You Can Take the Girl Out of America...

...but you can't take the American out of the girl.  At least, not this girl.  I realize this as G, P, and I (sacrilege alert) are walking to the metro eating our tangerines, riding the subway eating pita and carrots dipped in hummus, then walking to gymnastics while having Asian pear slices and cookies.  I am wearing my fleece tied around my waist.  I might as well just attach a flashing neon sign to myself saying, "AMERICAN!"  And yet, I don't care.  First of all, I have to tell you that we do not get one single dirty look.  Frankly, we don't even attract any notice (well, not that I notice anyway).  However, when I tell an American friend who has lived here several years about what we've just done, she gasps in horror.

Having lived in Japan 20+ years ago, where I would get stared at just for looking, well, non-Japanese, I quickly learned not to care about what other people think of me.  I used to eat in Japan in public all the time, and I'm certainly not going to stop here!  Let's face it, Anthony, the girls, and I are always hungry.  It's like our whole family has a tapeworm.  Our grocery bills are enormous, and I've actually seen P, at age 4 mind you, eat 3 scrambled eggs, 2 pieces of bacon, a huge bowl of fresh fruit with yogurt and granola, and a couple pieces of toast, then come whining to me half an hour later that she's hungry.

Go With the Flow. Or Not

Gigi & Pippa both have swimming as part of their school program. The big kids in the school, grades 3-5 (or CE2 a CM2 for those paying attention), go to a pool a little further away that is undergoing some repair at the moment. So Gigi's teacher had the wonderful idea of using swim-class-time to go on some field trips around Paris. 

I chaperone the first field trip today, which is to wander around the Latin Quarter and Notre Dame. In the 5th arrondissement, we see La Rue du Chat Qui Peche, which is officially the narrowest, smallest street in all of Paris. It's a small alley about the width of an arm-span, and the full length can be walked in about 20 steps. It also should win for the most colorfully named street in Paris, as it translates to "the Road of the Cat that Fishes." 

 

We go to Notre Dame, touring the inside of the cathedral, and standing on the bronze plate out front that is used as the Ground Zero marker for all measurements within or to Paris.

  

But the moment that will always stick with me is when we are standing on one of the bridges to Ile de la Cité, where Notre Dame is located, waving to the tourists on the Bateaux Mouches (tour boats), and appreciating the view of the Seine. I look up just as the teacher has Gigi do the honors of throwing a wadded-up piece of paper -- on purpose -- directly into the river. The premise, I believe, is to see which way the water is flowing. But I cannot really process that, as I am instead having a Bay Area-induced heart attack at watching my daughter litter, not only with her teacher's blessing, but at her teacher's insistence! I actually can not help myself from crying out loud, "Ah mon Dieu! Quel example horrible! On ne vient pas de jeter quelque chose dans la Seine. C'est pas possible!" "Oh my God! What a horrible example! We did not just throw something into the Seine. It's not possible!" The traffic is so loud that the teacher does not hear me, and I can't decide if I am relieved because I don't want her to hate me and think me a judgmental American prig, or if I am disappointed because I am a judgmental American prig and want her to know the full weight of my disapproval.


 

Rosh Hashanah, By Accident

Open gardens today, and we get 8 free little plants from one of the beautiful Parisian gardens we visit in the 7th.  In this case, they are truly free as there is no admission charge, but if you ever hear it from G & P, just consider the source.  This morning, after the three of us had gone to the Bastille market for groceries, they bragged to Anthony that they got a ton of free stuff, like some pomegranate chunks, fruit samples, and 2 Lebanese cookies.  What they didn't explain was that I had spent over 100euros at the stalls, and even had to go to the bank once to take out more cash.  So "free" is kind of a dubious term...

And in unrelated news:  Talk about a culture clash. I race from the Parisian gardens to Hawaiian hula class and then, on my way back in the metro tunnels, I watch a black woman in Islamic veil but stylishly modern leather jacket over her long dress walk by an Orthodox Jew blowing the Shofar.  By sheer coincidence, Anthony and I had dipped some apples in farmers' market honey this morning, and suddenly I realize it must be close to Rosh Hashanah (the Jewish new year, for those not in the know).  So Happy New Year to my Jewish friends and family!  And aloha and bisous to the rest of you.

