The Universal Language of Zumba®

It may sound silly but some of the most mundane activities can be incredibly intimidating in a foreign country.  Until now, most of my time and effort has gone towards unpacking and setting up a new house, in addition to ensuring two small kids are fed, clean, changed and happy.  Almost all of these things have taken place within the confines of our new home.  Although they are important, it also is a very safe place little interaction with the outside world is needed.  Sometimes too safe.

As things become more settled, I have to work on integrating into a new culture and starting a new life here.  Challenge number one?  Enroll in the gym down the street.  Although I postponed it a bit, I finally muster up the confidence to go in.  Cool - I start a monthly membership without too much confusion on my part (though I practiced on Jean beforehand).  I decide to try out a group class.  I thought I'd attempt to go under the radar by hanging out in the back so I take a place near the far wall.  As the instructor walks in, I find out that was actually the FRONT of the class.  Too late, can't make a dash for the back...it would be too obvious.  Then he blares the music and puts on his microphone.  Let the real French challenge begin!  It's really not too bad as I try and follow along as much as possible.  I'm actually surprised by how much I understand despite the music and the microphone cutting out every 5 seconds.  I mean squats are squats, whether or not you understand every word of instruction that comes along with them.  Then he starts talking to me directly in front of the class, obviously trying to correct something I am doing.  Let's see - French language coming from a crappy microphone, blaring hip-hop music and that deer in the headlight feeling that comes from being singled out by an exercise instructor in a class.  I try a couple totally random modifications until one must have done it.  Phew...crisis averted.

I feel great at the end of the class.  Partly because it was a decent work out but also because I ventured out of my safety zone and came away relatively unscathed.  Not a bad confidence booster.  I check out the schedule of classes and see there are many of them that take place in the pool.  Interesting concept.  One of the most popular ones?  Aquabiking.  Yes - a spinning class under water.  Don't believe me.  Check this out:

Also in the same category - aquastep and aquaboxing.  I kid you not.  Not sure I'm up for that much of an adventure so I stick to one of the classes on the list that I know best - Zumba.  I mean when you trademark a workout, you can pretty much guarantee it's the same no matter what continent you're on.  When I enter the Zumba class, I proudly march up to the front of the class (that I am now sure of) and do pretty much the same workout as I did last month and Mike's Fitness back in Boston.  Pretty cool.  Zumba - bridging cultures since 2001.

Oh, another interesting class on the schedule on Monday nights at 7:30pm...Cocktail Fitness Stretch.  Yes, I wrote that right.  I'm not totally certain what it's all about but I can't help but imagining people in "dressy" spandex outfits reaching across a table to grab an hors d'oeuvre.  I might have to check that one out just to report back.     

      

Let the unpacking begin!

And our things have arrived.  I have to say I was a pretty excited to see to see the truck pull up.  One by one they would unwrap each item right off the truck and we'd get a glimpse (as would the rest of the neighborhood) of our belongings. From beginning to end, it took 3 men just one hour to unload it all.  And then they left in a hurry to get to Switzerland to get to their next delivery before customs closed for the day.

I don't think I was ready for the emotions that followed.  I remember walking past what will be our guest/playroom and seeing all the kids toys peeking out of half opened boxes.  I was overcome by an incredible sense of sadness.  I couldn't totally understand why.   I could see the paints that Audrey loved drawing with.  Or the table and chair set that our good friend Stacy helped me put together one night.  The large basked of random toys that I'd be constantly picking up off our old living room floor. And then it hit me...here are the belongings from our home in Boston that are sitting in our new place in France. I say new place because it doesn't totally seem like home yet.  Its as if our most precious memories are now against the backdrop of an empty room making them seem incredibly out of place.  Don't get me wrong - this is nothing related to not liking it here.  It's just that both Jean and I know that the house we are renting is just a temporary arrangement.  In the next year or so, we hope to be in a place of our own.  So here we are, trying to surround ourselves by our memory filled belongings while making as few holes as possible on the blank white walls.  It's a strange feeling of transition.  But I am glad I can identify where to sadness is coming from in order to make sense of it.

