So this blog is a learning process. Every few days I am learning something new and changing formats. Some of you are more familiar with posts, blogs and internet communication than I am. I have discovered through many of you how to format for lap and desk tops, tablets, and mobile devices. I have also learned what is a preferred way to upload multiple images so they can be viewed individually, or in different aspects of landscape and portrait modes. I have learned that when I update or edit and republish on my screen, YOUR email link does not give you the edited version. However, if you click on the upper right hand words in blue “Lees in France,” I believe that puts you directly into WordPress and shows you the edited versions. Hope this helps, it does me. There may be more added helps along this journey. Photo below is how I find my help many times a day.

Side note added today 8/27: The first week of school is over and went pretty well. Having a routine is amazing! Randy is recovering from being sick. I have been driving in France, like I did in Mechanicsville, even with a broken rear window wiper.(Alison Blanco)

The weekend (8/19) started off with the French initiation of cleaning the house and yard. Inside cleaning consisted of vacuuming and mopping tile floors, cleaning bathrooms, straightening up bedrooms and living spaces, and putting our personal belongings in their personal spots. Sounds pretty similar to home. The downstairs to our French home shown below.

The yard cleaning was slightly different.  It consisted of skimming and vacuuming the pool, poop duty, recycling of cardboard and plastic, glass separately, not to forget composting food scraps, hanging wet laundry, folding dry laundry, walking to the boulangerie for baguettes and chocolate croissants, AND filling up the hole Cody enjoys digging in the yard. Once all the chores were done the kids had their daily allotted 30 minutes of electronic time. 

At some point Mazie was in her room with the windows open and heard English being spoken on the street. It was amazing to her. Then she realized she knew the voices speaking. Leaping and shouting down the stairs, “The Fosters, The Fosters are here!”  We surprised the kids by not telling them our family friends from Barcelona were coming for the weekend!  

What a wondrous weekend it was, watching all the kids laugh, play, catch up and just be kids, ages 9-14. Also wondrous, was our adult time with JJ and Susan. The chores finally made sense to our kids because we needed to get ready for friends. Our activities included swimming, walking to the boulangerie, walking trails by vineyards, nerf gun battle, movies, an adventure walking alongside an aqueduct, and eating at our 2 favorite (and only ones we have experienced) restaurants La Guinguette du Massillan and La Terrazza. 

Note if you ever come upon a remote aqueduct, it is really fun to hurl rocks to the top of the structure to see if you can land them!

Errands and New Friends Tuesday-Thursday 16-18 August

It rained again Monday night, which is very unusual for this time of year. Fred texted us the things to do before the rain as well as things to do after the rain. So Tuesday morning Cody and I went for a little walk and found snails. Yep after a rain you go looking for snails.

Our first normal outing of running errands was not that normal! In the US we, as a family, rarely did errands together! Our list today consisted of getting my phone French acclimated, puppy food, and groceries. The mall was the first stop. Ramp-like escalators ascended us to the top floor of a “Short Pump Town Center” outdoor style mall.

The phone store was a success! I am now able to text like I used to and have access to wifi while I am out of the house. We will skip the lunch restaurant experience to protect tired, foreign youth and adults. Mazie and I found a toy store that was ALL TOYS and IKEA. The guys found an incredible, make you want to drool, sports store. 

We drove to Maxi-zoo, the pet store and then to the grocery store. Below is a typical road from one village to another. The road sign is a warning sign that the road can flood. In my words, there is a risk of the road being inundated with water when it rains…beware.

Luckily I had been to Aldi’s before and understood the coin in the cart method of acquiring a cart. The wheels on the cart go round-and-round-and-sideways. Everyone brings their own bags or you just leave the store carrying out your purchased goods in every store. OVERWHELMING and CROWDED was the store on a Tuesday. One complete aisle, both right and left sides, was lined with yogurts. Fruit and veggies seemed like the US but each had to be individually weighed and ticketed before heading to the cashier. I literally spent 20 minutes trying to figure out and translate words on bottles for shampoo and conditioner for my thick curly hair. Finally, in frustration, I grabbed a few, hoping for the best. Medicine is found only in a pharmacie, not a grocery store, nor a para-pharmacie store. I had forgotten to refill/bring my Zyrtec in the States. Insane itching spots were popping up all over my body day and night. I actually researched it and found out I was experiencing a detox situation from Zyrtec. After 5 days of itching, I found a different brand of antihistamine in our new house and have been taking it, and am itch free. 

