At La Maison de Retraite

Sophie showing off her creation


Last week Sophie's class had a field trip to a retirement home. The goal was to hand out ornaments made by the children, make a treat (dates stuffed with marzipan) and sing some Christmas songs.

After passing out their handmade ornaments, the kids and "aged people" as they say in French donned plastic gloves and began cutting open the sticky dates. The ladies (I say ladies because there was not ONE man there) did most of the cutting, thank goodness.

But there was no marzipan (pate d'amandes) because none had arrived in the truck that made the daily deliveries to the home. So there was a lot of staring off into space, playing with sticky gloves and aged people worrying about what they were supposed to do next.

Finally someone made a grocery store run and saved the day, and most of the dates were eaten, save a few (like when I offered some to a very old lady in a wheel chair and she snipped back at me, "I didn't order anything.")

After everything was finished, the kids drank grenadine mixed with water (so gross!) and the directrice gave them all chocolates and huge tubes of Smarties. I'm not sure who got the better end of the deal!


Giorgios giving a lady a Christmas ornament