Dear friends and family,
My mom used to be a prolific writer, something she managed to instill in me and my siblings as children. I guess 12 years of boarding school enforced in me a need to write, and back in the 1980’s and 1990’s, once we had made our treasured friendships, (only to be ripped away from each other for the summer (Boston was not exactly the other side of anywhere) or after high school, because life;) and so I also came to enjoy my letter writing times.
I imagine nowadays that there was nothing particularly creative about those missives of a by-gone phase. My Mom, on the other hand, she used to write her Christmas letter. Every year. They used to be handwritten, sent to Anne in England- an old school friend; to Nan in Ireland and possibly Joy in England who both kept a keen interest in the distant lives of the Carr family. I think mostly it would be a newsletter, a general round up of the years activities: the farm has had a drought, and Paddy continues to worry about everything; Gaenor started high school, Graham was Dux at his primary school, Andrea did well to achieve playing Under 10 A hockey and such. Obviously, with the arrival of the internet and emails, being able to send letters from the convenience of a keyboard meant she could email newsletters to more people, although they may have been slightly more impersonal, who knows?
For the 6 and a half years we have lived here in France, away from pretty much everything we knew, loved and were familiar with, I figured the best way to stay in touch with that life was via this blog, and the social media options of Facebook and Instagram became an added bonus. Along the way, we found a veritable world of new friends, new cultural lives to discover. It has been an incredible journey, learning a new set of skill’s, discovering things about myself and my life in general. Lately however, it has led to a very impartial, a very tiny existential crisis, and for the last 4 weeks, I have shared nothing on my social media pages. Liberating much? I still can’t be sure, but it has served to force me to be more introspective, because there’s never enough of that in my life right?
Regardless of my reasons for being a no-show recently, I thought I would write a final e-mail this year to send my Christmas blessings including a wrap up on the year that was. I’m hoping that maybe this time, you will reciprocate with a little wave?
2019 started off, naturally, with another long cold winter. Every year it seems that the winter carries on for longer than normal, although there was an absence of proper snow, so it can’t be too awful, right? Spring arrived a little later than normal, and carried on for longer than last year. This meant we got to enjoy the trees and flowers for longer. Summer was possibly the hottest it has ever been in 7 summers so far, with heatwaves counted on 4 occasions. I learnt a new French word this summer- la canicule-and we had absolutely no rain whatsoever. Our garden became dry, parched and quite brown. Added to my concerns, was that in the eco-warrior age we are now in, I felt that I couldn’t justify watering the garden, so we let it dry up. The consequences of that it seems, is that now that the rain is here in full force, whatever grass is there has become moss. Any suggestions for going forward? Or would it be best to just save up some cash and buy new lawn? During the summer, we were able to harvest a large bowl of apricots from the tree in the garden. The quality of the apricots wasn’t great. Call them very organic because they hadn’t been fertilised, nor had they been sprayed for bugs, so I made jam with them. Which has been Alex’s breakfast jam ever since ;-).
We’re still living in the apartment out in the outer-burbs, with the garden and the farm-views. I love it so much here that after Anton started looking around casually for a place of our own to buy, and we realised there was no ways we are going to afford to buy a place that is as perfect as this, I asked him to stop looking, to just let us rent for a while longer. Unfortunately for me, Strasbourg is an expensive city in which to buy property, so even a small house, with an outdoor space is out of our price range. Realistically what we can afford is an apartment, with no view, and probably a balcony where we can’t braai. We could probably find what we like further out of the city, but the logistics of travelling to the International School where our girls are just means it doesn’t make sense. So Project Mortgage for the duP’s has not happened in 2019.
School: the girls continue in the International School, with their standard French syllabus, as well as their daily lessons in English. To my horror, Beth’s English spelling is downright appalling. She somehow manages to add e‘s and s‘s onto some words, and leaves them off other words. She has no grasp of the phoenetic sounds, particularly ph, but I have remained objective in my expectations. All she knows is the French way of learning, so inelegant handwriting and a mixture of language rules becomes the order of the day. I do love it though, that she comes home talking about her lessons, teaching me about le royaume after being taught about Brexit and the European Union. I love that there are french words she knows before English words. For now, she loves her schooling. She fears nothing about it, and it’s a stark contrast to Alex. This year Beth has the same CE1 teacher that Alex had that year. Alex despised this teacher, who even I was quite scared of. She was certainly not the same motherly type of previous teachers, and was the cause of tears from Alex. When Beth realised she had the same teacher in September at rentrĂ©e, she burst into tears. Later that day when I picked her up from school, she was all smiles and said she loves Mme Halm. I was quite amused a few weeks ago when Beth did her oral presentation. One project of this teacher is that her students have to prepare an oral presentation and poster of a famous person. Alex didn’t choose anyone, so she was given Francis Bacon (which I have spoken about before). These orals are presented only on Fridays in class, so they’re spread out between November and June- the kids are given the option to choose when it suits them. Alex ended up being the very last student to present (after a bout of nerves saw her being absent on her first date). Beth in the other hand was the very first in her class to present. She spoke about Nelson Mandela and although we fought constantly about the content of her presentation while we prepped, she soaked up every moment of attention standing in front of the class and absolutely loved every moment of it. Once again I am beset with the niggle that we should be sending her to drama school later in life. Beth soaks up every aspect of her school life. She is social; is a representative for her class on the cantine committee, loves being able to come home on the bus without me because she gets to be with friends from school en route, and switches between her French and English as easy as pie.
