It is hard to get a three-year old excited about more than one thing at a time, especially when her concept of time isn’t fully formulated. So while we made a lot of references about going to France and the things we would do “when we’re in France”, we didn’t focus on preparing our daughter for our departure for France until after all our other travels (within the US) were done. So it wasn’t until after the second week of December that we really started talking up France (and by then it was competing against Christmas for her attention).
But many times when we talked about France, she would to ask, “Who are we going to see in France?” We’d fumble around by saying we didn’t really know. We were going to meet new people, make new friends, we’d have new neighbors and do new things like go to new schools with new teachers and classmates. But even after this explanation, each time she would still ask again, “who are we going to see in France?”
Then I realized, for the past four months we have been traveling all around the US-- but it was always about relationships. “We’re going to California to see Gram & Grandad.” “We’re going to Maine to see Anica & Clayton.” “We’re going to Wayland to see Grandma & Grandpa.” “We’re going to Ohio to see..... We’re going to Missouri to see......” This was the chorus that Grace had been hearing for the past several months. So no wonder the phrase, “We’re going to France!” seemed to fall short of one important point. “Who are we going to see now?”This is our last blog of 2011. We arrived in France yesterday (Fri. Dec 30) afternoon and we look forward to letting you know who we’ll see and what we'll learn here. Thanks for making our time in the US so meaningful, it was great to SEE all of you and reconnect.
PRAYERS ANSWERED
We had a wonderful Christmas with family in Massachusetts. We were able to pack up our place thanks to family watching our kids and our friend Emily helping clean the house as we packed. We made it to France! All of our bags were waiting for us. We made it to our new apartment and have already been blessed by our neighbors (our fellow French students) who helped bring up our bags from the snowy outside and even made us dinner!
PRAYERS REQUESTED
We’re jet-lagged. The kids were both wide-awake from about midnight-2am last night. Pray for a quick adjustment to the French time zone for all of us. Pray for our adjustment as we learn how and where to get things we need for living in France. Pray for our daughter as she begins French preschool on Tuesday! Pray that we will be able to register for school with no difficulty on Monday. It sounds like we have a few days of testing and orientation before starting French classes on Thursday.