The remaining activities of the week consisted of hanging clothes inside due to the rain, biking and walking on new trails around the village, kids going to a new friend’s house to play games (Life and Nintendo Switch) and to eat cookies. Trails around our house wind you past horses pastures and vineyards. Randy rode with a new friend past an aqueduct!

New family friends, from Jill and Fred’s small group, invited the kids over to play with their kids one afternoon. Below are pictures of Zach waiting for Noah to come and then Cody waiting for their return home. Later we joined the kids for beer and pizza with their family, Lez, Marie, and daughters, Naomi and Hannah, and 2 new kittens. What a blessing Mario Kart and ping-pong can be in a foreign country! Zach included this quote from Judah & the Lions. One day our daily card had us researching the country of France, draw and label cities, rivers, mountains and surrounding countries. The kids did not want to do this exercise, while Randy and I embraced it, enjoyed it and learned from it.

Today is the beginning of my new role this year. I am the kids’ supervisor for their online academy. The academy provides all the teaching, testing, and grading. I manage the kids’ work, open testing assignments with a passcode, and help facilitate their learning this year.  Zach and Mazie are enrolled in NorthStar Academy Online, based out of Mississippi. This academy was originally started for missionary children in 1998. They now serve over 3000 students in 100+ countries.  Below are picture of school supplies. American paper, followed by French composition books and paper, and a fun pencil sharpener for Mazie. The glass dining table will serve as desks…for now.

Zach will be in 9th grade taking the 4 core subjects, Geometry, English, World History, and Biology, in addition to French 2 and an engineering class. Mazie will be in 7th and taking the 4 core subjects along with an organizing skills class for middle schoolers. She will learn French on the side :). She is wants to learn conversational French so she can take her USA friends (when they come to visit) to the boulangerie and order in French.

I had a zoom orientation at 5pm French time,10 am Central time. All three of us have an online orientation course to complete, learning the ins and outs of reading, doing and submitting assignments, how to communicate with teachers and peers as well as online safety. The orientation course took me several days to complete. The kids’ first assignment, finish the orientation class by Wednesday! This class must be completed before their individual fall classes will open up. We will begin school Monday, 22 August. Wish us luck.

As I go to post this a week later, I have discovered my “office” has changed locations 3 times. Currently, I am at the kitchen table with a view outside, our calendar from home, and a sunflower batik wall hanging, which makes me VERY happy.

Next up in our first week of experiences in France, the deluge of rain, driving directions to church, missed roundabout turns requiring an extra 10 minutes of travel, church service in French, and a small group gathering.

August has been abnormally hot and dry here in France, so we have been told. Many places do not have air conditioning, see the post from when we arrived and the dreaded hot subway ride! We awoke to the rain. The rain, accompanied with thunder and lightning at 8 am, was intense. We didn’t think much of it until we had to go through a puddle about 12” deep, 6 feet wide and 8 feet in length just to enter the narrow one lane church parking lot, while driving a small European car. We had missed the entrance turn in, thanks to us not truly understanding the timing of GOOGLE telling us to turn. We were diverted into an office park with nowhere to turn around. So off we went following Google for another 10 more minutes to who knows where, literally. We saw a French Firetruck.

Alas, we saw the parking lot entrance again and the puddle. When in France, do as the French do, and we drove right through the puddle, only floating for a second or two. Ok just kidding, we did not float anywhere because we were surrounded by 3 ft high walls on both sides keeping us on the puddle path. Wish I had a picture of this!

JIll and Fred’s church, like ours in the States, does not own the building and is on the smaller side of congregations. This church uses a Seventh Day Adventist Church on Sunday mornings. We were welcomed in French and English! Jill and Fred’s friends were (and still are) very welcoming. We sat in the balcony, designated for AV, sound, and those needing the service to be translated into English. Yep, that was us! And Mazie’s rubber ducky who pops up on our experiences.

