February 18, 2014

Well, as my family and friends back in the USA are having the weirdest winter ever, here in France it’s been mild and rainy. This is apparently their normal winter weather.  For the past two years as it’s been so cold and so wet or snowy I’ve been told that it wasn’t normal; since miserable winters were alI I experienced here I was beginning to believe they were lying!!  So, I’ll take this mild stuff anyday.  Yes, it’s dreary and wet, but temperatures are above freezing and often into the 40’s and low 50’s.

Georgia has had two major storms in the past few weeks.  The first hit with a vengeance and teachers ended up staying at school overnight with students, some kids slept on buses on the side of the road. There wasn’t much snowfall but when it freezes and the roads become pure ice, things get crazy and the whole city shuts down.  There were almost 1000 cars stranded along the highway.  Fortunately Lindsay and Calum made it in just before the freeze, another hour and who knows where Lindsay would have been stuck.  It’s nice to see people rally and help each other though, opening homes and businesses for people to sleep and eat and be warm. Tristan and Katie were in and safe as well in Alabama.

Then this last storm was crazy too….ross happened to be in Georgia for meetings.  He ended up housebound with Lindsay and Calum for the week. Instead of leaving Wednesday, he didn’t get back here until Saturday morning. They would skype and joke about being sick of each other and how they were bonding.  They were trying to figure out a way to do internet pinochle. We have a muti-year game going and those housebound days would have been full of many rounds of that. They had to settle for other games since we couldn’t figure out skype pinochle.  Lindsay will have several make up days into the summer at this point, but the schools had to close as the governor banned driving.  Then as I see the east coast and the major storms they’ve had, it’s been a long winter in the US. The joke is that for both storms in Georgia, within a week temperatures hit the 60’s…we joke you can get frostbite and sunburn all in one week. Having grown up in Buffalo, snow doesn’t bother me, but when the ice hits the south, that’s a condition that calls for a healthy respect. No one can drive on that. Even a salt truck overturned in Gainesville. Calum laughed as his college shut down for the week…in that town they ran out of road treatment in the previous storm and had no more left. So, they had no choice but to close.  Normally during a winter they might not even use the stuff, but this month, they needed double.

Ross and Lindsay did get a trip to Birmingham before the bad weather and had a day with Tristan, Katie and Liam. I got a nice facetime call with them, but Liam has discovered the red button and keeps saying “I push red button” He loves to disconnect the calls.  He is such a stinker, but a super cute stinker!  That morning as Katie was changing his sheets he saw the egg crate mattress thing and said “Hey that has a lot of nipples”…..we all laughed and laughed. They say he NEVER stops talking and has this big vocabulary.  He’s driving them nuts….but in a fun way.  He gets into all kinds of stuff and it makes me smile remembering what a little stinker Tristan was at this age.  From the Nana side it’s hysterical….from there side, not quite as much.

So, Ross arrived Saturday and then left Monday for Austria. Just a normal week in our lives! This year (2014) he’s been in China, Germany, Sweden, the USA and Austria. Yes, we’re only seven weeks in! Travel is supposed to slow down for a few weeks and then he’s off to Philadelphia in March.

As for me, I’ve kept busy here, I have a few friends I meet for lunch or coffee, plus a couple dental visits and grocery runs. I had been saving my set of Downton Abbey DVD’s for such an occasion. I’ve been marathon watching and have been through series one, two and three so far! Hey why not?

Ross did bring me back this book from Tristan….it’s signed by the author to me and everything. WELL…Tristan said he was at a work lunch in Atlanta (picture 6’7”, full beard and his nasty construction work clothes) so anyway as he left the toilet an older lady was waiting for him-creepy! She asked if he would he would help her play a trick on her table of lady friends.  If so she’d give him a free book. So he played along. He was to approach her table and say something like “Hey aren’t you that famous author so and so?” He is SO NOT what her typical reading audience would be. Her friends would then be shocked etc…..okay fine, so he has her sign the book to me figuring it’s not something he wants. I’m dying laughing here ….…the book is Grandma Takes a Lover….WHAT???? She wrote “Dear Lisa, I hope you enjoy my story about a grandmother who discovers it’s never too late for love….or lust” So I contact Tristan when Ross brought it and he just laughed and laughed…..and said “Well I didn’t want it” We’ve all had a good laugh…first her seeing him and waiting outside the toilets….and then the book…oh my! 

I had lunch last week with a friend I met on line. My kids were like “WHAT….you tell us all the time not to meet people online” , but I met her through a group of English speakers here in Tours….so it’s not like it was some weird chat thing. She and I met up last spring and got together again last week. It’s amazing to me how speaking English in a foreign land draws us together.  While at lunch I ran into a Scottish couple we’ve met a few times. They spend a couple months in Tours and then a couple months in Scotland back and forth. We seem to run into them each time they’re here though which is fun. I do run into people in town a lot now and love that feeling of belonging.  It will be very strange when I’m back in the US not to do the BIZ or kiss kiss thing….I really like it and find it so normal now. Plus I think it is way better than handshakes which spread all kinds if germs! With the biz, you never really do more than touch cheeks and make a kiss noise!  

I’m ready for visitors again…it’s been a while. I figured out we had guests 16 weeks last year and I loved that! Between that and my trips to the US the year flew by. Our next guests aren’t scheduled until May so it will be a while yet.  I do go back for a visit at the end of March so that will be nice. I’ve had three people want to come the exact week Ross and I already booked our cruise so that is a shame. We go the end of May for five days to Italy, Turkey, Greece and Croatia. I’m excited and hope Ross loves it.  He wasn’t keen on the whole cruise idea but this just seemed a great way to see a few places we’ll never be near again. I told him if he likes it, we’ll do more.  Lindsay hopes he hates it and that I love it and want to take her as my travel partner!!!

I am able to share now that Tristan and Katie are expecting again and the baby due in mid August. We are so excited and it will be good for Liam to learn to deal with a sibling.  They told us at Christmas since her folks were with us and they could tell everyone all at once.  It was early so we had to keep it quiet for a couple months. I’ve been bursting to share but waited……so Ross and I will do our annual US visit then! It’ll be crazier for me as I’ll go for camp in June/July, fly home and we’ll both go together in August. So, yes. Ross is gone a lot, but I am enjoying the perks of frequent flier miles!

Language wise I feel I’ve made a bit more progress.  I find myself in half French half English a lot which is crazy weird. But I feel like most people understand me, even if my sentence structure is horrid and I will NEVER figure out the gender of every word…I so mix up my Le and La for things which changes everything else….but they get it at least and then gently correct me. Somehow I thought this would be easier and by now I’d be pretty fluent-HA not quite! But, I am pleased at how far I’ve come and realize how difficult it must be for those coming to America and learning English. I feel like English must be a much harder language to master…we have so many homonyms and synonyms and so many words. I hope it makes me more tolerant and more helpful in the future. If I had it to do over again, my children would have studied languages while they were young…when I see what children can do it amazes me…..they pick up the languages without trying. I’ve seen it here firsthand with several children and am so impressed.

So I’m off….I keep hearing random people tell me they enjoy the blog even though at this point I don’t feel like much exciting happens, it’s normal  life just in a different culture and language. I’ll throw in some obligatory food pics…I do enjoy the presentation here. The first is a food truck guy here who does fabulous crepes and waffles!