Hello!

This will be my second last post for this blog because we have just 21 days left here in Paris! Richard and I are hoping to get some things done before we leave here because we know we will need to hit the ground running when we get back to Australia- we will have to get some carpet for our house, move back in, buy a fridge, a bed, a BBQ and some chairs to sit on, get the kids ready for school and most importantly, see as many of our friends and family as possible. It will be busy and wonderful.

I want to use my blog to remind all the women reading to check your boobs! A friend of mine over here was diagnosed with breast cancer since my last blog and is currently undergoing aggressive chemotherapy as the first stage of her treatment. Check now, before you read on.

Done? Ok.

When I wrote the last blog post, the kids were just about to begin a two week break from school. We had scribbled a list of things we wanted to do during those two weeks and when the holidays began, we methodically worked our way through the list while being mindful of the changing weather.

Generally, each day we picked a place to visit and then headed out mid-morning, had a look around, ate lunch, explored some more and then came back to the apartment. Some of the stand out destinations included Centre Georges Pompidou (a modern art gallery), Trocadéro, Versailles and the breathtaking Opéra Garnier.

Our visit to Trocadéro happened only because the kids hadn’t yet seen the Eiffel Tower sparkling at night time (apart from seeing the very top of it from their bedroom) and I had read that Trocadéro was one of the best places to view the tower. So one night after dinner, off we went! Please allow me to give you a little back story here… In the days prior to this night time outing, Bessie had convinced me to buy a huge pumpkin (and carry it all the way back from the market) so that we could carve it for Halloween. With aunty Rose’s help via Skype, we got busy and messy and had lots of fun creating Pumpie the Pumpkin! He looked super cool! Our night out at Trocadéro coincided exactly with Halloween, so I suggested we bring Pumpie with us. Richard was highly opposed to the idea because it would make the metro ride even more uncomfortable, but he didn’t know Pumpie like we knew him! He was worth it! This was his night! So along came Pumpie. The sparkling tower looked absolutely beautiful and the atmosphere at Trocadéro was awesome! There were heaps of people out and about, some dressed in Halloween costumes and many with flashing “bling”, like you might see on new year’s eve. Pumpie looked the best though and we took some pics of him to prove it. At the end of the night, we all decided that we would leave Pumpie there at Trocadero to enjoy his night of nights and live out the rest of his life giving people Halloween happiness with his big smile. We set him down, walked away and turned back to give him a last wave but he was not alone! Some people had picked him up and were taking photos with him! Well, we found this hilarious, especially because it just kept on happening! His orange face must have been all over Facebook that night! For me, the funniest part of all was the fact that Richard, who had shown nothing but anti-pumpkin behaviour the whole day long, all of a sudden wanted to take the credit for Pumpie’s sudden rise to fame. “I placed him there!”, Richard falsely claimed, in a desperate attempt to own some of the glory. I cried with laughter for possibly a whole hour.

Our visit to Versailles was really good and it was worth the long wait to get into the Palace (1 hour +). Once we were in, we queued again for the audio guides for about another half hour but the kids coped well, collecting “interesting pebbles” from the ground, poor loves. I think this year, the three of them have learnt how to be patient. [Parisians seem to accept queuing up as just a part of what happens each day and nobody seems to go bananas.] We loved seeing the rooms of the Palace and we all imagined ourselves there in the 1700s (Richard said he could picture himself only as the King- hmmmm). After a picnic lunch outside, we hired a golf cart and hooned around the Palace gardens. It was awesome!

The start of November was super special- Kitty turned SEVEN! She invited her two friends Emna and Flora over to the apartment and the children made some beautiful watercolour paintings. We then headed to one of the local cinemas and watched “Un conte peut en cacher un autre” which is a film adaptation of the Roald Dahl book “Revolting Rhymes”. We all really enjoyed it! We then headed back home to sing both Joyeux Anniversaire and Happy Birthday and to eat some birthday cake. It was so nice to have the chance to celebrate this incredible little girl who is wise and already has a strong sense of self and what’s right and wrong at such a young age.

A new family of nits set up camp in our hairs in November (all except Richard, again!). Also, a family of mice thought they’d stop by for a while in our apartment. Having mice was something that we half expected at some point this year, though when you see the Paris streets, you have to wonder why any mouse would bother running all the way up to the sixth floor when there is so much rubbish to eat on the ground. Speaking of food on offer for the creatures of Paris, Richard once saw a rat eating a mouse meters from where our kids were playing, I recently saw several pigeons feasting on a pile of vomit and our whole family watched once as a huge rat stood up on its hind legs and ripped a hole in the suspended rubbish bin bag to get to the food inside just a metre or so from where we were standing. So we were almost pleased that we had mice, just because they weren’t huge fearless rats! I put down about 30 sachets of poison and kept the apartment squeaky clean which meant clearing the droppings from under the couch cushions and inside cupboards each morning and then trying to sanitise everything! They only stayed for a week or so.

To anyone who has links to Camberwell Primary School, you would understand our excitement at having Thalia Stewart stay with us for a few days! She is an unbelievably great teacher and I honestly feel eternally grateful that she gave both Solomon and Bessie such an inspiring start to their schooling. Thalia now lives in France with her French love Anthony and is producing some incredible work at an astonishing rate in true Thalia style! Watch out world! Her visit was something that we have all been looking forward to since before any of us even left Melbourne. I thoroughly enjoyed making and sharing yummy vegan dishes with her which required only very minor tweaks from our usual meals. We did a little sightseeing including a visit to Galleries Lafayette to check out the Christmas windows, an evening visit to the Louvre and a journey to the Arc de Triomphe. Thalia managed to squeeze in a really cool lesson with the kids- they felt very special! It was the first lesson in English they’d had for a long while, delivered from none other than the famous Miss Stewart herself!

The kids have been to several parties and playdates which are more frequent now due to the weather which limits options for outdoor play. Last weekend, all three of my kids have had a friend or two over to play at our apartment. I had a great day today doing some Christmas shopping at La Defense with my Bulgarian friend Ivelina who speaks with me in French, no English whatsoever! I understand what she says (mostly) but I find it hard to communicate my thoughts back to her. She makes me feel very comfortable while I use mime, some jumbled French words (present tense only- everything I say is happening right now!) and any props I can get hold of to get my point across. She is someone I will dearly miss when I go home.

As for Richard, he has received several attractive job offers for when he gets back to Melbourne and he has spent countless hours trying to sort out which of them or which combination will work best. He recently travelled to Prague to spend time with experts in DBS “micro-electrode recording” and enjoyed his time in theatre there. When I asked him for anything significant that has happened since my last post, he just said “Malcom Young died”.

Cindi x