Our Juicy Life

french lessons x 2

For 3 years Bruce and I have been taking French lessons. We started with private lessons from Sylvan (he's from northwest france), 1 day a week...and since neither of us had taken french before we started from the beginning. Then after 6 months we decided to take a group class and joined Savoir-Faire language institute. We would have a 2 hour class every Monday with Ouihaba (she is from Algeria) and 10 other students, it was total immersion, no english spoken. "je ne comprends pas". We had the class for 1 year and learned tons and got more comfortable with speaking. Then we went back to Sylvan for the summer and did only conversational which was great practice. We went back to Ouihaba in September but for privates this time, just Bruce and I. The hard part for me is that I have never taken a language before...there I was at 41 trying to teach my brain to learn french. Bruce took Spanish and really has a gift when it comes to learning a language, so he is much better than me.

I don't want to rely on him in France. I have decided that I will do the shopping alone, will take a french cooking class alone and take a pottery class alone. I need to use my french and not look at him for the right answer. So, I have decided until we leave that I will take 2 french classes per week. Bruce and I will go to Ouihaba on Thursday for our private and then I will go to Sylvan by myself on Wednesday. All Sylvan and I do is speak...he'll say something to me in English and I have to translate my answer back in french (using the same tense), then he'll say something in french and I have to translate and respond in French. It's great for me, gets me speaking and thinking faster. I know my tenses: Present, Imparfait, passe compose, conditionnel and futur....but it's the speed that I'm lacking...my brain isn't fast and I'm sure that I will get better as the year goes on, but I don't want my first couple months to go something like this: someone says something to me... I translate it (tick-tock, tick-tock), figure out what to say back (tick-tock, tick-tock) get everything sorted out (tick-tock, tick-tock) and respond. But it's too late...they gave up long ago and left!

Buy now or wait...

So we only have 20 weeks until we leave for France. Things are getting sorted out very nicely. Long stay visa, rental car, boat, renting of our house, Travis taking over the studio, buying a car in france (thanks kim) etc...but one thing is still weighing heavy on our minds....the euro! We are going back and forth about buying our euros now (for the year) or waiting to see what will happen in the summer. Last week the euro/dollar was at 1.53 the lowest it has been in while. In March it went up to 1.60, some people say that it could go to 2.00. Our rent is payable in euros and I don't want to be stuck with a much higher rent. So right now we are in the process of opening an account with Credit Agricole and we have opened an account with HiFx which is a foreign exchange service. They don't charge a fee (most banks and places like American Express can charge up to 4%) nor do they charge a commission to transfer money to our account in france, they get low rates because of the high volumes of trading and we can lock in a rate for as long a 2 years, if we want. But today the euro is back up to 1.55. My head is spinning. If anyone has a crystal ball handy, do you mind checking out the future for the euro/dollar and letting me know what it's going to do between now and September? Thanks.

Eight Belles

I'm sorry to blog about this...but I figure maybe if I do the images and the story will go to my computer screen and out of my mind. I can't seem to stop thinking about this poor filly. She was beautiful and now she is gone. She broke both of her front ankles just after crossing the finish line in the Kentucky Derby and they had to euthanize her right there on the track. She was the only filly in the derby on Sunday. There are many who say the jockey was whipping her towards the end and should have realize she was injured (hello...both front ankles were broke!) and should have let up. I am not a jockey, or a trainer, or a horse owner, but I am a horse lover.

When I was a child I loved horses more than anything. The show "My Friend Flicka" was my favorite. When I was 11 I would ride my bike about 5 miles to a stables that let me volunteer there (I can't believe my mom let me ride my bike 5 miles by myself at 11...but I lived in Michigan and that was in the early 70's and times were different). I always wanted a horse, but never got one. I would dream that Santa would bring me a horse...I guess it was too big to come down the chimney. When I moved to LA I started volunteering for a non-profit that offered free riding lessons to under privileged kids. I loved being around the horses.

I'm the type of person that if there is an animal and a person together and something happens to them I worry about the animal, not the person. That's just the way I am. So, when this happened on Sunday, I was so sad...poor Eight Belles....her life was to race and she did everything possible to be her best, she knew nothing else. There is talk that breeding race horses has changed, it's now more about breeding a horse for the performance instead of breeding a solid horse. I don't know if that is true all I know is that she is gone and it makes me really sad.

