Monkeys on Ethan

Stasha's brother and his family spent the holidays in Morocco, away from their home in Boston. That's a pretty cool thing to do, since Boston must be a nightmare in the winter. Morocco used to be a French colony so they speak French there. I've never visited. Apparently while there they paid money to have monkeys on the head of their nine year-old son Ethan. Since one of the monkeys (in the background) was wearing a diaper, that suggests they cannot rate high on the trust factor. And with that I shall start another rant.

I've always been a big fan of monkeys. It was one of the first Cantonese words I learned when I was a Mormon missionary in Hong Kong in the early 90's and I used to feed them whenever we'd visit monkey mountain in Hong Kong. Monkey Mountain was quite a place. I bet there were a thousand monkeys living there, swinging from the trees. There are few place names more interesting and fun to say than "Monkey Mountain". But - as Stasha will tell you, since we lived there together for a short time in the late 90's - those monkeys were filthy, greedy and incredibly mean. You existed to serve them and if you failed to live up to expectations, look out.

The residents of Monkey Mountain looked a lot like the monkeys climbing on my nephew in this photo. They can't be trusted. They look innocent and harmless in the photo above but I can assure you that's a canard.

Right there while they were touching his head I guarantee they were hatching a plan to cause mayhem at some future moment, probably not too far distant. They're conniving and evil and all they want are peanuts and bananas and they'll do anything to get them. "By any means necessary."

I prefer the gentle residents of the mangroves of Borneo, otherwise known as Proboscis Monkeys. I have got to post separately about Proboscis Monkeys. And chimps. Chimps do funny things like wear suits and act in Fall Out Boy videos and pick fleas out of each others' skin. And Spider Monkeys, because the name "Spider Monkey" is almost as cool as "Monkey Mountain". I don't care so much for gorillas. They're very menacing and they do all that chest-beating. I'm not into that stuff. And I don't like baboons at all. Even baby baboons are evil-looking, they fight over carrion with vultures and jackals and they have those weird butts that are all different colors. It creeps me out. So in a relative sense I would say the monkeys in the photo above, while evil and greedy, are probably about average as monkeys go, in terms of likeability.

At least monkeys have hands. I've always thought it would be frustrating to be an animal and you don't really have any hands. You can't pick up money if you find it on the street, you can't hug your kids, and you're pretty much only good for running. Except sloths, but I guess technically they have hands. I've never seen a pig throw a ball. They probably exist just for meat anyway. Bacon is delicious even though it's incredibly fattening.

My brother-in-law said they paid 10 dhirams for the monkey photos. I guess that's the currency of Morocco. Whatever 10 dhirams is worth in dollars, it used to be worth half that because the dollar is so weak now. I'm disappointed that Bush doesn't do more to shore up our currency. I'm looking forward to getting a new president. It's not that Bush is a bad person or anything, but the last four years have just kind of been one mess after another. A lot of that is media-generated but sometimes the guy really could have been a bit smarter and more diplomatic about the way he went about things, don't you think?

The only problem is who to replace him with. Mitt Romney is the most qualified person from a business perspective but he's pandering so much to the religious right I can hardly stand it. And it's not going to work: those Southern Baptists are so bigoted it's incredible. Barack Obama would be a great choice to bring everybody together but his fiscal policies are no good. The dollar would probably drop to like fifty per pound if he took office. I still might root for him though. Giuliani is from New York and has been married like 68 times so he's out. McCain is a hundred years old and is just kind of ornery, though I can't blame him given where he lived for five years in the early 70's. He's probably the best choice given his frank honesty on almost everything. I really respect that. But a lot of people don't like him and at this point we need a president that most of us can really get behind together. On the other end of the spectrum we have Jonathon Edwards the Scheister. The dude would say he's against mothers if he thought it would get him elected.

Huckabee and all those other dudes with pocked faces (Richardson, that actor dude, etc) are just flashes in the pan. They'll be yesterday's news in a couple of weeks. Huckabee just has no chance, even if every born-again Christian in Iowa votes for him. What a joke. For one thing, his name isn't going to work. If you want to be President you have to have a name like George Washington or Abraham Lincoln or Monkey Mountain. Huckabee or Huckster or Scheister just aren't going to work.