We unpacked a couple boxes yesterday afternoon and woke up this morning to a house still overrun by boxes.  After breakfast we both tried unpacking more stuff.  I found that we were both feeling stressed and and a little overwhelmed and started getting a little short with each other.  Just then, I see Thomas and Audrey in the corner of the dining room.  Audrey somehow has Thomas giggling hysterically the way that 8 month old babies do when you repeat some mildy funny thing over and over again.  It hit me that they are perfectly happy in the midst of the chaos and disorganization.  Jean and I stop the unpacking we are doing and vow to live in a state of disorder for weeks to come to enjoy the laughter.  No need to hurry in getting everything unpacked.  It will all happen in good time.

Oh...and also like every 8 month old, Thomas has found the packing paper for the boxes much more entertaining than the toys themselves. Cliché, I know. Yet another reason to leave those boxes of toys in the garage for a little longer.

Raising resiliance

I've learned a lot about my kids in the last month.  As parents, we think we have a pretty good idea of our children's capabilities.  And then they surprise us.

We packed up many of our belongings 6 weeks ago to ship them by boat to have here in France.  We left our big furniture but packed up the a lot of the rest.  Truthfully, it wasn't worth the cost of shipping it but there's a lot of sentimental value many of these items, especially those that belong to the kids.  When the packers were gone, Audrey's room was completely bare, except for a borrowed mattress on the floor.  I thought she'd flip out when she saw the bare room for the first time.  But she didn't.  Instead she ran around in circles in the empty space that once housed her bed, dresser, books and toys as if she had been waiting for this freedom for a while!  Over the past six weeks she's slept on a variety of mattresses, blankets or cushions never once complaining.  We brought with us a small box of toys that has entertained both kids since the movers took the rest of them.  Audrey has yet to ask for any of the toys that were packed up.  She has remained content with the few that we brought and some others that have been borrowed.  Both kids have a suitcase of full of clothes in their room even though I haven't even made it half way though the piles.

Although I am looking forward to the arrival of our belongings tomorrow, I realize how many of those things are not as necessary as I first thought.  We paid by volume so I was careful to sort through what we didn't need any longer to have only the essentials.  However, I realize that there is a significant portion of the goods that I am dreading seeing tomorrow even though a month and a half ago I thought I couldn't do without them.  It's funny how living without these things made me realize just that - we can live without them.   I'm thinking of just leaving much of it boxed up and pulling things out little by little (if at all!).

Audrey and Thomas have been perfectly happy without all those extras that are soon to arrive.  The move has made me see how resilient and adaptable kids can be, much more so than adults at times.  Although I didn't plan it, I have enjoyed seeing how our transition has turned things upside down for the kids, but they are able to take it in stride and adapt to their new surroundings.  I can't help but think that this is building their resilience and setting them up for adapting for other changes later in life.

I've attached a picture of Audrey's last night in her bare room.  It's ironic how hard it was to get her to sit still and stop playing around on the her "bed" for me to take the picture.

Wish us luck on the unpacking!!

    

   

Audrey's (almost) first day of school

We've been prepping Audrey for quite a while about her entry into her new French "school".  We were able to secure her a spot in the garderie, what seems to be a mix between a daycare and preschool by American standards.  From what we've heard, it's often hard to get a spot and the quality of care that is offered is exceptional.  We signed her up months before moving to France and have been looking forward to seeing her flourish in this setting.

For the past week, we've talked about this first day of school much more.  I tell her, "Remember, you have to speak French at school.  How would you say hello?".  "I know, mama", she'd respond with a snide smile.  "I say bonjour!"  Too cute really.  She was incredibly excited about the whole adventure.

