Tidbits

*Summer's over. Karolina, the kids' neighbor friend, was My Summer Lifesaver. When she was visiting her native Poland for two weeks in August we all nearly expired. She is an absolute delight and we pretty much can't live without her sparkling personality (and her entertainment of my children on the playground for hours on end). Her mom is one of my favorites, too. We are lucky to have good neighbors that we get to see everyday. Here they are enjoying the trampoline park in Merl and a walk in the woods behind our house.

*We visited Adam at work for lunch only once this summer. Why not more? I'm asking myself now. We went for a walk around the Grund afterward. The Grund is in the lower part of Luxembourg City. It's a lovely area. (His office is on the right.)

*The Amazon company party was a great time, as per usual. Bouncy houses, face painting, food, friends. That's Sienna on the climbing wall. 

*The Schueberfouer is a 675 year old carnival that comes to Luxembourg every year. It's a great time. The entrance is free but the rides are a million euros, so I planned accordingly and made sure the kids knew we were doing the budget-friendly version of Schueberfouer. It worked out pretty well except for the one tantrum Noah threw at the end where he was yelling at me and stomping on my feet. Actually not the worst end to a couple hours of "trying to have fun with kids" I've ever had.

*We went to Nancy, France for Stake Conference. It's about 1.5 hours away. It's got a beautiful town square and a large park next to it where we played with ward friends for several hours. 

 Adam went for a long bike ride while we were playing at the park. He had to gear up for his big cycling trip to France. More in a post on that later. He met us at the town square in the afternoon.

Nancy, France is known for starting the popularization of the macaron. While the cookies originated in Italy and can be traced to Venetian monasteries in the 8th century A.D., they were brought to France in 1533 by a pastry chef of Catherine de' Medici upon her marriage to the king of France, Henry II. In 1792, two Carmelite nuns, seeking asylum in Nancy during the French Revolution, baked and sold the macaron cookies to help pay for their housing. These nuns became known as the "Macaron Sisters." In these early days the cookies were sold without special flavorings or fillings.

I went to the shop that still sells their original cookies. Macarons des Soeurs means "sisters macarons."

Here's a picture of them before I gobbled them all up. They are light and crisp and chewy and almond flavored. Really yummy and really addictive. I went down a Wikipedia rabbit-hole researching more about these cookies. If you're wondering about my main question - what's the difference between a macaroon and a macaron - look no further: Macaron is simply the French spelling and macaroon is simply the English spelling. There are hundreds of different types of the cookies in many different countries. Fascinating gastronomy! 

 Most of our ward stayed in the fabulous Hotel Ariane. Adam and I brought our ear plugs because we knew there'd be plenty of not-sleeping kids on either side of our paper-thin walls. It was ward bonding at its finest. We all took turns with kids during different sessions. The dads took the kids to McDonalds while the moms went to the adult session. For dinner we ordered Dominos pizza online and ate weird candy and played card games until late. Our ward sang La Priere d'un Enfant (A Child's Prayer) in French in front of the whole stake. Otherwise it was a fairly normal general session of stake conference. The meeting was in French and we wore headsets. I taught Sienna how to play tic-tac-toe and the dots/squares game on paper. These were the main games I played during church growing up with my own siblings, so it was fun to re-live that with my own child.

 *School started on September 15! I thought we were the last but poor Seattle brought up the rear a week later due to teacher strikes. Here they are in front of our apartment door on the first day. Noah is in K1/preschool (Cycle 1.1) and Sienna is in 1st grade (Cycle 2.1). Noah will learn Luxembourgish and Sienna starts German now. Helping with homework has been okay so far. Noah doesn't have any, most of his day is just play. Sienna gets extra help from a German teacher at school and I use Google Translate at night to help her say a bunch of words and then she works on writing her letters and numbers. Sienna was doing much more complicated things at the end of kindergarten in Seattle, so at this rate, they'll both be quite behind when we return to the states. I'm trying not to think about that right now. We'll just soak up whatever language we can and it will be good enough.

 This in front of Sienna's school.

 Here she is at her desk on the first day. There is one girl in her class who speaks English but I think that's it.

I got off to a rocky start with Noah's teacher. She is extraordinarily picky when it comes to everything and she's had to teach me what a proper snack is. No Bugles and no pretzels. Nothing salty. It's supposed to be like breakfast, so fruit, yogurt, a granola bar, cornflakes. I'm trying not to let it bug me. #deepbreathsdeepbreathsdeepbreaths 

The alternate snack given by his teacher instead of Bugles? I don't know, but he described it as "a cookie." Weird.

One more odd school thing: I'd booked a cottage in France during a time the kids didn't have school off in the middle of October thinking I could just take them out. Not so! I had to write a letter to the school president of our community schools and request the time off. His letter back said that he could not grant my request. He needed more documents that were "motivated." I was luckily able to switch the days of our cottage rental so I didn't have to go back to him, but phew! I'll have to keep that in mind for next time. The Luxembourgers are serious about school attendance.

 *Sienna started gymnastics. Noah did, too, but let's not talk about that (unless you want to talk about monumental tantrums). For now, it's only Sienna. And that is the way we will keep it for awhile.

*The ward gals are so fun. We had a girls' night out recently where we all met at a grocery store and walked around and told each other what we bought. Sounds weird but it was so helpful! Especially because one of them is an American woman who's married to a native Luxembourger so she gets all the inside tips from her in-laws. Then we had dinner at Vapiano's, a great little spot where you can order at a counter, watch them cook it, then bring it to your table. I ordered shrimp risotto and I understood a lot of what they were asking me while they were making it! My Rosetta Stone/ DuoLingo/ Coffee Break French podcast have been helping! A little! But every bit of understanding helps a lot. Our relocation lady took us to this same place when Adam and I were house hunting and it's safe to say back then I understood nil. Or shall we say rien. 

 Someone told me to put balsamic vinegar in a basil leaf and dip my bread in it. I never caught the second piece of her demonstration so I have no idea why she told me to do it.

 *Me and Nobes on our apartment elevator.

 *A few Sundays ago Adam had the car and I wanted to take the bus to church with the kids. At the last minute, I figured out that one of the bus lines wouldn't work that day due to construction. I Googled "English-speaking Christian churches Luxembourg" and found one so we bussed it there that day. We walked through a part of the city that had a ton of graffiti. Church was nice; they met in an auditorium at the International School of Luxembourg, they sang hymns and prayed and sent around a collection bag. The kids had their own classes. Then we left. It was good. I've always wanted to go church hopping and I don't think this'll be my last time. It's nice to mix it up every once in awhile. My favorite hymn we sang was called "The Rugged Cross of Jesus."