Léa went to her first Sleep-Away summer camp!

Hi everyone, this is Léa's mom, Mari.

I'm sorry for not posting so much; after Léa's dad returned to NYC, I am working in Paris and it has been difficult to find the time. I just spent 4 days with Léa and Téo in Abbecourt at the grandparents house, preparing for their departure to their "Colonie Vacances", Sleep-away Camp! Here is Léa and Téo yesterday at the train station called Gare Montparnasse with the grandparents just before the departure.

She is going to Nantes, a city in the west of France. She had a huge list of things to bring: 7 shirts, 7 pants, 7 underwear and socks etc. and she will be responsible of organizing her own belongings for two weeks!

After the school ended, Léa has been lucky since Sophie, a little girl from her class and also a close neighbor, remained friends and they go back and forth spending a lot of time together. Here is Sophie in the kitchen playing with Léa and Téo.

Last week, her cousins' family came back from their vacation in Ireland, so they had fun playing together. Here is Léa and her 14 yr-old cousin Gwenaëlle, whom she loves very much.

Léa also learned a new computer program her uncle and an engineer Frédéric 'Tonton Fred' taught her, called Google Sketch Up. It's a free program and you should try it! She has been designing houses and rooms and it has been a great pass-time for her too!

What are you all doing? Let us know! We are picking Léa and Téo up at the Gare Montparnasse next week, July 30th.

Hi!

Yesterday, the bus company decided to be on strike, so there was no bus. I took the bicycle to school instead, but Mamine took me in the car for lunch and for coming back.

The whole day, we had to do drawing lessons! (The english teacher Anne was supposed to come the day before, but she didn't come Thursday nor the day after!)

Bye!

Lea

P.S. What happened to writing back to me??????!!!!!!!!!!

Hi!!!!!!!!!!

It's me! So, Uhuru, big problem. I tried to ask Teo if he wanted to become a superhero and he said no! Isn't there any other way I can become a 2500-3750 maximum????!!!!!!!

I went in a wood with Papy and mamine.(I didn't like it so much.)I also enjoyed dressing up as a

bandit from "Fantastic Mr. Fox" and getting a little laugh from my shot, which was done by my new doctor, Dr.Sibillat.

Bye,

Lea

P.S. How to dress up as a bandit:

Clothes:

3 pairs of clean underwear

A long-sleeved knit shirt of any color

A uniform of any color

A light-blue, short sleeved pants

One sock ( don't take the whole pair!)

A long-sleeved pants of any color

Steps:

1. Put on the knit shirt and the light-blue pants.

2. Tie the uniform around your waist.

3. Tie the long-sleeved pants around your waist.

4. Put a pair of underwear on your head like you put on a hat.

5. Put another pair of underwear on top of your face. (make sure you can see well through the holes and it covers your nose.)

6. Put the last pair on the back of your head.

7. Place the sock on your non-dominate hand.

ENJOY YOUR HALLOWEEN!!!!!!!!!!

Historical visits

This is Léa's dad, Léa hasn't blogged for a while now. We shall see about that.

Yesterday, the whole class took a bus tour to visit the Caverne du Dragon (Dragon's Lair), a cave that was used by both the Germans and French during the World War 1 battle of the Aisne. The tour was very interesting, with the whole class accompanied by a few veterans from the association that paid for the class visit and for the bus. (Not WW1 veterans! they would be 90 yrs old, at least!) By the end of the visit, it was clear to all the children that war should be avoided if at all possible.

Today, we went to visit another site not far from here, the Abbaye of Chiry-Ourscamp (the link in French is much more informative). It is a beautiful place, as the picture shows of the old nave, which was never rebuilt. So it looks like a church without a roof in the middle of a beautiful garden. In fact, there are a few more buildings where the monks live, but they still say the mass in the middle of the church sometimes.

Léa's study in France

Hello everyone, this is Léa's mom, Mari.

I just wanted to show you what Léa has been working on at her school in France. It's about Father's Day (this Sunday in France). Léa's dad will translate it in the comment. In French schools, kids learn to write only in CURSIVE, connecting letters. Léa has to learn French words, then write them in cursive. In two short weeks I think she did pretty well, would you agree?? :)

Cheers,
Léa's mom.

ps. Here's Léa this weekend, playing in a park behind Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris with French kids.

Other questions

Note from the editor: some of the questions from previous comments were answered in previous posts, but some questions have not been answered (yet!). This blog entry is from Mamine, Léa's grandmother.

I think the other questions have been already answered by Léa, her father and the photos.