So the day arrived.  We set an alarm clock (for the first time in 2.5 years!) just to make sure we wouldn't oversleep (which unfortunately never happens with the two kiddos). We can't stop talking about school while  eating breakfast that morning.  We jump in the car and take a 5 minute drive to the garderie. Parking right in front, her eyes light up when we show her the playground they have.  We get buzzed in by the director who seems a little surprised to see us.  "This is Audrey Sprauer" I say (in French of course).  "It's her first day here".  Silence...not a good sign.  Seems she failed to tell us that there's a bunch of administrative items that need to take place first.  School will have to wait it seems.  We have a brief chat with the director in her office where we are given a stack of paperwork to fill out and a long list of more paperwork that needs to be submitted.  Unfortunately, more than half of it are items we don't have quite yet : medical consent from her doctor (that we don't have), French tax forms (that are in the container of items being held in Customs in Belgium), and a bunch of other legal documents that were on our "do to" list.  Unfortunately for many of those legal documents, there is a list of other documents necessary to obtain each one. Sigh.

We leave with an appointment for later in the week to come back with as much of this paperwork as possible.  We exit the building with a stack of papers and a pretty sad girl.  She keeps looking back at the building saying, "I want school, mama". Heartbreaking.  That sweet, sad face put her dad in motion knocking off almost all those needed documents in less than 24 hours.  The first of which was a walk in appointment with a doctor who examined both kids and did all of Audrey's medical paperwork - less than an hour after leaving the school that morning!

Tomorrow we'll head out again with our stack of paperwork in hand.  We'll keep a the school talk to a minimum for now, until we have more certainty.  Here's hoping she'll be playing on her new playground next week.

So here is her (almost) first day of school picture we took.  To be followed by her REAL first day of school picture very soon.

Closets? Who needs closets??

We are currently renting a 1300 sq foot house.  I was super excited about sprawling out given its considerably bigger than our Boston apartment.  Plus with 3 bedrooms, it means that Jean and I can have our own bedroom again.  While I enjoyed having Thomas in our room for the first 6 months, I do not miss the days of tip toeing into a dark room at night and sneaking under the covers to play my Words with Friends games while trying to stay as still as humanly possible.  Now we can read at night with the light on. It's a welcome change.

When we first did the walk though of the house the day after we arrived, I couldn't help but feel the place was a little smaller than I was expecting.  Oh well, I thought...we'll make do.  We just need to be good about keeping our belongings to a minimum and optimize storage as much as possible.  Then it hits me - there are NO closets in this place.  I don't mean small closets, I mean not one to be found.  I feel like I had a mini panic attack.  In the US, closets are to homes as cup holders are to cars.  The more, the better.

Okay, I should have known this.  Looking back I never remember seeing many closets in any other houses.  But perhaps it never hit me because it wasn't my house (or my things to store!).  So, what's the solution?  Armoires!  Ironically I have always found that word hard to say in English.  Perhaps because it is something the French have perfected!  I have always seen these massive wooden pieces at houses here in France but it never registered that these are used in lieu of closets. Oh, and when I say massive, I mean MASSIVE.  When moving into our new place, Jean talked about taking the old armorire that was in his room.  For the life of me I could not imagine how it could ever be moved without taking down some walls (the one in mention measures 8 feet high and 6 feet wide and easily weighs 500 pounds).  Imagine my shock when in just 20 minutes him and 2 friends have transformed this impressive piece of furniture into a neatly stacked pile of of wooden planks.  I couldn't believe my eyes.  Even more incredible is that there was not one nail or screw in the entire pile.  It was a masterly crafted jigsaw of wood pieced that can be assembled and dissembled incredibly easily.  Okay armoires - you have won me over.

I took a couple pictures of another armoire that belonged to Jean's grandmother that we moved into the front entryway area.  I will contain the contents of what formerly lived in our front closet (sporting goods, coats, shoes, baby carriers, etc.) along with MUCH more I'm sure.  Insane really.  We've found out that it was made for Jean's great great grandmother in the 1800's which is another kinda cool factoid.  Anyway, I think my new-found love of armoires is obvious.  And for the rooms that don't have armoires - well, there's always IKEA.