Let the countdown begin

I have been feeling antsy lately, restless. I am so ready for our adventure, but it's not until September. Bruce thought it might be good to get a big wall calendar so we can count down the weeks/days. I also was visiting Kim at her blog and noticed her countdown widget...what a great idea. Then every day I can see on my computer screen how many weeks/days I have left, that will be just what I need. So I put one on my blog...thanks Kim! Kim is leaving in July, so her days are 1/2 what ours are....lucky dog!

We only have 4 more weeks of regular after-school classes and then our summer program starts. It will be 12 weeks of 1/2 day summer camps. Our schedule will switch from having the morning & early afternoon free and not having to go to work until 3:00 pm to being at the studio at 8:00 am and working until 1:30, so our afternoons will be free. I prefer the morning free, but alas. We will work the same number of hours per week, a light load at 20, but instead of working Tuesday-Saturday, we'll work Tuesday-Friday. Once the camps start the weeks fly by....usually when we start them it goes like this "ugh, 12 weeks of camps", then the next thing we know it's "ah, only 6 more camps"....then "yeah, only 1 more camp". Camps are great fun, we do super cool projects with the kids have a wonderful time, but it's draining and exhausting (in a good way that doing art with kids brings).

It feels like I'm a kid again...."are we there yet?" We were big on road trips when I was younger, as most of the country was back in the 60's and 70's. We had a big green station wagon and all of us would pack in there at least 2 times a year and head to Florida. I think I have been to Florida maybe 25-30 times. My parents are from Florida and my oldest sister and brother we born there. My sister Anne and I were born in Michigan. My father was a golf professional and started out in Florida and then took a job at a private club in Michigan. But anytime we had vacation it would be back to Florida to see the grandparents and Aunts and Uncles and it would allow my dad to golf.

I recently saw my brother, he and his family came out to San Diego for a weeks vacation, so Bruce and I drove down to have dinner with them. We were talking about the hell we had on those car trips. Mom and Dad in the front and 4 kids in the back. I'm sure many of you had those trips. "This is the imaginary line, don't cross it". "Mom, Anne hit me". "Mom, Mark kicked me". We didn't have DVD players in the car or hand-held games or ipods. My Dad would pop in his 8-track and we'd listen to his music, Edie Gourmet, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, etc... We played the alphabet game with license plates. Yee Haa! My brother also reminded me that on the drive down to Florida we'd always stay the night in a Holiday Inn and every time we'd have to eat, we'd stop at a Holiday Inn. He is sick of Holiday Inn's. We'd also stop in the same city for the night...talk about creatures of habit. Florida was our vacation...my dad didn't want to go anywhere else. Sure, we'd stop at Rock City or Mammoth Caves on the way down, but that's it. It was always St. Petersburg Florida. Staying with my grandmother, swimming in her pool, going to Treasure Island beach, going to Disney World when there was no Epicot center. The sunshine state. All my grandparents have passed on and only my cousin and her husband live there now, so no more Florida trips for me.....ever again.

What was I talking about? Sorry, got side-tracked. Ah, yes....counting the days until France. It seems so far away, but I know that once the summer gets going it will come up fast. It's hard to be patient when the countryside is calling you. The picture above was taken in September when we visited the Aveyron region. This is very close to where our house is. The nice thing about that area is that it won't change from when we saw it in September to when we'll be back in September. It is patiently waiting for us.

Such an exciting small world...

So, I wanted to do some spring reading and of course I wanted to read about France. I have read "a year in provence" but it was 10 years ago, so I figured I'd read it again. I went to Amazon.com and looked it up, Amazon.com also gave me some recommendations based on my "a year in provence" order...one of them was "French by Heart", by Rebecca Ramsey. It sounded really good, so I ordered it. The books came last week and I started on "A year in provence" and Bruce started with "french by heart". He said it was really good. Today I was looking at my comments and noticed a new one from a blog called Wonders Never Cease, so I went to that blog and started to read the latest post. I was about a backyard garden (not in the ground but above ground) thanks to their golden retriever tanner. Tanner looked so much like Dashell, it was scary....but many goldens look alike. I then read a bit further down and it said "when we lived in france"....so I went back to the bio and who is this blog by.....Rebecca Ramsey....yes, yes..the women who wrote "France by Heart", the book that is on my husband's nightstand right now.