She thinks of you of course, but she is trying to THINK in FRENCH and that is VERY TIRING, you know. You seem to be very active children! Could you do what Léa does, Live in another country, eat another kind of food, talk to people in another language because they do NOT understand yours? See your parents every week only because they are in Paris? And be condemned to be with your brother? Of course, he is nice, very often, but he can be mischievious, too. Fortunately, mamine and papy are there for cuddles!! Do not you think she is very brave?

Have a nice afternoon, Here it is the end of the afternoon. By the way, when you look at the clock, add 6 hours : at 8 a.m in NYC, it is 2 p.m in France. When you go to bed, it is the middle of the night here.

Bye, Mamine Bronnimann

Mamine answers Léa'sschool

Mamine answers because Léa is tired: a school day is 3 hours in the morning and 3 in the afternoon and the other children have have some homework to do, that is 1 or 2 pages to read with their parents (to get those involved in their kids' knowledge!)or a little text to learn by heart!

This afternoon, she did not go to school because the other pupils have been working on a dance with other pupils of many schools all over the district and it was the last rehearsal, so Léa would have been bored, but tomorrow we shall go to see the performance with all the younger pupils of all the schools in Chauny.
So I took her to the shop with me and she helped me choose their favourite yogurts and she bought sweets with her pocket money.

She spends a lot of time reading books in French and looking at their pictures, especially those who are intended for younger children, but wonderfully illustrated so she recognises all what she hears or see around. I do not think I could do what she does without being exhausted at the end of the morning...


Now, some answers for you, Kids of Léa's school:

The French flag is BUE, WHITE and RED (vertical stripes).

The place of ABBECOURT (where we live) is a tiny village with houses and gardens, around 9 streets, houses have only two floors, some have only one ground floor! There is the railway passing right in the middle of the village, and there is also a canal alongside , 30 feet wide!!!!

Between or behind the houses there are tiny or large gardens, but only 3 farms now, and NOT a single shop! The baker comes with her truck every morning and the butcher every week.

Léa in the local news!

I couldn't resist scanning and putting an article in the local newspaper (l'Aisne Nouvelle) with Léa's class posing for the picture. Can you see Léa? (hint: near lower right corner)

The article is about using soccer ("football" or even "foot" as it is called in French!!!) as a means to get the students interested in geography. All the students hold a map. Léa is holding a map of France. Can you see why France is sometimes called the "hexagon"?

Today, no school. Barbeque!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!(thanks, Papy and mamine for the Jambon, ham in English, the chicken and that delicious sausage!!!!!)

Now, here's a little about birds: I'm looking through a book called spotting birds. There's many birds in there, like the blue tit, the coal tit, the crested tit, the marsh tit, the long-tailed tit, the penduline tit, the swallow, and the house martin.(Mamine said we have a nest of those under her roof.) But the one I saw at the place where we have the barbeque was the sand martin, which is on the next page.

Now for Makayla and Shaunice: a little more about Euros! If I went to the department store and bought a Blender and a barbeque stove, I will have to pay 59,98 Euros. Guess what? If they see the number 30 on one advertisement they'd gasp or probably laugh.

Go0odbye,

Lea

Note of the editor: There is no school on Wednesdays, and I left on Mondays and Tuesdays to Paris, so there was no blog in the past two days... We will have to correct that.

And about the euros, what Léa was explaining was that each item was 29.99 Euros, which total up to 59.98 euros. If each item was 30 Euros, people would have the impression that it was a lot more expensive than 29.99 (even though it is only one cent more expensive).

Editor: I'm going to step in and insert a message in Léa's blog, purely for the pleasure of putting pictures. But don't forget to check the previous entry which is directly from Léa.

First when we came in, we spoke about Mamine and her painting exhibition. She had five paintings among the 20+ artists from the painting club who also showed their painting. Here is Léa and Mamine in front of Mamine's works.

At home, there is plenty of time for snacks, and both Léa and her brother love French bread, sliced and covered with butter and jam (or hiney, or just butter, depending on the mood) French people call it a "tartine" (tar-teen). And Mamine has a machine to peel apples, which is truly extraordinary : you can put the apple in, then just crank the knob and it will peel the apple and core it and slice it. At the end, the apple just falls into the plate.

So Léa goes to school every day from 8:30am till 11:30am, and 1:45pm till 4:45pm. The bus picks her up at the school in Abbécourt at 8:05 in the morning, and brings her back at the same place around noon. After lunch at home, which is right across the street, she goes back to the bus at 1:15pm and is home shortly after 5pm. In between she has school, with one recess of about 15 mins to rest and stretch in the morning and afternoon, each. I do not really know what they study, I will try to ask Léa to write a blog about it.