German mystery meat

Today we went shopping in Germany.  Okay..it's really just a 15 minute car ride but the prices on certain things are much better.  I've always felt like I could get the gist of written German - usually some semblance of an English word smashed in between some 15 other consonants.  Yah, not as easy as I was thinking it would be when doing a decent sized shopping trip.  Sure, paper towels and tissue are pretty obvious without reading the packages.  Luckily, Jean has decent German having grown up in Alsace but there were still a bunch of items that stumped us.  Bratwurst - yup, understood. Schweine - okay, sounds enough like swine to know its pork.  But Hinterkcochschinkin ? Although it could visually be classified as a meat product, we decided to stick with what we knew best.   Plus, with a curious toddler and a cranky infant in tow, it didn't give us much time to really think though the translations.  

Anyway, I picked up the sale circular to study for our next trip.  Better work on adding some words to my non existent German vocab.  It's funny how being totally lost in German got me excited to cross back into France where my conversational French now seemed markedly improved since breakfast! 

So maybe you think you could do better.  Here's a couple food items (all found in the meat section) that I'd love for you all to take a stab at:

Frühstükfleish?

Bruzzlkracher?

Grillfackeln?

Oh, if anyone is looking for sparkling wine in a can, the Lidl in Rheinau, Germany has them at a great price. Probably not a bad accompaniment for a Hinterkcochschinkin sandwich.

Chugging along

It's been a quiet, though busy couple of days. Nothing super exciting really - setting up cell phones, utilities, banking, etc. It's been just over a week since we arrived and looking back we've made an incredible amount of progress.  We survived jet lag, moved into our new place and started the slow progress of settling into our new life here. Audrey seems to understand the concept that she is living somewhere new call this our "new maison" and talking about her good friends back home who she'll be able to Skype but not see in person for a while.  For a 2 1/2 year old, she's really picking up on all this.

I think being here also has her more aware of the whole English versus French concept.  A good friend here unloaded a bunch of children's books in French on us.  Last night we were reading some of them and she grabs it from me saying, "No mama, I read this one.  It's French".  Hmmm...was that perhaps an insult to by French reading level?  I hope not.

I've attached a couple pictures of the town where we now reside.  It's a decent sized community just north of Strasbourg, the 7th largest city in France.  Lying right on the German border, it has a very distinct look to the town that's hard to mistake.  Today, I took Audrey out in the stroller a couple times and I could see how she seems to take in her new surroundings pointing at the corn fields and houses very different from those in Boston.  I reminded me of one of the main reasons we came to live in France - to expose the kids to new surroundings and expand the view of their world.  Time will only tell what impact this will have on them.  For the rest of you, below are some of the pictures that we captured on our walk today to give you a glimpse of our everyday life here in Alsace.

Enjoy!   

Pizza on the patio

The kids are finally getting over the jetlag it seems.  The first morning Audrey woke up at 11:15am.  Over the last few days its gotten progressively earlier with today's wake up just after 8am.  Truthfully, keeping two jetlagged kiddos fed, clean and content while getting settled has been exhausting.  Luckily we are making progress on all fronts - the kids getting on a more regular schedule and the house starting to take shape.

Our first night in the new place is one I will likely never forget.  We ran to Aldi to grab "just a couple things".  As we walked up and down the aisles, we began to realize how much we really needed.  We had not one drop of food in the house so we stocked up on the basics; sugar, oil, vinegar, bread, jelly, etc (note that "etc" is really some 40 more items).  We then grabbed pretty much one of everything as we went down the housewares/personal care aisles - sponges, cleaners, garbage bags, aluminum foil, saran wrap, dish detergent, shampoo, toothpaste.  The list goes on and on.  I don't think I have every moved into a house so empty handed.  It's a strange feeling to start with almost nothing.

