and babies miraculously alive after a night in a snowbound car, old men escaping hypothermia by inches thanks to the intervention of public-spirited and alert neighbors, climbers plucked from the side on Mont Ventoux by helicopter, postmen battling against all odds to deliver electricity bills, village elders harking back to previous catastrophes -- there were days of material ahead....

That was the only mention we’d heard of snow since embarking on this adventure – lost among warm reminiscences of sunny January afternoon lunches in the yard and laughing assurances that we’d never need snow boots here. Sadly, we’d resigned ourselves to a leaf-clinging, Mistral blowing, rain spitting, smoke curling, blanketed gray green brown winter of thick wine and hot-potted leek and fowl and apple of the earth and, perhaps, more wine after that. All of that changed Wednesday.

The Midi Libre, our local paper, proclaimed, THE MIDI IS PARALYZED BY SNOW! detailing the *one thousand* cars that were stuck on one of the main roads leading out of Nimes, just to the south of us. Compounding the matter, no doubt, was that yesterday was the first day of the “soldes” – the bi-annual government-authorized sales that rival any Black Friday madness back home and brought surely no less than thousands to the commercial sprawl on the southern outskirts of the city in search of that most-precious pair of boots at a price too good to be true. We too joined the masses and came away with a not humble trove before turning into the gathering storm and driving north for what should have been a twenty minute drive home. Two hours later, having detoured to the East and weathered roads that would have been better suited to take the kids for an afternoon skate than to navigate in an outdated rear-wheel drive faded luxury wagon, angry north winds whipping white across each roundabout in what even the most literal meteorologist would have called blizzard conditions, we arrived at the dark, cold, old, powerless stone farmhouse that is our home.

The lack of a functional electrical system was, of course, a surprise. We would spend the next 26 hours learning how the men, women, and children who build this old house actually lived in it some 400 years ago, mind you in much smaller rooms, and with far less concern for fire safety or knowledge of air quality issues. 

While we waited to see whether the power company could manage to get a truck to our side of the hill in any reasonable timeframe, Ellie and I put on our warmest boots and thickest mittens and took off into the snow to document this Provencal rarity and throw a few snowballs at each other.

The whole dramatic event left but an inch or so on our hillside, barely enough for a proper Bonhomme de Neige, though we did our best, makeshift beret and all.

Restoring power was a greater challenge than one might have expected. After a few hours and with the day fading quickly, I walked to one of our two neighbors to see if they had power. They did, which meant we were in trouble because the problem was likely isolated to our house. This neighbor speaks no English so I fumbled through a bit of a conversation and he tried calling the power company for us, to no avail as, surprisingly given that all of the South of France was being ravaged by a winter storm the likes of which had not been seen in recent memory (they haven't seen any snow in four years in our village), all operators were busy at that time. Without a phone ourselves, thanks to the electrical needs of our IP phone, and without a functional cellular signal in our snug little hillside hamlet, we were dependant on friends and acquaintances to do our bidding for us. They did and the man with the headlamp and bag of black tape and fuses finally arrived like a tradesman's comic book superhero this afternoon to find the rogue fuse that had caused us to sleep in three layers and find every blanket in the house last night for the kids.

After spending a night by candle light, playing cards, and chatting, it was with a twinge of regret that we saw the clocks on the appliances flicker to life... a twinge that lasted exactly as long as it took us both to get our computers booted up and our noses firmly buried therein.  Ahh, life in a rural farmhouse in the South of France.

History Repeating

OK - we were on a bit of a hiatus over the holidays and are now starting to weed through our un-posted pictures and get them up on the blog. We enjoyed having Lance’s Mom here for the holiday and have many exciting adventures to report (some of which you've already had glimpses of). My goal is to upload pictures in manageable chunks (nobody wants to sit and look at 400 pictures at once). So to start, you can go back in time and check out a little bit of history, starting at Thanksgiving, in "France Round 6."

Cold, Cold Night

Coldest night of the year so far for us last night.  The mercury plummeted to a ghastly 27 degrees.  Not sure how people ever survive these harsh, unforgiving winters.  It was so bad that the water in the pool froze over!  The forecast calls for a slight chance of flurries by Thursday.  We're heading out today to stock up on batteries, water, and canned goods.  Pray for us.

New Years Day

Sometimes the titles of these things are just too obvious to pass up...

So, what to do on New Years Day when you're living in rural Southern France in the harsh, rugged garrigue where the Rhône Valley meets the foothills of the Cévennes; when even after building a sunrise fire and enjoying a long, lazy pancake breakfast, the first Tournament of Roses Parade marching band is still tucked in their hotel beds alternating between dreams of triumphantly striding past the Governor's stand and nightmares of forgetting every note that they've so meticulously drilled the past six months; when only the most hard-core tailgaters have taken up position outside a bowl-game stadium still dark in the cool first night; and when the last lingering revelers are probably still toasting one more drink into a warm Pacific breeze?  What to do when the sun is up and bright and warm and the apples of your eye are looking at you with a trapped-in, cooped-up, pent-up, desperate gaze?

You strap your beloved cherubs upon your back and head off out into the garrigue for a three-hour hike down into the Gardon River gorge and back up out, of course.

Along the way you are rewarded with precipitous views of the Gardon gorge, ancient caves, not-as-ancient shrines built in to said caves and sweeping views of the Rhône Valley and the snow-capped Cévennes peaks.  At the same time, by lugging a backpack full of water, multiple snack options and… oh yeah… a three-year-old (or 20-month-old, as the case may be) down into and (more so) back up out of the gorge, you get a flat-out kick*ss workout that at least puts a little tiny dent into the mass of calories you’ve consumed over the past month. 

Happy New Year everyone.