Rainy day

Despite what people might think, especially friends in the South of France, it doesn't rain here much, well not since we moved up here last year. However, during the night and this morning, we have had quite a downpour along with gusty winds of up to 100km per hour.
You can tell I'm English, because I love it, I love rain (not everyday of course) but just sometimes, especially when I am safe and snug at home.  
The photo was taken about 9.30 am, it was so dark outside.  You can just make out our neighbours house opposite, she has an enormous house with an attached barn too.  Next year the barn is going to be converted into a micro creche, she'll have the right to take care of up to ten babies (along with help).  She already has a similar set-up not far away, but for fifty babies!  Thankfully, it's only for up to ten here!

La classe de 5.4 Gaby's school report

I don't normally write about school results and all that, but as I did for MK this year, I thought I'd have to do the same for my four other sweeties, even if one or two didn't do as well as they'd hoped (or we had hoped).

Today the turn of Gabrielle. She's 11, and she's in her second year at college (year 8 in the UK).

She is in the elite class (terrible to say that but so true), why? Because she chose options this year and last that group children together, those who aren't scared of a little extra work.  She's in a section called bi-langue which means she does English and German in tandem (mostly, from year 7, children learn just English and from year 9 they choose a second foreign language, usually Spanish. 

I can't remember if she has three hours or four of English per week and the same for German this year, but that was the case for last year anyway.

This year she took the option Latin.  She wasn't over keen, but we kind of pushed up a little, and she knew if she didn't like it, after one year, she had the right to stop.  Amazingly, she loves it, and for now at least, doesn't want to stop...yippee.

Ok in her class they are twenty eight children and twenty one of these are in the "bi-langue" class. Most of them either do Latin or Theatre as an option. 

On Saturday we met her form tutor in order to get her long awaited first school report for this year. And we learnt the following that out of twenty eight pupils

10 had felicitations, which like the highest honor you while in college

3 had compliments which is basically very good

3 had encouragements which means you are trying hard and we've noticed, and carry on it's good.

2 had been sanctioned for lack of effort.

The average of the class was a fairly high 13,70 (in comparison with what we've seen in the South of France, which was mostly between 10 and 11)

And eight pupils got an average more that 15, this is really good, the competition is at a maximum.

And guess what, Gaby, who is the youngest in the class (she skipped a class ages ago) was first of the class and first of her school year for that matter...big headed? no! Proud? Yes, proud as punch.

Sixty one tests since the beginning of the year, she managed to fight her way through them all and get averages over 19 in Math, English, Latin and Art and as for the rest, still amazing. Just under 18 of average is just awesome.

L'arbre Roux...class book and Marie-Kate's first term report

 Marie-Kate bought home a book that her class had put together, after watching a play called L'arbre Roux in the village hall.  

She has really worked well this year (as usual) still a little too shy but so was I, and so are her sisters.

Her school report opens up to show at least 7 pages of marks and 1 with teachers comments (as seen above  a little snippet) 

She got all A's, apart from for participation where is got a B and another B for sentence construction, which are apparently too long.

Very happy for my little girl who loves her school and to do the very best she can all the time, except when it comes to playing chess with me, because there, she's a sore loser.

Sunday afternoon walk down by the River Seine

Our house in the middle of a small village not far from Paris. If you walk down the hill, you will find the River Seine.

 Today, we walked down with Marie-Kate.  It was spitting a little, but still nice to get out, and great to spend some time with MK.

 There are some lovely houses that border onto the river, but  we ruled out buying one here because of the flood risk.

 Alain reckons that these geese are destined for someone's  Christmas table..

 A grey day but still nice reflections and some autumn colours lingering on

 Time to climb the hill and head off home.

New additions to our bedroom..Bookworm and Sapiens book tower

 For a very long time we've been longing for a bookworm(especially Alain), the idea  was to get a long one, but we changed our minds , when we came across a ptolomeo book tower while surfing on the Conran site. Far too expensive, but we still put the bookworm  on hold for a while.  Then while visiting one of my favourite blogs door sixteen I saw a sapiens bookcase, a lot like a ptolomeo but a hell of a lot cheaper....fast forward till last week.  I found out that you could buy a Sapiens at Habitat here at La Défense.  So we could get the two, a bookworm for Alain and a Sapiens for me, and all for less than a 5m20 bookworm.  

 A sapiens ready to be taken out of it's box

Christmas has come early and my book tower is full, whereas Alain needs a dozen or so books, mangas or graphic novels to fill up his bookworm

Rarebit and Speculoos biscuits

 We baked some speculoos biscuits fpr the first time on Friday and they were yummy.

 Gaby is a big fan of icing sugar, even in the morning for breakfast, she'll whip up a little bit of icing to go on biscuits, cookies or even with fruit...

 Charlotte adores nutella and if you leave her with a 750g jar, she'll finish it within 24 hours.

I bought yet another cookbook, this time, Hugh fearnley's Vegetable book, and I love it.  I'd never made a rarebit before, but for lunch on Friday, Alexis and I had some tomato ones for the first time and they were really good.  The bechamel sauce was amazing.

Marie Kate and Alexis in the Newspaper

 Ok, they're only in the local school newspaper, but still, Marie-Kate is even on the front cover (she's the one with the light blue coat in the front line near the middle).

 Her class are here again, this time after watching a piece of theatre in our local village hall

 Oui suis-je? Here, you have to find your child's eyes (and mouth on another page), this was hard....bad mother huh

 After the theatre her class wrote some review, here's Marie-Kate's(middle and to the left)..if you can't read it, she wrote "I liked it when the squirrel threw nuts at the woodcutter.

 Meanwhile, in Alexis' class, they have been working on liquids in science. They had to layer as many liquids as possible on top of one another, that didn't mix up. Alexis' group did 11, but another group 13.

 Last up was photos and a review of their visit and workshop with a local sculptor (Alexis is pictured on the far left and the boy on the far right is his best friend, Jeremy.


We a really  lucky to have live in a small village, with such a dynamic school.