"So, what'd you do Friday night?"
- Oh, y'know... just watched a goat have a sonogram.
After a long week of parent-teacher conferences, and "Conseils de Classe" where all of the teachers meet to discuss the students' progress/grades/behavior/etc., I was thrilled to see the clock strike 11 on Friday morning; that, for me, means the beginning of the weekend.
The afternoon was filled with knitting, catching up with a friend, and doing errands. In the evening, S and I went to visit our friend Simon, who had borrowed his veterinarian father's sonogram equipment to find out if his two goats and his sheep were preggers.
For dinner, we made "tartiflette" which is a delicious mixture of potatoes, cheese, and bacon (usually onions but they kindly left them out for me) which bakes into a melted, cholesterol-filled casserole of joy. (While making this, I fondly remembered my friend "Raleigh" who I met on the airplane going home for Christmas two years ago. He lived in Grenoble, and discovered these incredible tartiflette t-shirts. And motivated me to start running.)
While it baked, the boys attacked the task at hand, having absolutely no idea what to look for on the little black and white screen. In the process, we discovered two things: 1) the sheep's fleece feels exactly like one of those memory-foam pillows, which we would never have known otherwise, as she never lets people near her, and 2) there is a reason vets are paid good money to do their jobs.
On Saturday morning, we went to the farm for a day of precious sunshine, fresh air, and cows. In the afternoon, between feedings/cleanings, we played Scrabbled with S's intensely competitive mom, who destroyed us both, as mom's seem to do. (I would like to see ONE person who can beat his/her mom at this game; I never have.) My absolute uselessness at Scrabble in French was made clear, but thanks to my friend the dictionary (and S and his mom's explanations of the passé sample) I managed to lose by only 100 points. This was a victory from my point of view.
Sunday was freakishly warm and sunny and perfectly low-key, so we decided to make the most of it by beginning our day with a 50-minute jog around the village where Simon lives. To recover, we spent the afternoon cooking, lesson prepping, knitting and watching cult French films online.
This morning, I had three hours of class (three detentions given, sadly) and now face an afternoon of grading in-class essays, and planning for the rest of the week.
Things I'm looking forward to:
1. gym class tonight (it has been over a month since I've been able to go!)
2. hair cut Wednesday
3. finding out for sure whether the partial B-Fam European Reunion is happening or not in February
A side note --
I just have to say, I always laugh when I read old friends' Facebook posts longing for "France" and equating it with vacation, baguettes, accordion music and bicycles.
I was elated last week to finally receive an envelope with my social security card. Our washing machine broke, so we did laundry at the farm, and S remembered to buy more bananas last week when he went to the store. People have the same problems everywhere, and the only way, seemingly, to avoid the "Greener Grass Syndrome" is to be colorblind.
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