I had to email Rebecca and tell her what a small world it is. Go and get her book, it's a really good read, even if you are not moving to france like us....you'll still get a feel of what it would be like. Thanks for visiting Rebecca, your book is making us so excited for our sabbatical in france!

Waste

I bike by this about 3 times a week. This is a picture of Ballona Creek, a bike bath that goes down to the ocean. Ballona Creek comes from way east...miles and miles and it just flows down collecting more trash each mile. Lucikly there is a net that is about 1 mile from the ocean, it traps all the plastic and styrafoam so that it doesn't go into our ocean. It so amazing how much trash accumulates in the nets.

I usually TIVO Oprah. Most of the time I'm not that interested in the show, but sometimes she has a great show. This week she had 2 shows on how much we waste. Time, food, plastic bottles, electricity, gas, money, etc... It was amazing and made me re-think how we live. We only have 1 car and actually have been biking to work each day, so we only drive our car when we have to, which hasn't been a lot. We are only using $40.00 worth of gas each week (which I think is really good). We recycle, but then Oprah showed that plastic (which I thought would be recycled) doesn't really get recycled like we thought. Most of it stays around forever. We bought a Brita water pitcher and are getting SIGG bottles so that we won't be using plastic bottles. So many kids bring in a plastic water bottle with them for class and then they never drink it and just throw it away, so wasteful.

Oprah also showed how much food we waste. People that buy food and don't eat it and just throw it away. So, I have decided that I won't throw anything away. We are big on leftovers (which are great if the original meal was good) and for fresh produce I shop every other day, so I don't buy something and have it go bad.

We also changed our light bulbs to the new CVS light bulbs, we wash our clothes in cold water and I have re-useable bags for the grocery store, so I don't come home with those plastic bags that will last forever. It makes me sad to think of where this world is going. How much waste we have, how many landfills we have, how many tons of garbage each of us produce. I am not sure that most people really think about where there trash goes. Most of it doesn't go anywhere but to a landfill and it will stay around for thousands of years. We even use biodegradable bags for picking up our pooches poo.

Seeing these shows really made the think...about how we live and what we are doing to this world. We are going to do our best to make our footprints smaller. It's the least we can do.

Frustration!

I always hear of the problems with getting things done in France...the paperwork, the time, the patience you need, etc...but I'm here to say that it's bad here in America too.

Couple examples.  We had to update the deed for our house.  It was bought in my name and we needed to add Bruce to it.  I spent time on the Los Angeles County Clerks website getting all the paperwork that I needed (to save time).  So,  I went down to the County Clerks office which is by the Los Angeles International Airport.  Drove around for 15-20 minutes just to find a parking spot and finally reached the 6th floor.  The line was huge.  After waiting in line for about 45 minutes I was finally called.  I showed the lovely friendly helpful woman (NOT)  the filled out paperwork and of course it was wrong.  First I needed to add all this additional wording about the parcel of land our house was on.  I had to get that from another computer down the hall.  So I went and did that, got back in line and waited.  10 minutes later I was called again.  That part is complete but now you need to get it notarized.  OK, that's easy, where is the notary.  "we don't have a notary on site".  What!  Are you kidding!  This is the Los Angeles County Clerks office and they don't have a notary!  She said the closest was about 5 miles away, but she didn't know the  name of it so we had to just drive around looking for one.  So off we went.  We saw a sign for notary, pulled over, parked and went in.  Only to find out that the business didn't get their notary renewed so they couldn't do it  - so take your sign down!!!  We drove a bit further,  saw a sign, pulled over and went in.  "our notary called in sick today"...this was getting ridiculous!  We finally found another place that notarized the document.  Back we went to the County Clerk, this time Bruce waited in the car, so we wouldn't have to spend forever looking for a parking place.  The line wasn't too bad, I only had to wait 20 minutes.  Finally they accepted the document.  That was easy, not!