Alex started collège in September. It surprises me that these 11 year olds are given this level of independence and responsibility. Her schedule changes from day to day, they’re expected to traverse to school on their own, and if they happen to not have a class first thing in the morning, they are allowed to arrive at school in time for whatever class they have. They move around from classroom to classroom- like we did at high school when we were 13. Her subjects include the normal ones we did, as well as religion, something to do with science and technology which she doesn’t seem to excel at and I have my doubts about her teachers for this subject. Also, as with Beth, on top of the standard French syllabus, Alex is doing 2 English subjects and- as expected of French school- a ‘second language’, of German. It’s a heavy load. She is really happy though that one of her English teachers is a lovely South African. If it wasn’t for her English classes, Alex would possibly be more difficult to encourage getting to school every day. Nonetheless, my Alex makes me so incredibly proud of her maturity in dealing with these new family challenges, and I can’t help but be grateful for the polar oppose personality traits of my 2 girls. It certainly provides a good balance in our home.
Travel:
This year we have stayed very local. We were able to take in Paris twice. The first trip was for an new passport for Alex in February and we were lucky to have much better weather this time than when we did this passport run for her back in 2014. Anton and I did a second overnight run back to a Paris in April. We were lucky enough to find some cheap train tickets, so we did our civil responsibility as a tribute to our Green Mamba passport and went to vote. One thing is for certain- Paris in the spring is well worth the trip. And of course, since we were sans les enfants we did things we can’t normally do when we have them, namely found our group of South African friends who were coincidentally in Paris, and we all joined up for a late, rather boozy lunch. Anton and I had a rather tight trip back to the station in order to be on time for our train, but we made it with time to spare for a coffee, and were back home in time to relieve our Italian friend of baby-sitting duties.
Later on, in early June, before the first set of la canicules arrived, we drove across to Luxembourg for the annual cricket match that the Strollers play there. Since the cricket field in Lux is beautifully green, I was asked to take photos that day. I think I missed out on some good cricket though, since I really did spend 6 hours behind my camera lens. That being said, the young energetic mostly Asian team was very happy for those photos- I saw many of them being used as Facebook profiles in the days after I sent them out. We slept over in the lovely (although very commercial) Novotel on the Kirschberg that night, and spent the next morning touristing around Lux since the weather was so brilliant. Luxembourg is a fortresses, walled city. Parts of it sit on a hill, parts of it sit below at the river. I was suitably impressed at this ancient towering walls that were erected in medieval times, which still form an intrinsic part of the city, despite the huge amount of low taxed wealth that sees a horizon of new shiny buildings for the skyline. In case you ever need a reason to visit Lux, it’s a UNESCO heritage site if you’re in any way inclined to travel the world in search of such places.
Read Blog Summer in France should you want to find out about our French summer holiday. You saw all the photos I flooded onto my social media pages, and perhaps you want to get a better idea of where we were.
It wasn’t much after our trip that we became all very excited at the arrival of imminent visitors in the form of Antons’ parents. Since they had no real objectives to travel anywhere else in Europe, we all got to enjoy their company and they got to see all the sights that this city has to offer. It was very sad saying goodbye after 3 weeks, although it has left Alex and Beth asking often when the rest of the family is going to come and visit.
Work for Anton and I seems to have been pretty uneventful this year. Anton has had a few trips to boring places. I say boring, only because he’s kept very busy while there and doesn’t get to see any parts of the cities he’s been to. He does continue to be the best trainer that Ortho has in Strasbourg so that makes me proud.
Mine has been the same as last year, the only challenges being those very busy nights of Champions League and St Paddy’s. It turns out that my ‘head chef’ is a borderline alcoholic and he flips between moments of incredible glory and downright shame in his inability to arrive at work on time. (In my opinion anyway). I’ve tried to speak to the owner about what we have to deal with but sadly it falls on deaf ears.
Should I look around for a new job? I’m not sure it’s the best solution for me as a 42 year old mother and wife. A friend who used to work with me was telling me about her new colleagues, how these young 28 year old Head Chefs demand to be called “Chef” and they’re arrogant and self-important. Why would I want to put myself in that situation? And so we head into year 3 at Kellys SĂbĂn, ready to flip another thousand odd burger patties and entice the French to enjoy Malva Pudding (which I have had some success with this year already).
Christmas is the day after tomorrow, and I feel that I’m not fully prepared for it this year. I am looking forward to a more social Christmas this year with South African friends coming over for lunch. We will have a home full of little children and their laughter so even though I haven’t made tons of biscuits or sent cards to my neighbours, I did at least write some cards and I posted them to friends who no longer live in Strasbourg.
Speaking of Christmas, let me take this moment before I sign off to wish you and your family a very Happy Christmas. May there be joy and happiness and love to fill your hearts for the year to come. Many 2020 bring you success and prosperity. Our love and best wishes, always and forever,
Love Gaenor, Anton, Alex and Beth.
Pinot, Bretzels, and Cathedrals 