Vacation time

   We've struck up a bit of a friendship with an older French woman who lives in our apartment complex.  She frequently ends up waiting for/on the bus at the same time that we do, and we have talked a bit about Lyon and France.  She says that Lyon is, in her opinion, more closed and that it's harder to meet people than in many other cities.  She has lived here for years but didn't want to move here initially, when her husband got a job here.
    Today, I took the kids -- who are on All Saints break, which is two weeks long -- to the Beaux Arts museum in Lyon.  On the way home, our neighbor boarded the bus and sat nearby, chatting.  I mentioned that we were taking advantage of our vacation time to explore more of Lyon and she smiled knowingly and said, "Oh, yes, there are certainly a lot of vacations in France, aren't there?"  I said, "Well, it seems like there are more than in the United States..."  She said, "Oh, everyone knows that Americans work very very hard.  And French people do like their vacations.  That is well-known, too!"

Profiting from time abroad

     A few weeks ago, in music class, my son was chastised in front of the class for not having memorized the answers to a quiz.  When he indicated that his French wasn't yet strong enough to have completed the assignment, the teacher asked him how long he'd been in France.  He said two months (though he'd only been in school for about a month at that point) and the teacher said, "You must profit from your time!  Profit James, profit!"  Apparently, the exchange has continued, with the music teacher calling him up first last week and telling him that he's not really benefitting from this opportunity, because he hasn't learned enough French.
      This demonstrates that James and the teacher have rather different understandings of what it means to profit from time abroad as well as what James' "job" is here.  Overall, all the kids' teachers have been pretty understanding of the fact that they came knowing no French and that they're trying but that they don't yet know much.  However, I expect that it's hard for many of the teachers to see them making reasonably little progress in French, as it seems like they must not be learning anything about France.  Of course, that's not true.  They are picking up lots of French -- though nothing systematic -- and they are learning a great deal about social expectations, cuisine (school lunches are an entirely different animal here!), and playground games (marbles!), just to mention a few things.  They will not go back to the United States the same as when they left, whether they can carry on a conversation in French or not.

French School System

     I had big plans for this week:  meetings with scholars and plans for work at ENS-Lyon.
     So on Monday, I showed up at the Ecole des Entrepots, all excited for Lucy to have a full day of school -- and for me to have a full day of work. Turns out one of the teachers was out sick, so they were asking parents to keep their kids home in the afternoon. You could say no, but then they would parcel your kid out to another class so they could reach a better ratio. I don't think that's a recipe for success, given what a hard time she's having with the idea of full days. So she stayed for lunch and I picked her up at 1:30.  Since her teacher was going to be out sick for the entire week, it meant that I had to pick her up at 11:30 every other day.
    Then, on Thursday, I went to pick Lucy up and found Kate in Lucy's classroom. My first thought was "Oh no, lice!" But no, Kate's teacher was sick, so they parceled the kids out to all the classes...and sent Kate to preschool, where she was helping the four year olds with crafts and gymnastics.  Since I was already bringing Lucy home, I brought Kate home, too.  Then, about an hour later, I got a call from the principal, telling me that Molly's teacher was going to be sick tomorrow as well, so I am keeping all the girls. I really think I am not supposed to get any work doon Friday (along with Kate's and Lucy's).  So I just kept them all home.  
     This makes me wonder a few things.  I wonder if "sick" is code for "strike."  I suspect it's not, or they would have said, but perhaps they have a reason.  More importantly, I wonder what this says about childcare and the French public school system.  I saw many grandparents arriving to pick up the kids in Kate and Lucy's classes.  What do single parents or people without flexible jobs or without family backup do?  Often in the U.S., people point to Europe --and notably, France -- as a country that has solved the problem of childcare and working, but this experience doesn't seem to demonstrate to me the truth of that statement.

Americans in a French school

My oldest three kids have found the transition to French school to be far easier and way less terrifying than they had expected.  There are people around who are willing to help them, and it doesn't hurt that a good amount of their homework is comprised of things that they are unable to complete, because they don't know enough French yet.  Perhaps most of all, it's been a lot of fun for all of them.  In France, they are cool and interesting, just because they are American. Or maybe not just because, but it certainly gives them some extra caché. James is already able to parse a great deal of written French and Kate and Molly feel like they're picking up enough to get by (for example, learning how to say whatever word is not "poisson" on the lunch menu!).   Unfortunately, the youngest isn't finding her transition to be nearly as easy.  But I've promised her a puppy when we get home, if she can manage to stay in school full days and learn French.  (Let's hope shameless bribery succeeds, because I have a lot of work to do!)

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.

School Enrollment

   When I preregistered the girls for school, I was told that I had to meet with the director (principal) of the school in order for enrollment to be complete and that I had to call James' school in order to set up a meeting with them.  I quickly figured out that no one would be available until the week before classes, which meant that today (August 27) was the first day that anyone would be in the office and available to set up a meeting or talk about school enrollment. 
   I made some notes for myself and got out the girls' forms, then I called James' school to talk to them.  I got transferred right away to the director, who told me that it is the correct school for the location where we live, but they can't take him, because they don't have any assistance for French as a foreign language.  She took my number and said she'd call me back.
   I called the girls' school before I could get too nervous about the possibilities, but I got an answering machine.  Rather than stutter a message, I hung up.  About forty minutes later, the phone rang, and the director of the school said, "You called?"  Um yeah, when I had all my notes in front of me and was mentally prepared to talk to you....
   She was very nice, despite my stumbling though the explanation of what I needed.  They also have no extra resources for the girls, and she offered to see if they could transfer to a school with some support.  As she and I talked about it, though, we decided to leave all the girls in the same school, figuring they'd catch on.  (The extra support is mostly grammar-oriented and is only once a week; I don't think it really matters, given that the kids will only be in France for 4 months.)   I'm going tomorrow to finish enrolling the girls.  They'll come with me to see the school, too.
    James, however, still doesn't have a school....