The point of that shopping trip was actually to grab some food for dinner that night.  We had no cookware, utensils or fridge so we were a little limited.  After we left the store, we both looked at each other and decided that it was a great night for pizza. With no furniture to our names, we sat with the kids on the back patio and pulled apart (we had no knives) a "quatre saisons" pizza. Perhaps one of the most memorable dinners I'll ever have.

Although I miss family and friends deeply, I cannot help but be excited about this new adventure we have embarked on.  It's wonderful how this blog is helping to share these experiences with those we miss so much.

Home sweet home

We've arrived safe and sound but the trip was not an easy one.  We we minutes from missing our flight out of Boston and almost missed our connection in Iceland.  The good thing is people really get out of your way when they see a couple running with two kids though the airport.  Good for us, I suppose.

The last 48 hours have been a good mix of catching up on missed sleep, visiting and relaxing with family and trying to set up our new house.  We have rented a house in La Wantzenau, the town where Jean grew up some 20 minutes north of Strasbourg.  Much to my surprise, most rentals come with a "cuisine non-équipée" - meaning most major kitchen appliances are not included.  So this morning we grabbed a fridge and ordered a washing machine online.  We'll be doing dishes by hand for a while until we find a dishwasher we like at a decent price.  As I type, Jean and his buddies are taking over a first load of some furniture and the luggage we brought with us.  Our big furniture and other items should be arriving by boat in a couple weeks.  In case anyone was dying to track its trans-Atlantic voyage, here's the link. http://marinetraffic6.aegean.gr/ais/default.aspx?oldmmsi=538004599&zoom=10&olddate=lastknown#.   

We've spent the last two nights at my mother in law's house but we are hoping to "camp out" in our own place tonight.  It's exiting to put together our new house here piece by piece.  It's a nice mixture of items we brought along as well as those that have been in Jean's family for a while, along with a couple new purchases along the way.  It's definitely enough to keep us busy for a while!

Here are some spectacular pics of the current status of the house.  I think we'll be living in a state of dissarray  for weeks (or even months) to come!  Truthfully though, being with Jean and the kids makes anywhere feel like home.  

Putting my ducks in a row

Yes...we have arrived.  However, before we left I started drafting my reflection on my time in Boston.  I was hoping to finish it up and add some pictures while we were at the airport but things got insanely crazy and we barely made the flight.  So before I talk too much about our first days here let me finish what I started before our arrival.

I moved to Boston 10 years ago to complete my Dietetic Internship.  Why Boston, people ask? Jean and I were doing the long distance thing for 3 years before that and I thought I'd try to inch closer to him in France while finishing up the last step in becoming a dietitian.  One of my rotations had me in a community health center in an area of Boston called Jamaica Plain (JP).  I fell in love.  I was able to combine my love of nutrition counselling with a Latin American population, reminiscent of the summers I had spent in Latin America working on community health initiatives.  When Jean and I decided to marry, I found out that same community health center was hiring.  I have lived in Jamaica Plain ever since.

So what is it about Jamaica Plain that won me over?  For those of you who know the area its pretty obvious.  Its a diverse population and the people possess a strong sense of community.  There are green spaces have you feel as if you are miles away from a bustling major city.  When I first became pregnant with Audrey, I also found a highly organized network of mothers in Jamaica Plain to help me through my rite of passage into motherhood.  I have made some incredible friendships from this community of mothers and I find myself lucky to have been both the giving and receiving end of support and advice.  I cannot imagine my entry into motherhood in any other place.

Jean and I also used Jamaica Plain as the backdrop for our wedding.  We exchanged vows on the Arnold Arboretum, a breathtaking park  in JP.  Our reception took place at a JP landmark, the Milky Way - a quirky restaurant with candle pin bowling in the basement on salsa night.  We welcomed our two babies into our JP condo (a classic Boston triple decker).  Its the place we have made our life together.  I guess that's what makes it so hard to say goodbye.

I've shared some pictures we've taken of our beloved Jamaica Plain.  Though I hope we will have the same fondness for our new home, its hard to imagine a place that will come close to the love that we have for this community.  I hope to be proved wrong.