school days

After checking out the American School in Paris ($30K/year) we decided the best place for Gaius to go to school here in France was the local école maternelle. Yesterday was his first day of school at Courcelle Maternelle, which is just 3 blocks away from our house. Believe it or not, Gaius starts school at 8:30 a.m. and comes home at 4:30 p.m.! There is a two hour break for lunch. He can either eat in the cantine (cafeteria) or come home for lunch. When we walked Gaius to school yesterday morning, he was so excited. We arrived at 8:20 and saw a big crowd of parents and kids waiting for the school doors to open. Gaius looked back at me with a big smile on his face and said, "Bye!" and proceeded to walk up the steps. I had to stop him and ask him to wait for me to walk with him to his classroom! I'll have to admit that I got a little misty after dropping him off. Better for me to have tears than him, right?


In the morning, Christopher and I got in our rental car to find the Renault dealership where we are going to lease a car. Of course, we got lost on the way there and on the way back home. But we did make it there and we found the car for me. We are headed back there this morning to seal the deal. Wish me luck. I have to drive it back home from the dealership.


So, still no towels. No trip to Ikea. I actually hung our one beach towel on the line outside yesterday (I'm still intimidated by our washing machine) and it's good to go for one more day. (yuck!) Yesterday, we decided to forego the trip to Ikea since we didn't have the requisite 4 hours needed to go to and shop at an Ikea located only 30 minutes away. Hopefully we will be able to go there today. We'll see.


So, after we picked Gaius up from school yesterday, I asked him what he had for lunch. He told me that there were some round green things, some cheese he did not like, orange juice, STEAK, and a chocolate hot dog with white cream inside it. This morning, when we dropped him off, I found the menu for this week posted in the foyer. They actually DID have steak yesterday! It was probably a salisbury steak. The green things were peas, and of course the chocolate hot dog was an éclaire! Today, they are serving filet of haddock.

More tomorrow about the rental car, Ikea and grocery shopping in France! à Bientôt!