Less is More

When we were packing to come to France, I wanted to bring what we needed and not more.  But that is a hard decision to make.  We all know that we should go through our homes on a regular basis and get rid of the things which we no longer use.  Yet every time I struggle through my “spring cleaning.” So as our trip became closer and closer, I started to think more and more about what would we most need while in France.

To prepare the house for our tenants was an interesting exercise.  I went through all of our clothing and made lots of donations to different organizations.  I went through our cooking accessories, our books, our board games, all with an eye to which ones we no longer used, enjoyed, etc.  But it was tricky because, with Noah four years younger than Micah, it was a bit hard to predict.  But pare down I did.  Space now existed for the tenants belongings.

The next interesting decision was, once I had selected which items were worth our coming back to, deciding what another family would want for their year in our home.  They have two very young children, so I left a number of toys and books for the very young set.  Things I might have donated had they not been moving in.  But it is again interesting to think about which of your coveted or favorite items will be appreciated by another.  And how do choose which items are too special to leave for another?

On the other side of the ocean we are living with the things that we brought with us, the few extra things that we sent in Ed’s work boxes and the even fewer items that we have bought here to keep us going.  A ball for Noah, a piano keyboard (gasp!) for Julian.  But we’ve also worked to find things to keep us busy through the day, like a sports camp for Micah and Julian, a hike each weekend, the museums, the concerts, the community pool. 

And each boy has found a way to make his own fun.  Noah is all over the creative ball games.  He kicks, throws, catches, scores, but always with a VERY definite set of rules that, in true four-year-old fashion, always have him winning.  He has also become the king of testing out all of the paper airplanes that we’ve made, and re-made, and re-made. 

Speaking of reigning, Micah is the king of cardboard and other re-used items.  He made a telephone for himself and Noah from our cell-phone box.  He made an Ipad for Noah that has extra cardboard pieces to hide the apps once pressed, and extra buttons and games to play.  We are saving all of our toilet paper rolls for a marble maze, and corks for, well, I don’t know what for. 

Julian has taken the game-making to another level.  He has recreated an Aixois version of Candyland, with all of the cards to go with it.  Along the way one visits the petite marche, the cathedral, the boulangerie (with Monsieur Baguette), Chez Grand-Mere and other sites of interest.  All three boys have had a lot of fun playing Julian’s version, and the younger two have taken on the task of creating their own games now, too.  Julian is also the expert plane-maker, the Bombardier of our family’s airplanes.  The Dart 2000 is an especially coveted plane. 

Ed has gone back to telling some of his fabulous Lego-Man stories, with Lego-Man finding creative ways to cross the Atlantic to help Chief back in Toronto.  And the congratulatory pizzas at the end of the story are now served with a bit of saucisson!

And as for me, well, I decided not to bring any cookbooks with me, and so far I am loving the day-to-day shopping for what looks best and freshest.  We have been eating more fresh fruit every day than I could have imagined possible, all local from Provence.  And it is so much more fun to stand in the market and imagine my next meal than to open the fridge and see what foods limit my next meal.  Every day brings a new meal.  The one thing that may lead me back to a cookbook is baking.  I have made several fruit crisps so that I can enjoy the local fruits as well.  But, having just found that baking soda is kept in the pharmaceutical aisles, I am now ready to try something with a little leavening. 

The end result of living with less, at least for us right now, is a greater creativity.  We are all five of us looking at the things that we do have with different eyes.  Because we only have a few toys, the boys are more likely to share because they want to use someone else’s items as well.  (Mind you, this particular effect will take a bit longer to take full effect, I think!)  But I think all of us are looking at our world through a slightly different lens, and I think we are all becoming the richer for it. 

Parlez-vous Francais?

Not quite sure where to start, but these last few days have been a bit rough around the edges.  I now have an appreciation for how little French I really know, and that is humbling, and makes my day-to-day-interactions, well, ripe with opportunity. 

I am trying my best to continue to speak French with the shop-keepers and, for the most part, they are very helpful in this regard.  The women in the boulangerie have taught me the words for sliced bread, change from my purchase and some of the different types of bread.  The farmers in the outdoor market have helped me to learn the words for a bunch of fresh herbs and free-range eggs.  The people in the super-markets have taught me about my grocery cards and other more official shopping categories. 

