Re: Life in France
Lucky for me the kids are polite and well raised and do well in school...it helps a lot. The kids are considered from here, but with a 'different' Mom. I figured it out years ago...I volunteered at the schools, the foodbank, the bloodbank...I gave birthday parties and invited everyone, I made a hundred cookie houses at Christmas and invited everyone I knew, plus more that I didn't, to come and decorate a house with candy. I asked to be taught about everything I didn't know...gardening, cooking, small animal husbandry...I walked and took the kds to every event and festival and community thing that I could...they played the piano and rode in the parades and danced...I picked apples and pumpkins and showed the kids at school how to make applesauce and bob for apples and carve a pumpkin...I bought candy and passed it out to the neighbors and then got the neighborhood kids to go trick-or-treat...I dyed 360 easter eggs and sewed a bunny costume and showed up at school to give out Easter eggs and then discovered that, in France, it's NOT the Easter Bunny, but the bells of the church, that bring goodies. I gave quilting classes. I made friends with lots of little old ladies that told me stories of the people that live here...sadly, many of the little old ladies have dies off. I took the baby donkey and the chickens and the rabbits to school, and each year we hatched chicks in the incubator in the classroom. I took the mommy goat and her baby to school and squirted milk all over everybody. I had sleepovers and picnics and I'm still finding confetti from ten years ago in the corners of the house.
For the most part, I can tell you that it worked...all of the kids in my kids' classes will stop and say 'Hi' with a double kiss to the cheeks, when they pass. This house is like a trainstation with all the kids and friends that pass through it. And about half of the town accepts me. The other half just doesn't know what they are missing, is all.
The teachers, doctor, veterinarian and the police all have no problem with me, and we're on first-name, double-kiss basis. My Mom, when she came last, made a point that there are plenty of 'pillars of society' that come by (she was being sarcastic)...and it's true that ordinary nutcases and drunks and poor people and wild children and depressed moms and unemployed say hi to me, too...there's lots of those in this town.
Real friends are few and far between, but they do exist. Now that I speak and understand the language, I'm sometimes not sure if I don't prefer to not understand it. It was better to not scratch the surface, perhaps.
My ex is in Bordeaux, about two hours north. I am still enraged.
Originally posted by Pua'i Mana'o
For the most part, I can tell you that it worked...all of the kids in my kids' classes will stop and say 'Hi' with a double kiss to the cheeks, when they pass. This house is like a trainstation with all the kids and friends that pass through it. And about half of the town accepts me. The other half just doesn't know what they are missing, is all.
The teachers, doctor, veterinarian and the police all have no problem with me, and we're on first-name, double-kiss basis. My Mom, when she came last, made a point that there are plenty of 'pillars of society' that come by (she was being sarcastic)...and it's true that ordinary nutcases and drunks and poor people and wild children and depressed moms and unemployed say hi to me, too...there's lots of those in this town.
Real friends are few and far between, but they do exist. Now that I speak and understand the language, I'm sometimes not sure if I don't prefer to not understand it. It was better to not scratch the surface, perhaps.
My ex is in Bordeaux, about two hours north. I am still enraged.
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