Yesterday was Percy’s birthday, and it was a great one! He’s had several less than ideal birthdays. He spent his first birthday in hospital with pneumonia, on his fourth birthday I was recovering from an operation and couldn’t come. Like everyone he had a lockdown birthday, and last year we had been in France just 6 months so he choose not to have a party with friends because he felt like he didn’t know anyone enough, and his French was obviously not as good as it is now. But this party was up there with his epic spaced themed 7th party, it was a laser quest party with a few school friends and a lot of sugar.
It’s the beginning of the two week half term here and my parents made pretty last minute plans to visit. They were asking me about coming in the spring, but we don’t really know our plans yet, everything has been very up in the air job wise, and we have other friends hopefully coming at Easter, so it turned out like October half term is actually perfect because we didn’t really have any plans, and the flights were very cheap.
After making those plans though the language school that give me free French lessons called an information day. Unfortunately I couldn’t go because it was on a Wednesday, which is the day I teach English. But I heard from people who did go what the information was: a new course is starting tomorrow. Four days a week, starting tomorrow. I don’t want to complain about free lessons, but a little heads up would be nice. Anyway I’m going to what I can, and I’ve met a fresh group of refugees.
I think when you leave a country you should be given hundreds of stickers with your flag on and a sticker book then you have to try and fill it with the stickers of others. As a Brit I would be quite rare in these lessons that are mainly filled with refuges, I’ve never met another. New stickers I could have collected (if this was a real policy) are Eritrean and Syrian, there’s also Moroccans and Ukrainians but I’ve already had loads of chance to collect their stickers. My rarest sticker would be a Thahitian a Tahitish? Someone from Tahiti.
That was a huge tangent. Back to Percy, as a nine year old he is very smart, thinks deeply, he’s started trying to make word based puns, sometimes bilingual ones, loves to follow rules and sometimes struggles with his rebellious mum. He recently said “stop showing off mum, you’re going to hurt yourself.” (I was showing him the essential life skill of riding a bike with no hands.) He loves Lego, quite complex board games, but not losing them, Mario, reading and saving the world. They’re his top hobbies.
He’s constantly trying to think of ways to save the planet after seeing first hand the forest fires that happen here in the summer and the flooding that has happened at my parents house in Cheshire. While my parents were here their street was flooding again, no where near as bad as last time but enough that they needed to be in contact with their neighbours to be updated on the situation. Percy asked me “could you get a boat of water from there and take it here because we need water and they have too much.” I’m guessing it wouldn’t be cost effective, but someone should look into to that. It’s definitely a better idea than when Trump asked scientists to look into injecting bleach to cure Covid.
He did laser quest for his birthday. We had a little room for party food, he could go and play at this big playground place and then he had two 15 minute slots in the laser place. I went too but trying to help my team who had mainly never done it before, in the dark in French was a challenge. Especially because I was talking to my own kids and Dan and one other kid in English, but everyone else in French. It’s lovely to see Percy with his French friends here, they seem a really kind bunch of kids.
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| His requested cake: caramel and chocolate. |
We did a few nice trips with my parents too. We went to the hot springs where we’ve been a few times. It’s an outdoor pool that’s the temperature of a bath. I don’t know why all pools aren’t that temperature. Except for on a boiling hot day, it’s amazing. We also tried out the Velotrain which was so fun, and in a really beautiful location. Unfortunately Dan and Eric were a bit ill and had to stay behind. And then we all got ill. I think we’re over the worst now.
Next time I will write about jobs because me and Dan both have new ones.
Last minute edit: turns out we’re not over the worst of it, Eric’s just been sick all over the sofa.