There's Something Afoot

Our after-school activities have been, for the first few weeks, something of a moving target.  I have raced down to the ballet studio in the 6th arrondissement only to discover I was both half an hour late and also a full week too early.  At least the trial run clued us in to the fact that it would be hard to get there in time, and the girls almost immediately lost the enthusiasm to try again.  So, since I hadn't yet paid, we crossed that off the list.

We have gone down to two different gymnastics studios, and done 3 separate trial classes, in both regular and rhythmic.  Given that the girls have so many interests, and the gymnastics studio is a subway ride away, we have come to the conclusion that the 3 times per week G is supposed to go is too many for our liking.  We've been given special permission to do one day per week only, but  France is not so big on special exceptions, so we'll see how long that lasts! 

The activities that seem to have the most staying power are G's hip hop class, and the contemporary and Tahitian dance classes that both G & P are taking and loving. 

And this week, we cross another activity off the list.  We had initially been very excited about continuing the girls' soccer here in Paris.  We had heard that French girls don't play soccer, so we tracked down a league of mostly expat girls that plays here in Paris.  We went last week for the first time, and I will say this: the view can't be beat. 

 
Unfortunately, the soccer program can.  The field is full of boys playing up until 6pm, and playing at a very high level.  It's like watching the World Cup out there.  Then the field empties off, as sane people go home to get ready for dinner and bed.  That's when the girls are given the field.  Practice runs from 6:15-7:30pm (or, as they say here 18h15-19h30).  And since it's a double-metro home, we can't walk in the door till after 8pm, which means late dinner and bed not before 9pm on a school night.  The girls were truly shattered last Thursday and Friday, and this week is no better.

Soccer is year-round, even as it gets dark earlier (I am told the sun will set around 4pm in the winter...), and through rain and snow.  While I applaud their dedication, I don't share it.  And our girls are, shall we say, less than enthusiastic about playing in cold conditions.  Anthony has accused me of being a fair-weather adventurer, to which I respond, "Well, duh."  Call us crazy, but it's so much more fun to have fun when you're actually having fun, and not wishing you were indoors with a hot cup of tea. 

Because there's just the one girls' team, it's comprised of about 12-20 girls (depending on the day) spanning the ages from 6-12 or so.  This means that there are few children at any given level appropriate for G & P.  Also, I am reminded of King Kalakaua of Hawaii who was very excited to be the first in his kingdom to have a telephone.  Since that was pre-trans-Pacific-cables, it begged the question, "Who would he call?"  Well, since there's only one girls' soccer team in Paris, there is nobody to play against. 

But the ultimate kicker is that there is remarkably little kicking.  The coaches seem to think that girls should learn soccer ever-so-differently (and more delicately) than boys.  The first hour is spent doing warm ups: relay races, obstacle courses around cones, and -- most bizarrely -- large games of keep-away and passing where they run around the field throwing the ball to each other.  They do not actually touch the ball with their feet until the last 15 minutes, when they put on colored jerseys, split up in teams, and play complete free-for-all games with no interference (otherwise known as "coaching") from the coaches. 

And so, we give soccer the boot, and concentrate on our more "girly" activities, gymnastics and dance.  However, once we get our shipment from SF, I do have my eye on some guitar lessons....  Parents who are tearing their hair out over overscheduled children and the insanity of running to after-school activities in the Bay Area, or New York, or anywhere else in the US, can take some small misery-loves-company comfort in knowing that it's just as much of an issue here in Paris, even for the French.

What a Headache

Our first pharmacy foray, as Anthony realizes he is out of his Omega-3 fish oil pills.  He does not actually have a cholesterol problem, so much as he has an ego problem, and when the doctor told him his cholesterol was just a smidge too high to be in the perfect zone, he promptly went on a regimen of extra oatmeal and Omega-3s.

In the pharmacy, Anthony and I easily find a bottle of 100 pills, and we pass the bottle back and forth trying to decipher the price tag stuck to the bottle top.  We are often confused by numbers here because they use commas where we use decimal points, and sometimes (but not always) vice versa, and as far as I can tell they sometimes don't write out the hundreth's spot.  So 14,9 could be the equivalent of 14.90euros, if I am, in fact, correct.  Since we both are clearly misunderstanding the sticker, we ask le Monsieur who works there for a price clarification, then nearly have the heart-attack we are trying to avoid with the fish pills when he confirms it is 102,9 -- that is 102.90euros or about US $150 -- for the bottle.  Well, that's only 10 times the price for one-fifth the pills.  "I'm sorry, honey, but at those prices, you're just going to have to live with imperfectly high cholesterol.  Now shut up, and have some camembert." 

So you can understand my sense of impending doom when I run out of my thyroid medication, a prescription pill I need to take daily, and walk into the pharmacy.  Not only do I not have a prescription, but I haven't figure out my medical insurance yet, and I do not have a suitcase of cash with me.  In the US, I pay $10, with insurance covering the rest, each month.  I walk in, show them my bottle and the French translation of the chemical name, explain I don't have a French doctor yet, and approximately 2 seconds later, she walks over to me with a box of exactly the right pills, in a neat pack of 30, and sells them to me for 2,54 -- that's right, about US $4.  This feels so much like winning the lottery that I go into 2 other pharmacies and do the same thing, effectively stocking up for 3 months to give myself time to find a doctor and get a real prescription. 

When I get a migraine, and need to return to the pharmacy, I don't know what will happen.  It's like playing Russian roulette around here.  In addition to the fear of pricing is the fact that the last time I had a headache in France was when I was an exchange summer camp counselor during college near Biarritz, in Southern France.  I walked into the camp nurse with a headache, and she handed over a suppository.  I re-explained what was wrong with me, complete with lots of pointing and sign language.  But no, she understood me perfectly, and again tried to hand over the suppository.  Finally, I said to her, "OK, then just give me whatever you give the campers" (who were 3-12 years old).  She held out her hand with the suppository in it, "This is what we give the campers."  Oh screw it.  I'd rather have a headache.

The pharmacist answers all my pain-killer questions, and I do find something that while not exactly Excedrin Migraine (my own personal miracle drug) does seem to have some of the same active ingredients, is taken orally, and only costs 5 times what I wish I were paying.  When I ask about pain-killer for children, she shows me some pediatric acetaminophen and tells me, "We have chewable tablets, syrup, or suppository."   Hmm...just how much of a true French experience do we want the girls to have?

Fashionista

G wearing her tutu, very Can-Can danseuse meets 20th century fashionista if you ask me.  Several children at school demand to know why she is in costume.  Sacrilege alert: For all the hype she heard about Paris being so high-fashion, she is somewhat disappointed that the children pretty much wear jeans and navy/gray/black shirts and seem far less fashionable than the children in San Francisco.  When G wore her crazy tutu in SF, she got a little attention, but here in Paris is is an act of almost unimaginable anti-conformity, and she is beseiged with too much attention -- a phenomenon I didn't even know was possible for my center-stage daughter.  She claims she will wear it again to school, but we notice that she makes a very big point of wearing jeans, sneakers, and a sweatshirt to school for a couple days after.  My goodness, how sad will it be if living in Paris tames her flair for fashion?!

A Primary School Primer

(note from G): School is awsome.  There are lots of nice kids, but some kids are mean.

I have two teachers one is named Laurance and the other one is named Vallerie.  I

praffer.....  School is harder in france because I don't understand french as well as

everybode else.  One thing I love about school in Paris is that you get Wednesday off.

So thats the day I (and P) do most of our activities ex: soccer, contemporary, hip hop.

Here we have a cantine [cafiteria].

