Chez Wilkes has relocated! As of today, I will no longer be posting at this location. We have moved to the following address:
chezwilkes.wordpress.com
If you visit us there, you will be asked to enter a user name and password, which I will be emailing to friends and family after I post this. If you do not receive this email and would like to read, please contact me! Our email address is jhwilkes@gmail.com.
Au revoir...for now!
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
Friday, September 26, 2008
Blog News
First of all, thanks to everyone who has read the blog over the past year or so, commented on it, and enjoyed it! I have loved keeping in touch and getting back in touch with lots of people through it!
That being said, as of October 1, I will be password-protecting Chez Wilkes to return it to the readership for whom it was intended...family and friends back home in the USA. I have discovered that there is too much potential for inadvertent offense with how widely dispersed this blog has become, completely through my own actions and fault.
I will be emailing the password to those of you who fit the bill as family and friends in the States. If I don't email you, please email me and ask before getting offended! Our email address is jhwilkes@gmail.com . I know that I probably don't have everyone's email who has been reading and posting comments, and I don't want to leave you out if you would like to continue reading.
Well, that's that! We are headed to Arles in Provence this weekend for some R&R, and I hope to have some stories and photos for you soon.
Have a good weekend!
That being said, as of October 1, I will be password-protecting Chez Wilkes to return it to the readership for whom it was intended...family and friends back home in the USA. I have discovered that there is too much potential for inadvertent offense with how widely dispersed this blog has become, completely through my own actions and fault.
I will be emailing the password to those of you who fit the bill as family and friends in the States. If I don't email you, please email me and ask before getting offended! Our email address is jhwilkes@gmail.com . I know that I probably don't have everyone's email who has been reading and posting comments, and I don't want to leave you out if you would like to continue reading.
Well, that's that! We are headed to Arles in Provence this weekend for some R&R, and I hope to have some stories and photos for you soon.
Have a good weekend!
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Escrime et Esclade
AKA, fencing and rock climbing. Both were on the agenda for today, in different forms.
No more Lazy Wednesdays, that's for sure. While we still have no school on Wednesday, it has now officially become our "activity day," in which we join most other people that live here. A few brave souls have activities on other weekdays, but most of us cram everything in on Wednesday.
The kids had piano from 9:00 until 10:15 or so. Their teacher comes to the house and spends about 45 minutes with Charlotte and 30 with Elijah. At 10:45, Elijah and I bundled into the car and dashed down the hill to the gymnasium where his first fencing class took place.
Elijah is a very easy-going, laid-back kid, but he does NOT like new things all that well, and fencing was no exception. Right up until today, he loved the idea of fencing and couldn't wait for the idea of class. But this morning, he started backpedaling and just wasn't so sure that fencing was such a great idea.
Nevertheless, off we went. Upon entering, we were greeted by the teacher, a big smiling man who immediately knew we must be the ones signed up who were not French. After clearing up that he doesn't speak much English, he asked if Elijah understood French. I reassured him that Elijah functions quite well at school, handed in the remaining paperwork, and headed back to the house.
Charlotte had let in the French tutor, per our careful instructions, and they had started on Charlotte's homework. (She has something like 25 French spelling words this week...she is lucky that she memorizes things so easily!) At 11:40, I headed back down the hill to pick Elijah up.
I got to watch the tail end of the fencing lessons...adorable! Eight little boys in face masks with foam sabers were dueling and then shaking hands at the end of it! Elijah was all smiles when the class ended. "What we're learning in there is exactly like what Master Yoda does, Mom!" he excitedly told me.
Success!
So then we motored back up the hill, where Charlotte was finishing up her lesson, and Elijah had his. When the lesson ended at 1:00, we ate lunch and then embarked on my challenge of the day: enrolling Charlotte in rock climbing.
This was nuts, mostly because I couldn't find the place. Where the GPS said should be the location of Espace Vertical was a massive construction project. I saw no signs or anything else indicating that I was close to an indoor rock-climbing place. So I circled the block a couple of times and decided to give the building site one more chance. I drove back a bit farther and finally saw these itty bitty, printer-paper-sized signs announcing where the parking for Espace Vertical was. Wow.
So, I parked and headed in. When the guy at the desk saw me with a handful of papers and two little people in tow, he rattled something off and pointed to the back of the building. I'm sure that I gave him my patented blank look because he sort of smiled, apologized for talking so fast, and repeated that the sign-ups for escalade were up the stairs to the back. (I'm starting to think I have a tattoo visible only to French people that says, "No speaky the French." Only in French.)
I headed to the stairs, with the kids chattering excitedly behind me. The walls here are pretty impressive. (Check out this link if you want to see some of them: http://www.espacevertical.net/pages/page_salle_de_grenoblepag.html . I believe it will be awhile before our daughter is making her way up any of those, but it's a worthy goal!) I hopped in the line, filled out the paperwork, wrote my check, and said, "Merci, au revoir."