Rachel, about our age, was our translator for the morning. Her dad preached the Gospel, diving in and out of the old and new testaments, in relation to the sovereignty of God. Not necessarily asking why things happen, rather what is God doing with what is happening. He peeked into Jacob, Job and the disciples’ lives.

While I did not understand a lick of what was being said or sung in French, my heart understood the translated timely message. My ears, mind, and heart were back in a familiar place, Uganda, strange as this may seem. My understanding could not be grasped on this day on my own, however through a kind helper in Rachel, and familiar tunes of music, I could sing foreign words to a familiar God and find rest and renewal.

Sunday naps, screen time, Cody and semi-house mate, Bella, disagreements, and the sun appearing happened throughout the afternoon, along with Mazie’s lizard from Mark’s Family Dentistry.

For dinner we were invited by Jill and Fred’s small group to join them for wine and tapas at La Guinguette du Massillan.  Our kids enjoyed walking around outside while we adults had fellowship and introductions. If anyone comes to visit we will probably let you experience this place too.

Jet lag continues to loom, thus late bedtimes, late rising, and naps are observed throughout the day. We decided today would be a free day. The Frenchies arrived in DC and made it to their new home. We figured out communication between our families which serves us well when we have questions about life in a new place. 

In case anyone was wondering, the “off peak” electricity times in the village are 3:30-7am, 1-4pm, and 9-10pm. These are the times we try to use the washing machine, dishwasher and AC.

We load the clothes up the night before and set a delayed start time. In the morning we hang the clean wet clothes out to dry. We can use the dryer, however we are trying to live as Jill and Fred. When we use the dryer we have to be mindful that it collects water in a reservoir, under the drum, from the clothes and needs to be occasionally emptied. The dryer is not vented out of the house. Both appliances are in the garage.

Yep you read right, Fred, Jill, Alex, Ben, Jason, Cara and Garfield the orange cat are off to Virginia. They left at 5am heading toward Barcelona to catch their flight at noon. They found a rental van that had to be returned to Barcelona and paid 1 EURO (about $1.25) plus gas to drive it. Ding ding ding, maybe this is how we can explore without adding a ton of miles to their cars or buying one ourselves while we are here?

So we woke up to just us and a quiet house. The house went from 10 humans to 4 overnight. Now what, a  light panic started settling in my mind. What’s for Breakfast? What are we going to do today? What’s for lunch AND dinner? What are the cheapest times of the day to do laundry, run the AC, wash dishes? When do the stores close and reopen? When do we open the shades? So many thoughts running through my head.

Randy and Mazie walked to the boulangerie (0.4miles away) and picked up chocolate croissants and a couple of baguettes. Zach headed off on his bike to the SPAR (mini market beside the boulangerie) for a soda. I decided to go for a swim in the above ground pool in our backyard. 

WARNING: No animals or pools (FRED) were harmed! I was swimming with a really cool snorkel mask, which allowed me to swim and not take breaths above the water. Fantastic! Clueless to the world around me was Cody, carefully watching every move I made. He has never seen nor experienced water deeper than 10 inches and that was in a creek at Poor Farm Park. The next thing I know, something was scratching my leg while I was swimming. Yep Cody somehow had leaped or carefully climbed up and down the ladder into the pool to “rescue” me while I was happily swimming along. Simultaneously, I realized Cody was in the pool and he didn’t really know how to swim! Yes, he is a golden retriever, but you still have to show them how to swim initially. So at this point, I am now carrying a 72 lb pup in the water and helping him navigate the ladder. Because we lived in a ranch style house in VA, Cody just learned how to climb more than 3 steps while living in France for 7 days. Don’t you wish you were here to have witnessed this comedy? Success happened all around that morning, I was rescued, Cody was rescued, the pool was not scratched in the process, and everyone arrived back home from the village shops.

We spent the remaining part of the day picking out bedrooms and unpacking the 10 pieces of luggage we brought and the 3 Randy brought. Finally after 4 days, I had found my packing cube of shorts and socks! Randy worked on computers for all of us and we enjoyed the day. Lunch consisted of sandwiches and dinner was left over pizza from the park picnic the night before.