To Hug or to Kiss?

Posted on June 11, 2015 by A French American Life

I certainly didn’t intend a two month hiatus – thank you all for sticking with me!

I have a tendency to bite off more than I can chew in life, and these last few months were no different. I went back to work as a PT on a per diem basis, I continued to teach French to preschoolers, and I took three university level French courses. I look forward to blogging more about that soon…. Oh, yeah, I’m also taking care of two energetic preschoolers and ramping up my workouts for triathlon season. Life is busy. Life is good.

We are prepping for a French-filled summer! We will be traveling to Iceland and France and then spending a few weeks in San Diego where my kids (now ages 3 and 4 1/2) will be doing day camp at the San Diego French American School. I am so excited to see how their French progresses! We’ve fallen off the wagon a bit with teaching (pushing, coercing…) them to speak French, and I’m hoping these activities will get us back on track.

First up, a trip to France! The other night, as I was tucking my daughter into bed, I told her that in France, when we greet friends and family, we give them a kiss on each cheek rather than a hug. I’m a huge hugger – I love nothing more than to give people in my life a big enthusiastic squeeze. My kids, too, give the best hugs – big tight squeezes that I can’t get enough of. I learned the hard way that this does not always go over well with the French. I remember telling my husband once how awkward it felt to me to kiss everyone, pressing my cheek to theirs. His response: More awkward than pressing your whole body up to everyone and squeezing tight? I see his point… The two cheek kiss greeting no longer feels awkward to me, but my daughter was confused.

Among her questions:

“Why don’t we give hugs?”

“Why do we just make a kiss sound and push our cheeks together instead of really kissing them?”

“Why don’t we kiss them on their mouths?”

Excellent questions, all. Then, she melted my heart with this:

“So, when I see Mimi and Papy, I kiss them like this,” here she demonstrated kissing me on each cheek, “And then the kiss goes to their hearts?”

Exactly, my amazing child. Exactly.

Can’t wait to introduce these two to France. It’s fun to visit a place we know so well with very little agenda – we don’t have anything we absolutely must see, so we’re planning a vacation around activities like puppet shows, toy boats at the Luxembourg gardens, and then lots of beach time and crepes in Brittany. My daughter really wants to see the Eiffel Tower, but I have a feeling the most exciting thing we will do will be to ride the metro. At any rate, it will be a different kind of trip than we’ve ever had. Fingers crossed for good weather and good tempers (the latter being more about me than my kids, I’m sure!)

Ten Things I Love About France

Posted on April 3, 2014 by A French American Life

Because it’s all about lists these days, right? In no particular order:

1. Walking the streets of Paris – the entire city is a work of art. I love to simply stroll along the avenues, people watch, gaze at the architecture, find unique spots in each quartier, inhale the scents, leading to #2…

Latin Quarter

2. The smell of a patisserie. I’ll never forget the time I was strolling down a narrow street and was stopped in my tracks by a rich, buttery scent pouring out a patisserie door. I stopped, whispered, “Oh. My. God.” Closed my eyes, and stood there inhaling deeply, unselfconscious until I paused, looked inside, and saw the pastry chef watching me with an amused, and pleased, smile on his face.

3. Flower boxes on windows.

4. Fields of lavender right next to fields of sunflowers in Provence.

Abbaye de Senanque

5. Provence. For its beauty, its romance, its cuisine, its otherworldness.

6. Riding a bike through Bretagne.

7. Eating galettes and drinking cool apple cider on a hot day in Bretagne.

8. The French language. For all the grief it causes me, I love the sing-song beauty of this romantic language.

9. The Impressionists.

Claude Monet Painting in His Garden at Argenteuil, 1873 by Pierre-Auguste Renoir

10. And Paris. I really love Paris. Cliché? Perhaps. Still, to me, she will always be romantic, mysterious, something I will never quite touch nor truly understand, yet a place where I come alive and life beats forward at a quicker, more exciting, more beautiful pace.

I love Paris in the spring time
I love Paris in the fall
I love Paris in the winter when it drizzles
I love Paris in the summer when it sizzles

I love Paris every moment
Every moment of the year
I love Paris, why, oh why do I love Paris
Because my love is here

She’s there, she’s everywhere
But she’s really here

-Cole Porter

Belle Ile

Posted on April 18, 2013 by A French American Life

I can’t resist posting more photos from Bretagne/Brittany. These are from a trip we took to Belle Ile, just off the coast. Beautiful, windblown place. We rented a tiny little “Zest” and scooted all over the island, braving the wind and rain! We ate our fill of crepes, galettes, and drank plenty of cider. Great trip!

Harbor entrance at Le Palais

Le Palais

La Pointe de Poulains

Sailboat at Ster-Vraz

Ster Vraz

Excellent Galettes

Mussels clinging to the rocks on the Plage de Donnant

Lunch at Crêperie Coton

French Nationality, and More Bretagne

Posted on April 16, 2013 by A French American Life

My husband and I are working on getting my French citizenship. Surprise: there are many complicated steps to the process and the instructions are difficult to decipher. At times, the steps seem convoluted simply for the sake of being difficult. So we emailed the man in charge at the local embassy. He will only communicate via email; he will not accept phone calls or appointments. In our email, we tried to clarify a few points we were confused on after our research on their website. He sent us a form letter back, politely inviting us to refer to their website for answers to our questions.

Oh, the French.

Today, I go to the Alliance Française to take an exam that will determine if my French is at a level adequate enough to become a citizen. Will I be worthy?

The hope is that if I am a citizen, our family can easily go to France for extended periods during which I can work there, and that all of us will have the right to move freely, or stay, in France and Western Europe. Plus, I think it would be really cool to have dual citizenship.

So, I’ll post some more photos of my beloved Bretagne, and then get back to the stack of paperwork that is French bureaucracy at its finest!

One of the great things about traveling in Bretagne, especially when you get away from the bigger cities like Nantes or Rennes, is that much of Bretagne is visited mainly by French tourists, if at all. It’s off the beaten path enough that it remains more authentic, untouched.

Flowers growing on an old stone wall

Sunset at low tide

Locmariaquer

St. Cado, one of the most photographed homes, because the tide isolates it

One of the most photographed homes in St Cado because the tide isolates it

Quimper

Benodet

Concarneau

German bunker from WWII

Hay! Hey! (That’s for my brother)

Fresh caught oysters

Locmariaquer

Mmmm

Catch of the day at the outdoor market in Locmariaquer

Bretagne, Je t’aime

Posted on April 12, 2013 by A French American Life

I love Bretagne (Brittany, for the anglophones). Where Paris is measured, even severe, Bretagne is untamed, free, running wild. It’s a land of legends and history: Megaliths, Fairies, King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. Bretagne first gave us crepes, galettes (savory crepes, made with buckwheat), and French apple cider. What’s not to love?

My husband’s family has a summer home in a small Breton village at the opening of the Golfe du Morbihan. When we visit them during the summer, we tend to escape to their home here rather than swelter in Paris. The last several trips we’ve enjoyed mostly sunny days, which last from 5 in the morning until 10 at night. We spend our days riding bikes through overgrown pastures and past flower covered rock walls that are hundreds of years old, dipping our toes into the Atlantic, and eating fresh oysters that the neighbor harvests. And, of course, crepes, galettes, and cider. Every time I suggest staying there and never returning to our “real” lives, my husband warns me that I’m not experiencing the “real” Brittany.

“There’s a reason everything here is so green and overgrown, Carol,” he tells me.

I tell him he can’t burst my bubble.

Here are a few photos: