IHOP

As in International House Of Pizza.
This week we met up with the international-Anglo crowd for dinner.
The 4 of us, Felix, Susi, Julius (the Germans who sound Australian), Radika and Lea (Aussies), and Leoni, Anthony and their 3 kids Larry, Isolde, and Persephone (Aussie-French, by way of London, Brussels, and Paris).
We all speak french with accents that vary in quality and we all speak english better than french.
The pizzeria in Moulis (near the lab) is a great place for us to all meet and have a good time being expats - business is not so hot at the pizzeria, so we have the place to ourselves and the kids can be wild, make noise, and have fun. The pizzeria also has a big platform with kids toys surrounding an immense fish tank (that has written on it "Don't tap the glass. It scares the fish and they die"...surrounded by kids toys....and an army of 2-5 year olds...who can't read....and you wonder why they are going out of business?). Good fun!
The kids had a great time and stayed up playing WAY past their bed times (and ours) for a weeknight.

 

 Despite the international influence, Adrien is now speaking more French than English. That means that I have started to reconsider my 'speak to the kids in French' strategy that I adopted in hopes that it would help them be bilingual. But school is pushing Adrien's language skills to new limits. They have this system where 1 or 2 times a week, you write in a little notebook (and/or paste pictures) to tell the teacher what your kid has been up to...and the teacher can use that to coax a discussion out of your kid and work on language skills (at 3 years old...!!). The teacher also puts in information about what the kids did that week with something to get your kid to talk about class a bit - and avoid that "what did you do today?" - "nothing...I dunno"! So with all that extra french input, my bilingual strategy might have to entail English with me!