Lastly, she Léa was speaking about the "babyfoot", so I thought a picture would be worth a thousand words:

YAAAAAAWWWWWWNNNNNN!!!!!!

It me again, and it's already 8:35!! The food in france is really good, despite all the annoying jokes my brother does on me. Anyway, I'm doing really good. Hey, have you heard of my grand-uncle Andre? Right now he's watching the soccer match, as usual, with (my grand-father) Papy.

The stores? Well maybe the stores are really neat, but that's what I saw when I went inside a bakery for some sweets last week. Probably the large items are really expensive and the small items are plain cheap.

Are there any report cards? No, the teacher just look at them and after that, while we are playing, the teacher marks them with good or bad grades, but I don't think that is possible.

Does school look anything like yours? Nope. The class is just about 20 to 30 desks and the yard is only just a small space of rock pavements, which includes a shack with 2 dead baby birds,

and then theres's half the yard with grass, where they play soccer.

bonne-nuit,

LEAAAAAAAAAAAWWWWWWNNNNN!!!!!!!

P.S. The TV's still on, but no one's watching at 9:30.....snore...snort! SNORT!....hon-shoooo...

Hey guys!

It's me again! France is doing good! Guess what, now my favorite game to play is a game called "babyfoot". It's like a table soccer, the rules are that if the ball goes through the goal but falls off the table, it doesn't count, and if you kick the ball with the middle row of 5 people and it goes in the goal without touching anyone, it's called "Demi" and it doesn't count.

Anyway, school is doing good, and I'm having lots of fun!

Your you-know-who,

Lea

P.S. @Uhuru: what about the Plants vs Zombies lessons?

(Note from the editor: Yesterday there was a little accident, Léa's grandmother Mamine erased the blog message by mistake before it was published, so Léa had a small tantrum, and rightfully so I might had :) but she recovered enough to play table soccer with Mamine before going to bed... Mamine typed as best she remembered, and I copy-paste below:)

Today was a surprise because they can calculate 136x40=5,440 (in french, they write it 5 440). It was very difficult but she had Sophie to take care of that problem.

At lunch they came home and the family had Croque-Monsieurs or Croque-Madames with salad. Then school again. There is no school on Wednesday but. for primary schools only, the bigger pupils have school in the morning.

Then she wrote : AU REVOIR (in FRENCH), Léa

(Note by Mamine: About Euros: one euro is 1dollar20 cents. The coins are copper red: 1,2,5 centimes; yellow: 5,10,20,50 centimes. Then white around and yellow in the middle are 1euro, 2euros coins. Then the notes: 5 euros, 10, 20, 50 euros. And even 100 euros but they DO not like them in shops.)

PS by Mamine: The RECIPE for croque-monsieur. Take one slice of mie sandwhich bread, top it with a slice of gruyère cheese, then a slice of ham and another slice of gruyère cheese ,another slice of bread on top, and fry it ,in a special machine, or in a frying pan The croque-Madame is a croque-Monsieur with a fried egg on top of it. Bon Appétit!

Today is wednesday. There was no school, so me and Papy went to Bafia, a small garden next to a bunch of smelly cows. I used a bicycle to go there, and I even survived the road, which has millions of pebbles. And after that, I went to get some baguette,a raincoat, and some candy, which

I paid for only one coin that said 50 cents and that's all for getting three sweets. Then I went to see an art exhibition.

(Note from the editor: we went to the French version of Filene's basement, where Téo--Léa's little brother--wanted to buy a small purse for keeping his money; so we bought two, on eeach, and gave them some small change which they used at the bakery to buy some sweets, and to learn how to count French money. The art exhibition was from the local art club to which Léa's grandmother belongs, and her works were on display too.)

Welcome to Abbécourt

I had a good, actually great time at school.I have a companion at school. Her name is Sophie.
The teacher is Madame Bédu. My school is at Marest D. (Dampcourt).

The house in Abbecourt is great! There's even a little dollhouse in the livingroom.
if I go to bed, I have my doll go to bed. If I eat, the doll goes to the kitchen and eats.

Léa Bronnimann

(Note of the editor: she takes a bus in Abbécourt in the morning, at lunch time to eat at home, in the afternoon to go back, and in the evening to come home. The bus rides is only 10 minutes, Marest is the next town only 2 miles away. The class is about 25 kids, ten of them in third grade, and fourth and fifth grades are also combined: the teacher alternates the lessons while kids do their schoolwork. In third grade, there are nine boys and one girl: Sophie is very happy to have another girl in the class! They take the bus together.)