A New Adventure

“All our bags are packed, we’re ready to go…cause we’re leavin’ on a jet plane…”

I’m writing this from Gate 24 at the Ottawa airport, as we await our flight. We’re off on a new adventure, pet-sitting in the south of France for a couple months. We’ll be living in a small village looking after three indoor cats. An hour to the west is Biarritz on the coast, an hour to the southeast and we’re in the Pyrenees, and to the south is the Basque region of Spain. The village has fewer than 150 inhabitants, presumably mostly French-speakers.

The first question people ask is, “How’s your French?” That’s a good question. My written French is not bad, but speaking it is another matter, and an even bigger challenge is understanding fast-spoken French. I’ve tried watching French movies but, unless I turn on French-language subtitles, I understand very little of what they’re saying. If people spoke with subtitles or little speech bubbles above their heads, I’d probably do fine. Maybe there’s an app for that. Ray knows how to say, “Je ne parle pas Francais.” Should be interesting.

Of course, the day we’re leaving, it’s finally sunny and mild here, but I’ll still be happy to leave the snow behind and to say goodbye to the winter parka.

Normally, the first Saturday in April is Maplefest, but even if we’d tapped this year, we’d have been unable to do any boil-offs because the sugar shack still has a thick layer of ice, preventing us (by which I mean Ray) from dislodging any of the equipment. That hasn’t happened in all the years we’ve been making maple syrup.

I’m going to miss my twice-weekly reading sessions at the school. It’s been so rewarding to see their confidence and love of books build as the year progresses. The teachers gave me a thank you card and a gift card and the grade 3 boys presented me with a going-away card, all of them talking at once and pointing to the parts they’d written (I explained that they had, if fact, signed their names, so telling me which part was theirs wasn’t actually required). The grade 2s didn’t give me a card, but a few of them gave me spontaneous hugs, which was nice.

I asked each of the kids if they wanted to borrow one of my books while I was away and about half of them took me up on the offer. One guy had a hard time getting his head around it:

Me: Do you want to borrow one of my books while I’m gone?
7-year old: What if my mom sees it?
Me: It’s okay. You’re allowed to borrow a book.
7-year old: What if I rip one of the pages?
Me: That’s okay.
7-year old: What if my teacher sees?
Me: I already asked her and she said it’s okay.
7-year old: Did you ask [the first two students] if they wanted to borrow one?
Me: Yes, but they chose not to. 
7-year old: *quickly snatches Dog Man book off the table*

According to his teacher, he was “absolutely shining” when he returned to class.

Nick has finished classes for the year and will write his final exams over the next few weeks. Ray has left him a booklet of instructions and the contact info for virtually everyone he’s ever met. I tried to explain about the wonders of modern technology and that we’ll still be easily reachable should he need anything, but I suppose it’s an occupational hazard of having been an insurance adjustor for so many years that he plans for every possible eventuality.