Category: Family life

Back to school

Jean-Baptiste and Maxime went back to school on Tuesday. The first day of school is always interesting. Many parents have taken the day off, or at least have made the effort to be present. You can  feel the tension in the air. Everybody is happy to be there, but they are anxious. I think the parents are often more anxious than the children. People are tanned, smiling. Everyone runs around the courtyard, trying to find the classroom…

There have been works in the school over the summer, and there are 2 new classrooms. They look great. The headmistress has also changed. There’s a new teacher for the little one, the only man on the school staff. The following is an extract from Ouest-France a few days ago:

C’est avec un effectif en hausse, soit 186 élèves, que la rentrée se prépare à l’école du Croissant. La répartition des élèves : 26 en très petite et petite section avec Charles-Edouard Béan ; 30 en moyenne et grande section avec Cathy Morin ; 27 en grande section et CP avec la directrice Élisabeth Déréat ; 26 en CP-CE1 avec Nathalie Plante ; 25 en CE1-CE2 avec Sophie Le Gallic ; 26 en CE2-CM1 avec Nadège Sabouraud ; 26 en CM1-CM2 avec Sonia Le Sauter.

L’équipe enseignante est complétée par 3 Atsem (agent spécialisé des écoles maternelles) : Patricia Pronost, Hélène Le Persan et Sylvie Le Guillou. Une décharge de direction est prévue le jeudi.

It’s a nice school. The children like it, and we are starting to know some people.

Holidays

We’re on holidays at my mum’s place in the Alps. It’s good to be there. The weather has been great so far, and very warm. There’s nos much planned appart from reading, relaxing and sorting things out. I am scanning old lecture notes and various articles onto the computer for reference. Tomorrow, I’ll be speaking at a Student outreach meeting and on Sunday, I’ll be preaching.

Crossing France on the motorways

France has got a very efficient network of motorways. There are 11 392 km of motorways. About 8000 km of these are toll roads.

Today, we crossed France, from Guingamp to my hometown of Chambéry: 1000 km, 980  of which were on motorways.

I love driving on French motorways. It is a quick way to move around. They are well maintained. They feel safe. There’s not too much traffic if you avoid Paris and the few who have a lot of traffic. Some people think they are expensive. But you get the services you pay for, don’t you? I don’t mind paying if I get a good service. We left at 3am and arrived at 1.30 pm. That’s not bad considering many people were on the roads for their holidays. The only traffic jam we saw was in Lyon: people going towards the south. But we were on a bridge overlooking that road.

One of the downsides is that you don’t see much of the country. On our way, we went through many beautiful and historic places: Tours, the Loire Valley and its castles, Bourges, Lyon… But if we had avoided the toll roads, it would have taken several days for the journey. But we’ve arrived safely and quickly for a bit of holidays in the beautiful Savoie.

It’s always nice to see family and friends from home

On Monday afternoon, we had a visit from Esther’s cousin Gwilym and his family. They were visiting his brother in law who lives in Lannion. His wife Celine is French and the two children speak both Welsh and French (and English). I took the two boys with me to get Maxime and Jean-Baptiste, and I showed them one of the classrooms. There were many differences they said. For example, back in Wales, there are no individual desks in the classrooms, and they use an interactive board while in the French classroom, each pupil has a desk and faces the teacher. The board is still an old fashion black-board.

We had a nice time. And our boys were really excited to see their second-degree cousins.

A restful week

The week has been slow. I had a heavy cold on Sunday, and it took a few days to recover. Then, it was Esther’s turn to be hit, and she was out of action for a while. the kids are on holidays, so most things have been put on hold. We’re better today, so hopefully, we’ll be back on tracks on Monday.