Alia's highlights from France

These days seem to go by so quickly. Going back to work full-time takes a lot of energy and a lot of juggling. I am attempting to delegate some of the family blogging duties to Alia and Kyra. Maybe this way we have a chance to keep family and friends up to date!!


Here is a little clip from Alia and her thoughts on our recent trip to France. Enjoy!

This Week! (or Too Tired to Come Up With a Better Title!!!)

Today was day 6 of the school year! Rebuilding a classroom from the ground up is a lot of work! Thank goodness I am working with some fabulous teachers that are willing to share their wonderful ideas. I hope I can repay the favour in the future.

We enjoyed a lovely lasagna casserole for supper last night and lunch today. Eric made it on the weekend for us to eat Monday-Tuesday and also made enough to freeze for those 'crazy' nights! Je t'aime mon amour! It was delicious.

We are falling into a routine at home. Last night, the girls and I picked up around the house (with the hopes that doing a little bit all the time will avoid the tornado-look at the end of the week!!)

The girls are happy in school. Alia and Kyra were chosen to be in the school choir this year! They are both excited and now are busy during lunch hours for practices. Picking them up at daycare after school is going well. I am hoping I can keep better up to date with the happenings at the school. I am hoping to pick them up a little earlier than I have been. What a difference 20 minutes can make on the traffic!! (Construction on the main street near our house and down towards the school doesn't help!!)

Now I should be preparing my plan for tomorrow and the rest of the week. It seems that I can't seem to pull ahead more than a couple of days in my planning. Hopefully, things will start running a bit smoother soon!

Now back to work.

Good Night all!

The First Week of School!

Today is Friday! The first week of school has come to an end and we are still standing!

The girls are very happy with their teachers. Alia has the same teacher as last year and is once again in a split class. Kyra is also in a split class with a new teacher whom we have not met. Both girls are in the younger group of the split, which I think is a better spot to be in.

I went back to teaching full-time. I have 20 1st and 2nd graders (I guess this is the year for split classes!!). Even though teaching is not new to me, it has been a bit overwhelming to think of the amount of work ahead of me. I am very grateful to my teaching partners for their support and wisdom. This is the first time I am teaching French Immersion and to such a young crowd! I know it will be a lot of work but I am so looking forward to the upcoming year.

Eric's work plans changed this week at the last minute which allowed him to work from home. We were blessed with lunches, hot suppers, clean clothes and new office furniture. Un super gros merci à mon amour!!

Time to enjoy the weekend! And prepare for the shock of Monday morning! ;)

Au Marché!

cheeses at Atwater Market

While we were in France, we reconnected with the joys of shopping at local markets, choosing our menu based on what the farmers had to offer that day. Some of the foods we loved to eat in France were the cheeses, the salaisons, the wine (of course), the baguettes and croissants. Even the butter tastes better! The girls discovered 'les sirops à l'eau'. 

Upon our return home, I wanted to continue to live the 'market' experience. I have to admit that I love walking through local markets, taking in the sights and wonderful smells, buying a treat or two to take home and add to our evening meal. We rediscovered a couple of local markets here in Toronto. The girls and I went to the North York Farmers' Market (Thursdays at Mel Lastman Square on Yonge Street). We also visited Reesor's Farmers Market in Markham on our way home from a morning of mini-golf at Timbercreek (Stouffville). 

These were wonderful markets to find fresh produce and local products (I stocked up on honey! Yumm!). But it is very hard (maybe impossible) to find the salaisons/sausissons or cheeses 'au lait cru' here. We also were on the hunt for the syrups the girls liked to add to water for special drinks. In France, there is a brand of syrups called Teisseire. We found them in the grocery stores while on vacation but did not have any luck here in Toronto. However, in doing some research online, I found a store in Montreal that was rumoured to carry these fruity syrups.

Hanging out at Atwater Market!

On  recent trip to Montreal, we went to Atwater Market one morning. JACKPOT! We walked in and the first kiosk we crossed was a sausage and salaisons vendor from les Iles de la Madeleine! We bought a piece for our 'apéro'! We walked a little further and found the store with Teisseire lining its store front window!

salaison - Check!

Teisseire - Check!!

J'ai mon sirop citron-vert!

We also ended up buying an early anniversary/birthday present in the form of a cheese friller. We also bought a 'tête de moine' cheese, something we also discovered in France. We must admit that it doesn't taste the same as the one we ate in France. I think something happens to these cheeses when they are shipped over the Atlantic!!

On our way out of the market, we walked passed the crêpe kiosk. And yes, he was making them on the flat round griddles like the ones in Paris! Cool. 

P.S. We enjoyed our treasures that evening during 'apéro' but of course we also had to stop at Lafleur's at lunchtime for a poutine!

"Crêpe au sarrasin anyone? Maybe a crêpe au Nutella?"

J'attends ma poutine! J'ai faim!

Bon Appétit!

We love markets!

L'apéro

Family Trip to France - Day 1

Days fly by and we wonder where the time went. I can't believe it is September already! Where did the summer go? I am hoping to recap some of our summer adventures, mixed in with some back-to-school events, in hopes of catching up by Thanksgiving. (There. I've put this goal in writing. I am sure some of you will be after me to keep my word. I will try my very best! This fall is looking to be very busy but I am going to attempt to do so.)

Our family had the opportunity to travel this summer to France. We had a wonderful time! It was the girls' first trip to Europe and their first time on such a long flight. We left our travel plans flexible so that we would have the opportunity to 'go with the flow'. We did book our hotel rooms in Paris for our first couple of days, our car rental and the hotel room at the airport the night before our flight home.  We also planned to spend some time with our friends outside of Grenoble. The rest we left open to adventure and discovery!

We arrived in Paris on Friday morning. We found our way through the busy terminal (To say that CDG is a crazy-busy place is an understatement!!!!), bought our train tickets and metro passes and boarded the train for downtown Paris! We bought our tickets at the airport tourist kiosk. It saved us time by not having to line up for tickets at the train and metro stations. The lady who served us was very helpful in giving us clear directions to our hotel so we didn’t get lost!

Hotels in Paris and France in general are smaller than North American standards. Most hotel rooms only sleep 1-2 people, which meant we needed two rooms. Some hotels have 'family suites' but they are rare. Fortunately our 2 rooms were on the same floor but sadly not connecting nor that close to each other! Eric ended up sharing a room with Kyra and Alia shared a room with me!  At the end of the hall next to the elevators was a bank of windows. We were able to see the Eiffel tower, the dome of les Invalides and Sacre-Coeur way off in the distance.

Since our first day was going to be a long day, with the flight, a 'night's' sleep on the airplane, plus the time change, we did not plan to do much the first day. We did take a walk to Champs de Mars and the Eiffel tower, which was about a 10 minute walk from our hotel! Pretty cool.  Paris was pretty busy with the Tour de france arriving on the Sunday! We found a playground near the base of the Eiffel tower and the girls burned off some energy on the parisian jungle gym while the parents relaxed on the park bench and soaked in the atmosphere!

We had our first Nutella crepe and waited out the rain under the shelter at the park. After the rain we took a walk back to the hotel, found some dinner and went to bed early.

On retrace les pas d'Amélie à Paris!

One of my favourite movies is Le fabuleux destin d’Amélie Poulin (released in English under the title Amélie). It was the movie Eric and I saw on our visit to France in 2001. At the time we were looking for something to do and stumbled across a movie theatre not far from Montparnasse. We asked the person in the ticket booth for a recommendation on the movies showing. This was when we first met Amélie. For those of you who haven’t seen it yet, it is a must rent/download. Whatever you do, just see it.

On our recent trip to Paris with the girls, I started to get some ‘Amélie’ flashbacks! During our daily walks, I started snapping photos from the different locations I remember from the film.

On the steps of Sacre-Coeur

Sacre-Coeur and the carousel at the bottom of the funiculaire. The girls got to ride on the carousel after our visit to Sacre-Coeur one Sunday morning. We also stopped to admire the busker ‘statues’ on the steps of Sacre-Coeur.

Making our way back down the hill towards the metro, we walked by several tourist shops and boutiques. It was a beautiful Sunday morning and there were lots of people out and about. 

(On a side note, this particular Sunday was the final day of the Tour de France. We had weighed the possibility of making our way to les Champs-d'Élysées to watch the end of the race. However, we quickly (and wisely) decided to avoid the area.)

La carousel à Sacre-Coeur (Montmartre)

Canal Saint-Martin

Canal Saint-Martin. In the movie, Amélie is skipping stones on the canal. She obviously got special permission to be on the locks (for filming purposes) because one is really not allowed to cross the canal other than on the footbridges (and not on the locks like Amélie). We had a nice Sunday afternoon walk down the canal. One thing that is very different in France is that stores do close – daily around lunch hour. Many stores are closed on Sundays and quite a few close for the month of August for holidays. For us, this meant a limit to the shopping we could do – a good thing for the pocketbook! We did stop to watch the tour boats go through the locks.

Canal Saint-Martin

Amélie travels to Blois

On our last morning in Blois (Loir-et-Cher), we stopped to have our morning café crème outside the local bar-tabagie-café near the hotel. As I waited for Kyra, who was using the WC, I happened to look up and take in the whole scene from inside the shop. The two ladies were behind the counter. One was drying some coffee cups and putting them away next to the espresso machine. The other was closer to the door at the cash register, with her display of cigarettes behind her! Even though it was not even in Paris, it was still quite funny to get an Amélie movie flash!

Je veux jouer au parc!

Maman, le parc est juste là!

We were blessed with the opportunity to travel as a family to France this summer. We had several activities on our 'must do' list, a few hotel reservations made, a car rental booked and plans to visit friends while we were in France. Other than that, we left everything else up to the adventure. We figured it was a good time to go: the girls are now old enough to remember a trip like this, they are open to trying new foods and they have the stamina to walk and visit the sites.

We were also reminded (in a good way) that the girls are still young enough to want to play and have fun every day. In the hustle and bustle of being a tourist, it is just as important to enjoy the moment and be a kid. I have to admit that the times relaxing on a park bench, sharing a Nutella crêpe and watching the girls play in the playground near the Eiffel tower are just as memorable (and more meaningful) as our visits to the châteaux, monuments and museums.

Sourire!

Regarde moi!