And then there's Hillary. I don't like her at all. She's smart enough for the job and it would be great to have a woman president, but can't we find one with more of a personality than a cigar store Indian? Or a wet cat. A dead wet cat. And I'm so tired of seeing her brightly-colored pantsuits. I don't have a problem with women wearing pants, I mean my own wife wears them every day and I'm happy for her. But sometimes you have to do away with the pantsuits. I guarantee you in the 70's she had like a hundred polyester leisure suits in twenty different pastel shades. "Strong but with a feminine touch." Stuff like that doesn't play in 2008 baby. This whole election isn't for 10 months and I'm already exhausted by it.

Reagan was a good choice for everybody. Not that smart but a good delegator and always ready with a joke to poke fun at the Russians. We should bring him back. Or Jimmy Carter. He made everybody unhappy but at least he was honest. Has anyone noticed that Dick Cheney isn't running? I'm trying to think if Cheney's place in history will be more ignominious than Dan Quayle's. It's really a toss-up.

We don't manufacture anything in the US anymore anyway, so who is Bush kidding about us benefiting from a weak dollar because our goods are more affordable to foreign buyers? I'm not saying he's saying that, but why else would he take such a laissez-faire attitude toward our currency? Maybe he's too busy at his ranch in Crawford. I've never really cared that much for Texas. The whole "Don't Mess With Texas" thing is really overdone. I mean can we all just move on and agree that no one in the other 49 states cares about Texas and no one thinks Texas is tough and no one thinks anything is bigger in Texas, except maybe women's hair and people's waistlines? I can't stand that slogan. Maybe Texas should just be its own country. Bush can be president of that. The Texas White House can be in Crawford. Patty Sheehan can be secretary of state. All she does is follow him around anyway. And Ann Richards and her hair can be VP. She'd be better than Dan Quayle. Although I think she might be dead. No matter, so is Reagan and I'd still bring him back.

It's not like our steel needs to be cheaper so we can export it. And our cars are so ugly no one wants to drive them. Or they get like 2 miles to the gallon. If I ever saw a Buick in Europe I would eat my shirt. I'm so glad Oldsmobile went out of business. The only thing we manufacture anymore is intellectual property for information technology and pharmaceuticals, and that's basically immune to exchange rates.

So let's shore up the dollar and make it easier for Americans to buy summer houses in places like Morocco. Then we can hang out with monkeys all the time and it will be cheaper to just take your picture with them for 10d and have it cost like five cents, instead of having to feed them a bunch of peanuts and then when you run out of food they get mad and jump on your back and scare the living daylights out of you. Though it's not like that ever happened to me at monkey mountain or anything. I'm voting for Monkey Mountain for President. MM In 08. Hey I'm just trying to add content here.

Hey You! Yes You, The Australian People

We have this tracker on the blog that shows the general location of everyone that visits, and how often they stop by. The bigger the dot, the more the visits. For example, more people have visited from Phoenix than from anywhere else. Makes sense since we're from there. The next most common place is Nice, probably because I (Dave) visit this blog like 50 times a day because I never do anything.

There have been some visits from very interesting places the last few months, like the dude who visited from Dubai. Or the guy from Algeria. Or the lady from Iceland. I hope it was Bjork. Bjork's music is terrible but that video of her beating up that Japanese reporter a few years ago was incredible. I mean, out of nowhere she just went crazy.

But to me, the most interesting visitor of all is the dude - smack dab in the middle of Australia - who has visited this blog like a hundred times in the last few months. I mean, have any of you ever been to the middle of Australia? Yeah neither have I. The thing that fascinates me is that there's nothing around it for like a thousand miles. Other than New Guinea it might be the most isolated place on earth. But they have Internet there. And the dude that checks out this blog. Other than that it's pretty much just lizards, didgeridoos, and one huge red rock that's taller than the Tower of Babel and wider than Manhattan. Or something like that. Did the Tower of Babel ever really exist?

I know I'm crazy but I think about this visitor a lot. What's he doing (she?)? Why is he/she there? Does she get her food from the sand? How does the big rock look at sundown? And do you really think didgeridoos make good music? I mean, they look cool and all but they make sounds that are more irritating than the worst song by Bjork. And I've never seen a didgeridoo beat up a Japanese reporter, so there you go.

And while I'm at it, props go out to the dude just south of Perth, the dude in Brisbane, and the several people that have visted from Melbourne. As they say here in France, chapeau or 'hats off' to you. You visit more than people from Sydney, so thanks. People from Melbourne are better than people from Sydney anyway. Posers.

Anyway, thanks to all you Aussies for visiting. You comprise .42% of the world's population but you're on mind a lot more than that. If you wouldn't mind, post a comment or two so I can get answers to my questions and satisfy my curiosity about what's going on over there. And have a great day, ta.