And my landlady, my poor landlady, has helped me to learn some amenities and plumbing words right off the bat.  I have never ached so much for an iron, nor was so happy to see one, as this afternoon.  And who knew that the word for drain was tuyau – that doesn’t even sound like a word to me!

And the conjugations, oh the conjugations, of all my verbs in all of their various tenses.  Let’s just say that it was enough impetus to get me to sign up for a two-week language course.  It is even better than the Alliance Francaise in Toronto in that the students come from so many different parts of the world that it is actually easier to try to communicate in French during the break than in other languages. 

It turns out that some people have the easy facility of plowing through sentences and others, like me, get caught up in the grammar of the situation and are very halting and plodding.  Put into a grammatical exercise I can work my way through in my own time.  But the speed and facilty of my thoughts are so much faster than the speed and agility of my language ability that I stop and start and stutter.  No wonder my landlady continues to want to switch to English. 

I don’t think I have always been this way, but I am more hesitant here in Aix than I have been in other foreign language environments.  Maybe I have heard too much about how proper the French like their speech, or maybe I am just a bit overwhelmed by the desire to help my family settle in comfortably. Or maybe it is just me being older.  But I am hoping that I can push through this little block I am feeling and dive back into embracing all the moments of my day, instead of pondering the mistakes that come on an almost minute-ly basis.  The inner critic is the harshest one. 

But, and this is a big but, I am making progress, even in this short time.  I find that words with which I can make a connection all of a sudden start to pop up in other places, simply because I now notice them.  In Vauvenargues last week I looked up the word “carrefour,” which means crossroads and both it, and the word “chemin” appeared in the article that I hope to present to my French class next week.  And I have to admit that for the girl who could not understand almost a single dialogue in many of her previous French classes, I am getting much more of the casual conversation than I would have anticipated.  Accent, still terrible, worry, still present, but desire and sheer stubbornness still reigns strong. 

Photos (Vauvenargues and la fête nationale)

Main Street (and the only street in) Vauvenargues

Tasty stuff, even if it looked better in the boulangerie

Reasoning with the troops

Wild orchids (?)

The photographer with his models

La Fête Nationale (in Aix)

Many Steps

Given that Ed and I have both done some travelling in our pasts, we were not totally thrown for a loop when we arrived.  Everything here in Aix seems to take just a few steps longer than one might anticipate. The apartment itself is up on the top floor, which is not too much of a problem.  That is unless I forget my wallet and have to reclimb all those flights of stairs.  Or when Noah looks up and proclaims that his little legs are finally, just now, too tired to make it to the top. 

We are still working to register ourselves here in Aix.  We went to the prefecture (sort of a police station) to turn in our paperwork.   But the next step appeared to be to go down to Marseille to have a Marseille representative witness us signing the papers.  But, after a bit of convincing, we decided to go back to the prefecture here in town to try our luck here, and to see what we were told.  I walked ahead with Noah, to get our numbers in line while Ed and Julian and Micah made photocopies of our documents.  Noah and I leapt around all the vigorous and seemingly blind-to-pedestrians construction workers and showed up at the front doors of the prefecture.  The large doors were totally shut.  A mail carrier rang the bell and a matronly bureaucrat peeked her head around the corner.  Closed.  Looking on the door again, it turns out that they were closed because of the construction.  And then on Thursday for the National holiday.  And on Friday because there was a holiday the day before.  All very logical.  All giving me pause, as we were supposed to register within eight days of arrival.  Let’s hope that the first trip that started the paperwork was enough to “count,” or that the days that the prefecture was closed somehow don’t count in a bureaucrat’s method of counting.  We will return Monday to try again.

Ed is also struggling to receive his boxes from work.  Lots of email messages have gone around.  Phone calls made, faxes sent.  We had to get a cell phone in order to be able to be contacted to go and pick pu the boxes, but let’s just say that except for our landlady calling to invite us out to the countryside with her daughter’s family, the phone has remained quiet. 

