French school supplies (or Vive la rentrée!)

    We caught the bus to Auchan (kind of like Wal-Mart for Europe) yesterday in order to buy school supplies for the kids.  Lucy doesn't need much (slippers, a blanket, and a pillow for naptime, for example), but the other kids had very long lists.  Apparently, this is something new.  Public school used to be entirely free, with almost everything but the bookbag provided by the school.  Thie lists, however, included everything from a fountain pen (with refill cartridges) to special drawing paper, and many interesting office supplies in between.
     Anyone who knows me knows that I am a sucker for office supplies, so I was pretty intrigued by the lists and thought I would know many of the things.  Some were obvious (compas/compass, for example!) and others familiar (a box of tissues for the classroom to share).  However, despite lots of previous purchases at papeteries in France, as well as a fair amount of time spent on Google Translate and with my dictionary, a number of items left me completely stumped.
   Polly Platt, in French or Foe, offers a useful phrase, which basically translates as "Excuse me for bothering you, sir (or madam), but I have a problem...."  She then suggests making a colorful story out of one's particular need, hoping to engage the interest and sympathy of the person to whom you are making an appeal.  So far, it's worked every time I've needed to use it, and ultimately, I decided that the simplest way of figuring out what everything was would be to take Polly's idea to Auchan with me and, once there, to stop a friendly-looking mom in the aisle and ask her to take pity on me.
    I debated between a few women, but one looked too harassed by her own list and another looked irritated by my children.  I eventually decided on a mom who was speaking kindly to her son and grabbing workbooks to add to a pile, figuring she had her own list and her own children and didn't seem too irritated already.  She smiled at my pleas of total American incomptence in the face of French school supplies, and did indeed take pity on me. As it turned out, she spoke a decent amount of English -- but had no idea what the English words for most of the items were, though she could point me to what they looked like -- and tell me that the list was excessive for public school, but that there was nothing to do about it except suffer through it.  It turns out that many items are things that I've never seen in an American classroom, which might help explain why I didn't have any idea.  (For example, a plastic notebook cover and a fountain pen eraser/rewriter.)  She also had a boy Kate's age, and we sent Kate and the boy off together to look for the supplies that they both needed, and we did our best to get the other things on our lists.  We debated the best compass to buy (cheap? mid-range? expensive?) and discussed whether or not her daughter (almost 3) was too young to be away from mom for preschool two mornings a week (her mom's verdict:  probably).   
    When I got to the checkout and the checker told me the total (nearly 200 euros), I made a long face and she laughed and said, "Vive la rentrée!"  Yes, indeed.
    But I do now know a lot of words for school supplies and have a pink fountain pen.

Ecole des Entrepots

  The girls and I went to their school today.  The director is a lovely woman who was very helpful, and it turns out that there is another American family in the school, who have been in France for two years.  (The mom is French, but the dad is American and the kids didn't speak French when they arrived in France.) Quite happily, Kate and Molly have one of each of their kids in class with them, which should be quite helpful.  We also met another dad and his sons; the dad is Russian and the child doesn't speak much French at all.  (The dad speaks almost none; I ended up doing quite a bit of translating between the director and the dad, as she gave us a tour of the school together.)
  Molly is very excited for school to start, as they have badminton, fencing, and ping-pong as sports.  Kate is less excited, but she picked up a number of sentences that I said, so she's clearly already learning some French.  Lucy was quite overwhelmed by the end.  The communal bathrooms were the last straw.  After she saw how public and open the toilets were (they just have small, low dividers between them), she started crying.  It may be a bit of a struggle to get her to go, though she is excited about the play structure in the courtyard.

No need to change my airplane ticket

The kids and I went up to the French Consulate on Tuesday, and it was a remarkably easy process.  I don't have the kids' passports yet, as they want a copy of my husband's passport and a notarized statement that he is okay with my taking the kids to France for five months.  Other than that, it all went smoothly, and I have my passport -- with visa inside! -- in hand.  Should be no problem making my July 16 flight.  (They didn't even bat an eye.  Clearly this is not all that unusual.)

Convention d'acceuil!

I have spent the past six weeks worrying about the fact that my "convention d'acceuil" (necessary for the visa, which is necessary for a vist over three months) has been stalled.  I filled out all the forms at ENS-Lyon when I was there in April and it was to go to the prefecture right away, then get sent to me.  Weeks passed with no word.  I assumed that it was stuck at the prefecture.  In fact, it seems to have been on some random desk at ENS-Lyon.

My contacts emailed it to me the day that they received it (July 4), and I have made my appointment with the French Consulate in Chicago for July 10 (the next available set of 5 appointments, as I need one for each of us).  Now I just have to hope that everything goes through okay so that I can make my July 16 flight.  (I think that might be a long shot, but I'm not changing it yet!)

So now it's just a question of filling out all the forms and getting copies of everything!  By nexgt Tuesday afternoon, I should know where I stand.

Getting Ready

There are days when I feel like all that I am accomplishing is getting together the documents necessary to spend the summer and fall in France.  Today, I realized that I need a copy of my birth certificate.  Yet one more thing to order -- the list keeps getting longer!