We are going to open a french bank account now so that we can buy a large amount of euros and transfer them to our account, there is talk that the dollar might go to 2.00 against the euro this summer.  In order to open a french bank account we need to send a copy of our marriage license.  I don't know where that is, in fact I don't think we even requested a copy.  So I again had to go on the county clerks website and I noticed that you could order it on-line.  Great!  So I filled out the paperwork, sent in a check and waited...and waited...and waited.  30 days later I got all my information sent back to me in the mail, with a letter telling me that I needed to send in 2 copies of the request for a copy of the marriage license (it doesn't tell you that on the website though).  Argh!!!!  30 days of waiting and I get nothing.  So we had to go BACK to the County Clerks office because I wasn't going to wait another 30 days for the license.  This morning we went down there.  I ran up, left Bruce in the car and was sure that I had everything in order.  I had the check that I sent them originally and in front of the guy I just changed the date and initialed it (like you do at the bank, post office, grocery store, etc...) but NO, can't do that at the county clerks office.  I had to write out a new check and void the first.  I said to the guy "you guys sure don't make things easy"...and his response was "nope, we don't".

I finally have a copy of our marriage license and our deed was updated, so hopefully I will never have to go back to the 6th floor known as hell.  Many people rant about the france being so slow with documents and all and I'm sure they are, but it's bad here too.

OK - I feel better.

Christmas in April?

I know most of you will not be impressed with this...although some of you might! This is an amazing french bike - Bruce bought one about 3 months ago, although a different model. It's by a french company called LOOK. He was so excited to have it. BUT...then he noticed a crack in the seat tube of the bike...it was really tiny but it worried him and he HATED having something wrong with his new bike. So he contacted the sales rep for LOOK and found out that what happened isn't supposed to happen. So they took back his frame and replaced it with the frame above. It's the newest model - better than the one he had and he's so excited - LOOK has excellent customer service!!!!! Nothing funnier than seeing a man act like a kid at christmas. He got the frame one evening about 7:00 pm and spent the next 4 hours putting the bike together, he just couldn't go to bed without finishing it. He loves his new bike and I love him being happy (it's the little things that make my man smile). This bad boy will be coming to France with us in October.

OUR ANNUAL STUDENT ART EXHIBIT

Each year we have a student art exhibit. Each child that comes to classes at the studio get to pick their favorite piece of work that they created that year. We clean the studio, paint the walls, put the tables out back, get food, and hang all their work. It's a great evening for everyone (parents, grandparents, kids, friends, etc...). This year we have 100 children that take weekly art classes from us, all of our classes are full, so our turnout was amazing.

The friday before the show we spent the day taking off all the pieces we had hung on the wall, patching all the little holes (from the hundred of pushpins) and painting the walls. We also cleaned everything and painted and spiffed up the bathroom. On Saturday we hung all the pieces (well, Bruce hung the pieces). The show was on Sunday. We had about 300 people come through. The show was only for 2 hours.

I took some pictures of some of the pieces that were in the show....they are all amazing and I can't put all of them on, so here are just a few for your viewing pleasure. The kids that did these range from 5-15.

Don't they do great work! It helps when you have a great teacher and Bruce is the best - his lessons are amazing and the kids no only learn the fundamentals of drawing & painting but are able to be creative and expressive too. We will miss the kids when we go, but know they'll continue to do amazing work with Travis.

Moi!

Our great friends K&E came for dinner last Sunday and they brought their lovely daughter Kellen.  She's 8 and takes art classes at our studio.  I made duck, chez lou lou's onion and roquefort tart, a bow tie, broccoli salad (for kellen) and individual chocolate souffle's for dessert.  It was a great night.  They also brought their 8 month old black lab named "Stella".  The guys took the dogs to the park while I got dinner ready.  Kellen wanted to draw.  OK...my husband is an artist and we own an art studio and we don't have any drawing paper around the house, can't find any colored pencils (we found a few)...so we gave her wrapping paper and a sharpie and she was good to go.  Her first picture was this one above.  It's me. 

This was her 2nd picture, it's on the back of the first picture.  I just love this one (note the words).  Queen Alisa.  It's on our fridge and I turn it over every couple days.  I just had to share them with you.