Even the recreational parts of our adventures take just a bit more.  We wanted to go up to the dam in the mountains for a hike the other day.  We found the bus station and bought our tickets.  It actually turned out that they were the same tickets as the regular bus system, of which we already had 30 rides worth of tickets.  Make that now 40.  We found the right bus, waited for it to show up on the holiday schedule, and climbed aboard.  Yes, this was the bus to the Barrage du Bimont.  We settled in for the ride.  But we kept going and going and going, past the canp where we had picnicked last week, until we suddenly had the sinking feeling that we had gone too far.  The two backpackers in front of us reached up and pushed a button on the ceiling of the bus.  Oooops.  One needs to signal the driver to disembark.  Well, after discussing with the other passengers around us, we decided to go to the end of the line, have our picnic lunch there and turn around when the next bus went back down the mountain so we could get off at the dam this time around.  We arrived in Vauvenargues and ripped out the bread and cheese.  After four boys and their mother finished gobbling down their meal, we all looked up.  What a cute town! 

Vauvenargues is a town of a single street.  Apparently, apart from a small dip during the World Wars, the population has remained fairly steady around 500-700 residents.  The buildings are so beautifully maintained, colorful and well-painted, and just oh-so-cute.  Walking through, there is a (closed) office of tourism to which we vowed to come back to visit.  Walking along even further we get to the end of town, to the parking lot (no room for cars to park along the streets).  At the end of the lot, lo and behold, there is a trail map!  Changing plans yet again, we decide to have our hike here and set off at once.  The mountain is incredible and it totally brought back memories of hiking in Spain (I think in Grenada).  The wildflowers were stunning in their array, and I was so surprised to find wild thyme, wild lavender, and even what looked to be wild orchids.  And my favorite named conifer, Juniper.  We enjoyed the afternoon sunshine and then turned around, had a lemonade and a little snack and caught the bus all the way to one block before our street. 

It is amazing to me the process of letting go.  It is such a common thing to aim for, at least a frequent hope of mine, but it feels so novel to try to be more open to experiencing the options that appear, rather than sticking with a planned agenda just because that was the initial conception of the idea or outing.  I know that we are so super fortunate to be able to be on holiday right now in Aix, and that as more scheduled times come, the opportunities for spontaneity will lessen.  But I am truly enjoying being able to take my steps, one at a time, and making a new decision as I step onto each landing.  It hearkens me to each individual time I have travelled, and I have to say I am so grateful, full and content to be able to have this lightness in my life right now. 

The Winds

One thing that has struck me from day one are the winds.  Even on the hottest day so far (no real numbers, but over 30 for sure) the apartment has felt relatively cool.  We have no air conditioning, but the windows all have shutters and are totally open to the outdoors.  There seem not to be too many bugs so screens seem to be a non-issue.  Anyways, every morning we throw open the windows and the breezes cool out the apartment.  When we leave for the morning we close the shutters so nothing flies in, and the sun is mostly shaded out, but the air can still sneak through the slats.  Lunch is in the shade and a bit warmer, but still quite manageable, especially with a quick snooze right afterwards!  And then when we return from our afternoon outings we throw open the shutters once again until bedtime. 

The first night we were a bit freaked out, as there are tons of swallows that swoop by the apartment and cathedral.  We thought they were bats and immediately shut everything.  We have since learned that they are swallows and that some live under the eaves of the roof.  It is amazing to hear their screeches at dusk, and to watch the soars and dives of them all. 

But the best of all is to sit in the apartment, on the sofa or at the dining table and just feel the breeze whoosh by.  I can’t even really put words to it, but it’s a combination of  the physical sensation of wind touching my body along with all of the other signs of human life that waft in with the winds.  The smells of dinner cooking in another apartment, the sounds of children playing tag in the courtyard.  The sweet trills of opera sailing up from the music festival in the old city.  There is such a sense of life being lived and I love every  minute of it. 

The one bit of the winds that has a negative connotation is the dust that blows in with it.  We have been sweeping every day, and mopping almost as frequently, and it is just never-ending!  For a woman who prefers not to do housework, this is quite the change.  Actually (and for my LLLC book ladies, this is a shout out to you!), it brings me just that bit closer to being a Radical Homemaker!  The aspect of time, as an integral commodity, is SO present in our life here.  And it allows me to enjoy the small parts of my day, like hanging the laundry on the rack, or washing dishes.  

So, I guess, I say, "Winds, bring it on!"