Cars, Roads and Hot Rabbits

Imagine this, but with cars. Welcome to France.

Last Saturday night we had dinner with our friend Sabrina and her husband Olivier. We must write about this soon, as it shows one of the big differences between the French, who enjoy their meals, and Americans, who enjoy them in a much different way. I'll explain it some other time and we'll post some pictures, when we get them from Sabrina. It was a great meal.

Some longtime friends of Sabrina and Olivier were also at dinner: Merilynne and her husband Pierre, and Sabrina's friend Natasha. About halfway through our meal, which was four hours long, Merilynne asked me what are the biggest differences between the US and here. After asking "What did she say?" to Stasha, we talked about some differences in politics, that stores are open in the US more than six hours a day (and also on Sunday), and that people eat very differently in the US than they do in France. Then we also talked about how you can turn right on a red light in Arizona, but you can't do that in France.

Then we moved on to another subject, about how the Directeur at Abby's school, one single man in his late-40's called Monsieur Gyss, is constantly dating single mothers of children that attend the school. This is apparently because he's what's known as a "hot rabbit" in French, as well as a "profondeur". You can figure those out on your own.

But we should have continued to talk about turning right on red lights, because the differences between driving in the US and in the Cote d'Azur are staggering. I could go on all day about them. Basically it boils down to the fact that driving in the US is somewhat safe and driving in France is a near-death experience about half the time.

Roads in the Cote d'Azur are a challenge. The back lanes are incredibly narrow and the pavement is sometimes little more than rubble, having been taken over by expanding tree roots. Like most of Europe, the roads were built long before cars existed, and there are now many you can't even drive on. In the old village of Mougins, for example, cars are forbidden altogether, unless you live within the village walls. I can't describe how narrow these roads are. And we live on one. Some are less than eight feet wide: for cars going in both directions.

This creates problems that you can't even fathom in the United States. When driving the kids to school it's a normal thing to stop the car and pull into the entrance to someone's driveway just so the other car - going in the other direction - can pass. It's not so much a courtesy thing as a matter of survival: the roads are literally too narrow for two cars to pass each other while moving. And passing someone going your same direction is unthinkable. If the huge delivery truck in front of you is going 15 km an hour as it wheezes up a hill at a 30 degree angle, you just hang back and wait. And the roads are not straight. They basically look like this:

Only way, WAY more narrow.

A few months ago when Stasha smashed our car mirror on a tree, or a road sign, or a stone wall, or whatever it was (it all happens pretty fast), we went to Garage Raymondou to have it fixed. Here in France a "garage service center" for cars is sort of like Schumacher Mercedes Benz in Scottsdale, with just a couple of differences:

1. The whole place is less than a hundredth of the size of Schumacher. Usually it's a garage on the ground floor of somebody's house.
   
2. There is one guy working there. He lives there. When he goes out for groceries, the garage is no longer open.
   
3. There are probably no hydraulics at the place. Just one of those little beds on wheels that roll him under the car.
4. Almost no parts are at the garage. Everything gets ordered from somewhere else.
5. There's no free coffee. But since we don't drink coffee that's no big loss for us.
6. The guy at Garage Raymondou speaks French with such an odd accent - possibly a speech impediment - that I can't understand a word he says.

Other than that it's exactly like Schumacher. When Stasha broke the mirror I figured it would take the guy at Garage Raymondou a while to get the part that we needed, since he had to match the make and body style of a ten year-old BMW. But in fact he got the part and did the work in one day. Broken passenger side mirrors are so commonplace around here that they must have a huge warehouse somewhere stocked with millions of units of inventory. Anyway, driving is not something done for pleasure. Not for me anyway.

Dropping off Abby at school is always a bit of a challenge. The parking lot at her school has an entrance and an exit that are extremely narrow, just like the roads. All the cars (and all in a hurry) go in the entrance and exit the exit, on the other side of the parking lot. So inside the parking lot there is a distinct traffic pattern that's repeated every day by all who come and go. And the unwritten rules are not to be violated. You drive in, find a parking space, get out of your car while it's running, walk your child to the entrance gate (this is the Primary school, in which parents can't go in. Whereas at the Maternelle school we are required to walk the children all the way to their classrooms), walk back to your car and get in, look around to see if you can exit your parking space, since there's usually six to eight inches between you and the cars on either side of you, and then drive toward the exit.