Then I remembered noticing that the climbers all seemed to have special shoes, so I stood in the line some more to inquire. I asked in French about the shoes and got a very lengthy answer, some of which I understood and some of which I didn't. At the end of it, the man helping me pulled out my inscription form and asked about Charlotte's taille. Excited because I understood that he was asking for her shoe size, I called Charlotte over and asked her take off her tennis shoe so I could check her size.
At this point, Charlotte told me, in English, of course, that her tennis shoe didn't say her shoe size, but she was pretty sure that she was a 34 or 35 (French size!). Immediately, the guy helping us switched into English and started conversing with her.
Inwardly, I shook my head.
In any case, Espace Vertical has a shoe swap once the classes start, and, if someone comes in with an old pair in Charlotte's size, we can buy them for 10 euros, as opposed to paying 40 euros to buy a new pair. Not a bad deal.
Mission accomplished!
Shortly after arriving home, Francois, the neighbor boy, rang the doorbell. His mom followed shortly, and we spent the remainder of our afternoon with them, in what has quickly become a much-anticipated Wednesday afternoon event.
What a day! Glad it's over! I think we need to go back to school to rest!
No more Lazy Wednesdays, that's for sure. While we still have no school on Wednesday, it has now officially become our "activity day," in which we join most other people that live here. A few brave souls have activities on other weekdays, but most of us cram everything in on Wednesday.
The kids had piano from 9:00 until 10:15 or so. Their teacher comes to the house and spends about 45 minutes with Charlotte and 30 with Elijah. At 10:45, Elijah and I bundled into the car and dashed down the hill to the gymnasium where his first fencing class took place.
Elijah is a very easy-going, laid-back kid, but he does NOT like new things all that well, and fencing was no exception. Right up until today, he loved the idea of fencing and couldn't wait for the idea of class. But this morning, he started backpedaling and just wasn't so sure that fencing was such a great idea.
Nevertheless, off we went. Upon entering, we were greeted by the teacher, a big smiling man who immediately knew we must be the ones signed up who were not French. After clearing up that he doesn't speak much English, he asked if Elijah understood French. I reassured him that Elijah functions quite well at school, handed in the remaining paperwork, and headed back to the house.
Charlotte had let in the French tutor, per our careful instructions, and they had started on Charlotte's homework. (She has something like 25 French spelling words this week...she is lucky that she memorizes things so easily!) At 11:40, I headed back down the hill to pick Elijah up.
I got to watch the tail end of the fencing lessons...adorable! Eight little boys in face masks with foam sabers were dueling and then shaking hands at the end of it! Elijah was all smiles when the class ended. "What we're learning in there is exactly like what Master Yoda does, Mom!" he excitedly told me.
Success!
So then we motored back up the hill, where Charlotte was finishing up her lesson, and Elijah had his. When the lesson ended at 1:00, we ate lunch and then embarked on my challenge of the day: enrolling Charlotte in rock climbing.
This was nuts, mostly because I couldn't find the place. Where the GPS said should be the location of Espace Vertical was a massive construction project. I saw no signs or anything else indicating that I was close to an indoor rock-climbing place. So I circled the block a couple of times and decided to give the building site one more chance. I drove back a bit farther and finally saw these itty bitty, printer-paper-sized signs announcing where the parking for Espace Vertical was. Wow.
So, I parked and headed in. When the guy at the desk saw me with a handful of papers and two little people in tow, he rattled something off and pointed to the back of the building. I'm sure that I gave him my patented blank look because he sort of smiled, apologized for talking so fast, and repeated that the sign-ups for escalade were up the stairs to the back. (I'm starting to think I have a tattoo visible only to French people that says, "No speaky the French." Only in French.)
I headed to the stairs, with the kids chattering excitedly behind me. The walls here are pretty impressive. (Check out this link if you want to see some of them: http://www.espacevertical.net/pages/page_salle_de_grenoblepag.html . I believe it will be awhile before our daughter is making her way up any of those, but it's a worthy goal!) I hopped in the line, filled out the paperwork, wrote my check, and said, "Merci, au revoir."
Then I remembered noticing that the climbers all seemed to have special shoes, so I stood in the line some more to inquire. I asked in French about the shoes and got a very lengthy answer, some of which I understood and some of which I didn't. At the end of it, the man helping me pulled out my inscription form and asked about Charlotte's taille. Excited because I understood that he was asking for her shoe size, I called Charlotte over and asked her take off her tennis shoe so I could check her size.
At this point, Charlotte told me, in English, of course, that her tennis shoe didn't say her shoe size, but she was pretty sure that she was a 34 or 35 (French size!). Immediately, the guy helping us switched into English and started conversing with her.
Inwardly, I shook my head.
In any case, Espace Vertical has a shoe swap once the classes start, and, if someone comes in with an old pair in Charlotte's size, we can buy them for 10 euros, as opposed to paying 40 euros to buy a new pair. Not a bad deal.
Mission accomplished!
Shortly after arriving home, Francois, the neighbor boy, rang the doorbell. His mom followed shortly, and we spent the remainder of our afternoon with them, in what has quickly become a much-anticipated Wednesday afternoon event.
What a day! Glad it's over! I think we need to go back to school to rest!
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