The Travels

So after leaving Boston we had a four-hour layover in Montreal, and the long flight over the ocean, of which we slept at most 3-4 hours.  Arriving in Charles-de-Gaulle, we had about two hours to get our luggage, find the train station and board our train to Lyon.  Luckily the airports have invented these cool items called baggage carts, because we had 7 suitcases and 5 backpacks, plus the food sacks that we were gathering along the way.  Ed and Julian found the train info, while Noah took the time to explore every nook of the waiting area, including each of our bags and their abilities to support a four-year-old in various states of balance. 

Waiting, still waiting.  The train is almost two and half hours late.  Finally boarding the train, we realize that we will miss the connecting train in Lyon.  Well, to be dealt with once we were there.  Dragging all 12 bags aboard, it is not quite clear where they should go, nor is there much time to decide.  The train left after just 2-3 minutes.  I had forgotten that part of train travel… the frantic on/off, never quite sure if you have everything.  After all of the long travels and the long waiting we all fall asleep on the train.  Suddenly I awoke, feeling like the train was going much more slowly.  “Ed.  Ed!  ED! Wake up, I think we are here.”

We woke up all three boys, desperately searching out where we left all 1200 of our bags, and stumbled our way to the end of the car.  As Noah finally realized that he was upright and expected to carry his backpack he shouted at the top of his voice (as many of you have heard his screeches), “Bad mama.  You are a bad Mama!”  Needless to say, this travel-weary, English-speaking family was more than a bit embarrassed.  A few comforting moments later, we were dragging all the bags off of the train, amazed that we had made it as far as Lyon. 

After a quick reconnaissance mission, Ed changed our tickets to go through Avignon.  Unfortunately we had to be in the main station to discover from which track the train would leave, and then dash off to the proper platform by the time the train arrived and then departed 15 minutes later.  Let’s just say that Ed and I got lots of opportunities from each of our children to practice all of our good parenting techniques.  Getting all of the children and bags up to the platform, Ed walked ahead to speak with the conductor about where we should board.  Julian followed, then Micah, so Noah and I were left behind to guard the bags.  As the minutes ticked down, it was clear that Noah and I would have to get the rest of the bags down to the train car, at least half-way down the platform.  “OK, Noah, you wait here while I drag these bags over there (10 metres away).” “OK, now Noah come over here to watch these bags while I go back to get the rest.”  “Well, if I don’t go back, you won’t have any clothes to wear, because that is your suitcase.”  We proceeded this way, 10 metres at a time, all the way to the rest of the family.  And, of course, we made it onto this train as well. 

This particular train conductor was quite friendly, and made sure that we were settled, all bags organized and that we were aware of when it was time to disembark.  He also found the next train conductor to help us board our final train, which came to the same platform (no bag-dragging, yay!) and only 15 minutes later.  We were all finally alert and aware of our surroundings.  Passing castles out the window, and tiled roof after tiled roof it was easy to start to get excited about out new digs. 

A short taxi-ride later, we met the proprietor of the apartment who brought us up to our 4^th floor apartment.  Stocked with a welcoming baguette, juice and bottle of wine, the apartment is perfect - just enough to keep us set for the year, but nothing more.  There are three bedrooms in interesting configurations… A single bed in a long narrow room off of the living room, two double beds in a large bedroom off of the hall, and two double beds held together with a full-size sheet.  Selfishly, Ed and I wanted the larger room with the nicer furniture.  Julian took the small room, so Noah and Micah are sharing the bed.  The first night they fell asleep holding hands, and they sleep most nights cuddled together. 

A first few photos...

 Relaxing in petit marché square in Aix.

 Waiting, semi-patiently, at the train station at Charles de Gaulle airport. 7 bags and 3 kids in tow!

 To sleep, perchance to dream...

 Toute la famille sauf Papa

 Chez nous, 4 Traverse Notre Dame

 Beer with pico

 The view from our flat

You can take the Canadians from Canada, but...

The First Entry!

We're here!  So many things have happened so far that I don't even know where to start.  The biggest thing that I've noticed is that the "Southern hospitality" rings true here.  From the baguettes and wine left in the fridge to the landlady driving me to the Geant (even bigger than a super-store!) to the family we met in the prefecture who invited us to their children's camp we really feel welcomed. 

Each day brings us a new adventure, new tasks, even new challenges.  More later as Julian and I are off to explore the options for piano.