It's been a busy time seeing a whole load of family. The summer was a long summer with no visitors and then in October we had my sister Jo with her husband and little boy Zac, followed by Sarah followed by Dan's parents. I'm not going to write a load about it, but it was fun as well as a bit tiring, but we always appreciate people making the effort to visit. Here's a few highlights:
But now for some family updates starting with the person who has the most exciting news:
Percy
1) He has finally lost his front tooth age 8! He last the 2 bottom front ones ages ago, but they're not very noticeable, but now I feel like it's really noticeable that he's the only one in his class that still has baby teeth. Kids have even asked him about it, not it a horrible way, they're just curious. So he was very happy with this news and he told me in French.
2) He's going on a ski trip! His school won some funding to take kids skiing for a very discounted price. It's 60 euros for 3 days. The normal price would have been 300 euros. I still have to get him some ski clothes though, which is expensive, but I'm trying to get a few bits second hand. It's 3 random Tuesdays rather than a 3 day trip. They have to be at school for 6:45AM for a 2 hour coach ride to the mountains. In his old primary school he went on one trip to a local park in the rain. At this school he's already been to a castle and to the aquarium and sailing and now skiing. I'm also going to go on one of the days but I doubt I'll be much help seeing as I don't ski and I'm bad at french.
3) He played his first basketball match at the weekend! He was super chuffed to be chosen to play with some of the kids who have been doing basketball a year longer than him. His team Thuir (pronounced twe-er) were playing against anther small village Toulouges. Unfortunately they got beaten 34-4. Dan even thinks the 4 goals they got was down to the other team's coach telling them to let them get a few goals. We're super proud of Percy for giving it a go though. He'd pretty much written off sport in England because the rules in Scouse playgrounds are play football with the boys or play make believe with the girls.
Eric
1) He's really into art now which I'm very excited about because Percy has now declared art, "not his thing." He's aways drawing, making cool stuff up from his imagination and he's tried copying from photos too. Here's some lino printing he did:
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| It's a robot that shoots ice creams out of his arms. |
2) You know when a toddler might make sounds or connect words randomly? He's doing that with French, he's just saying gobbledygook. I google translated something he said today and it came out as, "I have paving."
3) Eric is very interested in the idea of heaven right now and asks questions such as, "will tattoos last is heaven?" And now when I tell him he can't do something he'll say, "I'll just do that in heaven then." Like when I told him he couldn't slot his drawings into some kind of hole in the back of the TV to make a program. He told me he'd just do that in heaven and then I felt bad and told him one day we can make a stop frame animation and put it on youtube and he can watch it on the telly.
Hannah
1) I currently have Covid, for the first time ever (that I know of). It's like the symptoms of a normal bad cold but with the added bonus of not being able to help out so much with housework and kid stuff. Annoyingly though the day I felt the worst was Sunday and it was impossible to get hold of paracetamol because everything is closed on a Sunday. We had to get some off a couple we know who also gave us a Covid test that they advised us to take.
2) Before all this I had a great day helping out on this refugee lunch. It was one of the first days that felt like I had a bit of a purpose and community. I did screen printing with some of them, both adults and kids, while others were making a huge meal. Most of the people I know seem to be refugees at the moment because I am also going to French lessons with refugees.
3) I'll do another whole blog post on this sometime, but what shall I do with life life now? My goal was to move countries but I didn't really think about what to do when I got here.
Dan
1) Dan is very busy trying to do everything, paperwork wise we're still not done, the medical stuff isn't sorted yet for us if we needed treatment and we're not getting the equivalent of child benefit yet which we eventually will. Tomorrow he will be collecting his National insurance number.
2) Just to add to all the things Dan has to do, he has to take on another job. In England he was employed by a Czech company, but they don't have an office in France so he has to be self employed. And just like in the UK you can't be self employed and only have one client, so he has to do a bit of something else. Last month he met up with a guy about doing some kind of business together.
3) Dan is still wearing shorts everyday. It is still hot in the middle of the day, like sometimes 28 degrees (in November!) but it's odd because that feels like summer, but then it still goes dark early and is cold at night.
