Miscellany

Well, I'm back to work, as of yesterday. It's kinda nice to come back to a familiar routine.

While I'm thinking about it (and before I forget again)... we had soup last night. That's not unusual, but I had said before that I'd post about the food from time to time in the hopes of being able to re-create it (or at least imitate it) once I'm home again. So last night, we had soup. Homemade soup. That's not unusual either. It turned out pretty tasty and this is what it was composed of: one leek, one small zucchini, three small to medium potatoes and three medium to large carrots. These were all peeled and cut into large-ish pieces, put in a large pot, barely covered with water, and boiled until mushy. Then, with a handy dandy machine that they have here, it was all mashed up... no... pureed... yeah, that sounds more appetizing. Add a bit of salt and 'mange.' Pretty good!!

Another thing that I've been meaning to say and never remember when I go to say it is that I have observed that European children play castles and medieval times the way American children play cowboys and Indians (or house, if they're girls). This makes perfect sense, but I never really thought about it before I was here. The boys here have a HUGE collection of knight toys and figurines. The nine-year-old has a castle theme on his duvet. In another family I met, the children all had dress-up costumes as medieval characters. Princesses and/or ladies-in-waiting for the girls and knights for the boys. They even had a pop-up tent/castle! :)

And one more completely unrelated thing. This made me laugh... I was teaching Jacques and Alban English tonight. (I was trying, anyway. The latter was particularly uncooperative.) I was one-on-one with Jacques and, after doing some reading in English, I was teaching him the phrase "my name is __________." So, since we were 'speaking' English, I told him to say, "My name is James." (That's what his dad calls him when talking to him in English... after all, that's the translation of 'Jacques.') Without missing a beat, he said, "My name is Bond. James Bond." I had to laugh. That was so unexpected! After that, he switched to, "My name is Smith. James Smith." He's such a crack-up! If it's not one thing, it's another... he can almost always make me laugh.