I spent a lot of time last school year researching Paris schools.  We knew we could not send the girls to a public school for the simple reason that we wouldn't have a permanent address at the time of la rentree, in September.  Public schools are local schools, so we would have had to change their schools a month or so into the school year once we found our permanent apartment.  And, frankly, while we have heard that the public schools are generally very good -- especially in the more uniformly middle/upper class areas where we wanted to live -- we have also heard many not-so-glowing reports about the public schools, both from French people and expats.  One thing we've heard is that the schools do very little to foster community.  You drop your child off and pick them up at the end of the day.  One expat we know who did a year at a public school here said he had only been allowed inside the school twice all year.  Also, that the teachers can be very strict/mean (from expats) and not terribly engaged at all (from French families).  One French family said that since they are government employees with very safe jobs, the teachers seem to do the absolute minimum amount of work, including approximately 10 days of strikes per year.  Who knows?  This is all hearsay, and I'm just passing it on.  I do know one expat family here who loves their public school and has had none of these issues.  Of course, it's a school in the 6th -- one of the nicest areas in the city.  And you could easily make the same sorts of criticisms about public schools in the US.  So much of it comes down to teacher, classmates, and luck of the draw.  But that doesn't stop us parents from obsessing about finding the perfect school for our children!

While hunting for private schools, we eliminated anything in the Western half of the city, since Anthony's job requires him to commute to the very edge of the East side of the Paris, by the Bois de Vincennes.  If you know Paris, you'll quickly realize that most of the tonier neighborhoods are on the western side, closer to the Bois de Boulogne.  This also means that virtually all of the high-end private and international schools are on that side as well.  In the end, though, we decided we didn't want to send them to a bilingual school.  They're young enough that we're not worried about what English work they'll miss, especially with my penchant for reading and writing!  And we know from children coming from these bilingual schools to our immersion school in San Francisco that the level of French is harder here, but the level of English is harder in the US.  This seems obvious, since you've got a huge cohort of native speakers to push the levels higher.  But what it also means is that our native-English-speaking children wouldn't be very challenged in the English classes here anyway.  And, in fact, we've since heard from English-speaking families here that this is entirely true.  Mostly, we want them to play in French, not gravitate just to other expats, and to become as fluent as possible.  What better way than to send them to a regular French school?

So we hit upon a small private school in the 5th arrondissment, right near the Seine, pretty much in the goegraphic center of where we hope live: either the 5th or the 4th.  Either Anthony will cross the Seine to get to the #1 metro line and I'll walk to the girls to school, or he'll jump right on the metro, and I'll walk across the Seine to get them to school.  The school is Catholic, but we were assured not very religious.  Also, it is sous contract which means it is under contract with the French government, receiving funding from the state and required to be open to all.  This also means the price for the school year is just over $1,000.  Yes, you read that right: one thousand US dollars for the whole school year.  Just one year of our US private school tuition would cover their schooling from pre-K to high school graduation!  One of the few areas where French people coming to the US must get sticker shock. 

The lunch cost for the year here is virtually the same price as the tuition.  I happily pay the extra thousand for lunch, since it works out to roughly $6 per meal plus saves me the drudgery of making 2 lunches, 5 times per week.  Our school in SF didn't have any cafeteria, in case you were wondering. This is one of the things I was most looking forward to in coming to Paris.  Only other parents who make lunches every day will understand my profound levels of joy at not packing anything every morning as we walk out the door -- not even snacks!  Yippee!

The school is still quite international, just by virtue of being in the relatively academic/ professional/ high-end neighborhood of the 5th.  There are of course many "pure" French families, some of whom bring their children in from other neighborhoods where they live but don't like the local schools.  Still, in G's small class of 19 children, there is a boy who is half-Moroccan, one who is half-German, one who is half-Thai, a girl who is half-Colombian, one who is half-Peruvian, another who is French but lived for 5 years in London, and all-American G.  All of those kids are bilingual.  This seems pretty representative of the population of the school as a whole, and we have found the families here to be exceptionally open, helpful, warm, and friendly.  We've been offered advice, help, tea, playdates, invitations, you name it, and have instantly felt like we could seamlessly transport the entire community back to our international school in SF.  The children have made our girls feel similarly welcomed.  Oh, of course there are a few mean girls and a couple rough boys (we still can't tell if their complaints about the boys are genuine, or if they secretly appreciate the attention...). 

G had a problem with a few mean girls at the beginning, and when I told her she'd probably just have to learn to deal with (or ignore...) mean girls all her life, she asked me in a very shocked voice, "You mean grown-ups can be mean girls, too?"  Yes, sadly, they can.  The trick is to surround yourself with lovely women friends and just not care about the others.  This simple advice has worked wonderfully for her, and she no longer gets bothered by those girls.  She's in a group of about 6 truly sweet, fun, outgoing, smart girls with families we really like.  Can't beat that for only a couple weeks into school! 

For the 1st grade, they had too many children, so they have 25 children in one classroom and they put 6 of the newest children into a combined K-1 class.  P was assigned to this class, and I was initially very worried that she's be bored repeating K material.  But they've scheduled it so that the K class goes off to swimming, dance, gym, music, recess, etc. on their own, and while they're away, the teacher has just the 6 first graders to work with.  Then, while she's working with the kindergarteners, the big kids go off and join the other 25 1st grade cohorts to do their specialty classes.  So in the end, her social circle is quite large, and she's getting rather a lot of special attention in class.  On the other hand, she told me that for the half-hour or hour per week that they spend on English, she's the teacher.  I said, "you mean you help the teacher?"   "No, the teacher tells me in French what she wants me to work on, and then I ask the children questions in English and have them repeat after me."  G does something similar for her class.  If you know my children, or any other overly-confident/slightly-bossy children, you can imagine that this is a huge highlight for them! 

School starts at 8:45am and ends at 4:30, but only 4 days per week: Mon, Tues, Thurs, Fri. No school on Wednesdays. That's a recent thing, and there's some talk of re-adding a Wed morning (or a Sat morning -- quelle horreur!) but for now, it's just 4 days per week. There's a 1 and 1/2 hr lunch/recess break when children can go home, but few do nowadays.

And finally, what else can I tell you about the girls' school experience?  Let me just be the first to admit that the metric system is much easier to manipulate than our Imperial system, and that Celsius works just as well as Farenheit, perhaps better when you consider 0 is freezing.  How logical!  And I do like that children here are put into grades according to birth years: born in 2003?  You're in grade 3!  No red-shirting, not different for every school or school district, etc.  Only the slightest fudging at the edges for the rare child who truly needs to be held-back or advanced.  But the grade-level naming system is just preposterous.  Here's the conversion chart:

US system = French system

K = GS (Grande Section. 3 year olds are in Petite Section, 4 year olds in Moyenne Section)
1 = CP (Cours Preparatoire)
2 = CE1 (Cours Elementaire 1)
3 = CE2 (Cours Elementaire 2)
4 = CM1 (Cours Moyenne 1)
5 = CM2 (Cours Moyenne 2)
6 = 6eme
7 = 5eme
8 = 4eme
9 = 3eme
10 = 2eme
11 = 1er
12 = Terminale

Sloth

Anthony's newest bed-time routine with the girls is called "Sloth."  This has nothing to do with France, except that the girls learned about sloths here for some reason, and so now it's their Paris bed-time routine.  As soon as he starts moving in ultra-slow-motion, the girls giggle and scream with delight.  Several minutes later, he finally arrives bedside, and then it takes almost another minute till he's planted very slow, wet, smoochy kisses on both of them.  Is there anything more attractive than seeing your husband make a fool of himself just to make the kids happy?

The Real Reason French Women Stay Thin Is...

...because the food is so expensive.  Eating out is so much costlier than in the US, even when you do it the "French" way and order the pre-set menus.  I find myself eating enough not to be hungry, but not so much that I'm full.  I'm sure it's healthier, but for all those friends (ahem, Sarah...) who predicted I would come back with a few too many pain-au-chocolat around my waist, I predict that instead I will be at the peak of fitness.  I walk miles (that's kilometres over here) every day, have no car, and am too cheap to feed myself enough.

Paris Time

Since my cell phone is a rental, I can't be bothered to read the instruction book.  Well, let's face it -- I don't read the instruction book in English either.  But therefore, I cannot figure out how to program the clock on it.  Luckily, the minutes are correct.  But it's 10 hours ahead.  Since it's a European-style 24-hour clock, in the mornings, my clock reads 19:45, when it's 9:45.  But in the afternoons, it reads 3:45 when it's 5:45 (which is 17:45).  So I have devised an elaborate system whereby I subtract 10 hours from numbers 10 up to 23, but add 2 hours from numbers 0 to below 10.  Then  in the afternoon, I must add 12 hours to figure out the equivalent time on the 24 hour clock.  And finally, I need to subtract 6 hours for contacting my family on the East Coast, and 9 hours for contacting people on the West Coast.  Got that?  Subtract 10, add 12, then subtract 9, or else add 2, add 12, subtract 9, so that I can know if it's a good time to contact you in San Francisco.  Or something like that.

Meanwhile, I have not ever been late for the girls' school drop off or pick up.  And only once did we mistakenly show up for an activity a full hour early.  I would like to publicly thank all my math teachers.

La Rentrée, and a Birthday to Boot

And finally, la rentree is here!  The girls are so excited for their first day of school! They are dressed and ready in a flash, both of them looking so pretty in special back-to-school clothes. Gigi is wearing the dress given to her by one of her best friends in SF, a French-girl named Zoe, with the incredibly touching thought that when she wore it, it would be like having Zoe and her SF friends there with her. Extra bonus being that Zoe and her mom Alex are originally French with really fabulous fashion sense, so Gigi looks adorable. She's been saving that dress all summer long to wear on this day! And Pippa has on a shirt that came from the hand-me-downs of her slightly-younger but so-much-taller cousin Lydia. So she too feels like she is wearing something with special meaning. Both are so energized and not displaying any signs of nervousness.

Walking to school takes 15 minutes, even though we have to stop to take photos. One thing's for sure: you'll never get a more scenic walk to school, or better first-day-of-school photo than this! Notice that we can see not only Notre Dame, from our lovely look-out on the bridge over the Seine, but also the Eiffel Tower (in the distance, left side of photo).  Awesome!

You may not have known it, but every store-keeper, baker, rental agent, banker, and teacher we've encountered in the last few weeks knows that today is not only the girl's first day of school, but also Gigi's 8th birthday. I packed 2 boxes of Trader Joe's brownie mix in our luggage for this occasion, and we bring trays of deliciously fudgy brownies for Gigi to share with her class and the teachers. If that's not going to help make the new kid popular, what will?! The secret, by the way, is to cook them far less than the box suggests: 15 minutes instead of 25, depending on the oven.  The second they don't jiggle, they're done. The only brownies that are better than Trader Joe's take a lot more work: see the Barefoot Contessa's Outrageous Brownies. As you are making them, you will swear they are not worth the extra expense ($$$ ingredients!) or effort. But then you will taste them and realize they are the best brownies you've ever eaten in your life. Just sayin'.

And though it goes against all our best parenting judgement, and we know they will go to bed too late on their first day of school, we just cannot resist taking the girls out for a special birthday dinner. There is a famous restaurant, Bofinger, nearby, and we manage to sneak in without a reservation (probably because our dinner hour of 7pm is well before the dinner rush here). The children's menu is amazing: no chicken fingers, pizza, burgers, pasta, all the usual suspects at American restaurants that make me bemoan American eating habits. Gigi orders a salmon en croute. When it arrives, Anthony and I are impressed. It is elegant and could easily be a grown-up dinner anywhere else. The salmon is perfect and succulent, surround by a flaky pastry crust and with a fresh tomato concasse sauce. Naturally, Gigi would rather have pasta. 

But it is Pippa's "Marine Discovery" dinner that blows us all away:

(according to Gigi): For my birthday we went out to a very fancy restaurant

it was seafood (not japoneze or chines seafood) for the first time I ate a

type of snale (under water snale) it was super discusting but the desert was

the best.  I had (4 difforent fruits [oranges, strawberrys, rasberrys and pinnapple]).

My favorite fruit were the strawberrys.  I opened my presents I got nale polish

from Pippa and mich mach [ed note: miss-matched] gloves and a lot of mich

mach socks.  My 8th birthday was the best.  I will never forget my 8th birthday. 

The "under water snale" by the way is actually a whelk, called bulot in French. We all taste it, and Gigi is right, it is indeed super "discusting." [Ed note: since this posting we got together with a family of French friends. Their 3 children, ages 4, 8, and 10 absolutely love bulot. Reminds me of children in Japan going crazy for after-school snacks of dried squid and crunchy little fishes with the heads attached.] Pippa chews and chews and chews and chews and finally asks, "If I spit it out, do I still get to tell people I ate it?" (Answer: yes) Along with the whelk, Pippa's children's seafood platter includes 2 kinds of shrimp still in the shells with the heads on, raw oysters, and smoked salmon. It is, frankly, a challenging meal even for many non-seafood adults, and I am gobsmacked that it is on the children's menu. 

 

 

In case you're wondering why we don't get them something simpler, the other children's menu choices were a "Land Discovery" meal including Duck Foie gras, terrine, and smoked uncooked ham or the "Veal Piccata" with a mushroom sauce.

The best part of the first day of school and Gigi's birthday to boot is that despite the extreme dinner, none of us do boot.

All-time Best Babysitter Award Goes to...

Before, the all-time best babysitter award had been firmly in the grasp of my cousins Kevin & Abby, who stayed at our house while we went away for an anniversary weekend in wine country.  Not only did they suffer through G & P mischeviously calling 911 and having the police show up at our house, but also when we arrived for our meal at Cyrus -- possibly the best restaurant meal of my life -- we were greeted by a bottle of champagne they had bought for us, along with a note to enjoy ourselves and worry about the kids.  Heck, it appears we should have been worrying about Kevin & Abby.  It's true they were living in our guest room at the time during a housing-transition, but still, above and beyond the call of babysitter duties.

But now, we have a close contender for the prize:
Almost three years ago, we hosted a little French kindergarten girl and her dad as an unofficial exchange, alongside the big-kid exchange taking place between our school in SF and a school on the Normandy coast of France.  Last year, the whole family (dad, mom, older son, and younger daughter) visited us for a week in SF.  By now, we agree we pretty much feel like cousins, and we all communicate in some version of franglais.

Many weeks ago, we got a "save the date" for this weekend, our first living in Paris, when we were graciously invited to a party of an American friend of a friend who is now our new friend.  We cast around to everybody we knew, or had ever heard of, in Paris, to see if they had babysitter suggestions. Our French "cousins" from Normandy replied that they would be in Paris for the weekend and would watch the girls.

In our minds, this meant they were planning to be there anyway, and the girls could do a sleepover at their hotel.  But when they arrive for the weekend, we discover that they had driven several hours and come to Paris basically to see us and to babysit!  They sit in our tiny little apartment while we went to the party, and then drive back to the hotel with their 12-year old son (younger girl slept over with our girls) after midnight.  We later discover they have stocked the fridge with beer.  And the next morning, they take us to Angelina which has the best hot chocolate in the world.  I don't just mean that we love it.  I mean it is literally considered to be the best hot chocolate in the world.  http://www.angelina-paris.fr/#/home/ Coco Chanel (no pun on her name) used to drink her hot chocolate here.  Very fancy, very rich, and of course, at Paris prices.

Hair Cut

G really needs a haircut, so we try to wait twice in a salon that will also do children's hair, and at a reasonable price (15euros, about the same as what I pay in San Francisco for a kids' cut).  However, the store is way too hot, and the queue moves way too slow.  So instead, I cut her hair myself in the courtyard of our apartment and pay her 5euro.  P is jealous, so I end up paying her 2euro to be allowed to brush out her hair.  Somehow, I feel like something has gone wrong with my parenting.

More Free Stuff (That Costs a Fortune)

On top of the postcards, cheese samples, free balloons, lavendar sachets, scented soaps, Croatia souvenirs, candies, cookies, and various treats already received, the green grocer gives us a free large cucumber today when the girls ask me for some after I've paid.  Truly, it is remarkable how often they get what they want, for free.  After I buy 40 Euros worth of fruit and veg, that is.