Thus created, this very day, my first road rage experience in France. It was very tame by Arizona standards but is worth repeating anyway. But since I've written too much already, I shall post it another day...

How To Humiliate People 100 Years After Your Death

At left, Jules Verne, favorite son of Nantes, in about 1880. He was allowed to wear pants in this photo. No one stopped him.

The village where we live now, Mougins (pronounced "Moo ZHAN"), is in the extreme southeast of France, sort of the equivalent to Miami geographically. Last summer, when we first arrived in France and before ever coming to Mougins, we spent nearly a month in a city called Nantes (pronounced "NONT"), which is sort of the equivalent of Portland geographically. It's in the Northwest of France, so is a long way from Mougins. Although keep in mind that all of France is smaller than Texas. That part of France has a long, rich history so naturally Dave insisted we spend a bunch of time there. We had a lot of interesting experiences during that month, partly because we knew absolutely no one and Dave couldn't understand a word of French at that time. I was only slightly better. The below is from an email Dave sent to his brothers about an experience we had while in Nantes that typifies some of the cultural differences between here and the US. It happened one weekday early in August. I'll let him tell it.

We've been in Nantes for a few weeks and I really like it. I can't understand the traffic patterns, I get lost every day and nothing anybody says makes any sense, but the summer weather is great and there's lots of good stuff to see within reasonable driving distance. Like this. And this. And this. But there's only so much touring around the kids can stand, and so yesterday instead of visiting castles and Roman ruins, we took the kids to the main public pool in Nantes, called the "Piscine Jules Verne". Piscine is swimming pool in French and Jules Verne was a 19th century author from Nantes who wrote 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. They make a big deal out of the guy here. Sort of a favorite son thing I guess. A lot of dudes have written fairy tales so I don't know what the big deal is. But Jules Verne is everywhere in Nantes.

The kids are so used to swimming every day in Phoenix they've really missed it. I hesitated to go a public pool because I didn't really know where it was (so we would get lost going there), it's indoors, it's expensive, and public pools kind of creep me out, but of course we eventually do what they want because they're kids and we're parents and that's what happens when they keep asking for something. Boy was I in for a treat.

We arrived at noon, when they open. No business establishment in France ever seems to be open for very long, and this is no exception. It's summer, all the kids are out of school, and there is enormous demand for this pool. They're open every day from – get this - Noon until 4:30pm. I mean, are you kidding me?

We stood in line, paid our money, and went in to the locker room. It was like a room with a bunch of secret doors that didn't lead anywhere. The entire room seemed like just a bunch of thick yellow and blue melamine from floor to ceiling. Each cramped changing room had one door on each end, and the changing rooms were everywhere, so walking into the locker room was like walking into a maze of doors and walls. I couldn't figure out where I was. I couldn’t tell where anything led. It was very confusing.

Then, when I walked into the changing room (you couldn't get to the pool, which was in some unseeable, unknowable place very far away and very mysterious) I couldn't figure out how to lock the door. Turns out the door lock was by one's FEET. Sam found it. It was this long pole-like structure the same length as the length of the changing room. It had three fat dowels on each end attached to a circular piece of plastic. You had to grab one of the dowels and turn it counter-clockwise and it would partially cover and therefore (b)lock both doors (on each end) at the same time. It was seriously ridiculous. I mean absolutely ludicrous. But it worked.

So we changed into our swim trunks. I put on my very fancy, long polka dot twister swim trunks that make the ladies crazy. Sam was wearing his long Spiderman trunks. We looked tremendous. We found Stasha and the girls in the maze and blindly followed one corridor after another until we found the entrance to the pool. At the end of the maze, when you make it out, they give you a piece of cheese. I'm just kidding.

I walk out and basically see this:Piscine Jules Verne - Click on photo to look at the men in line for the waterslide.

So I was trying to figure out where to go. There were four or five pools of different shapes, sizes and heights, and they were all connected. And when I say "height", I don't mean "depth", I mean "height". One pool was here, another one was there, connected to it, but was set five or ten feet lower. The next one was the same way. There were big portholes in the side of this one or that one so you could see various people's legs showing up here and there (not as interesting as it might sound). The pools were apparently all supposed to serve different functions (i.e. lap pool, tide pool, waterslide pool, baby pool, etc etc), but everyone was everywhere doing whatever they wanted so it was all the same. Oh, and every pool was a different temperature. Hmmmmmmmmmm, I wonder which one had the most people in it?

I started walking toward one of the pools with Sam when an official-looking man stopped me. I could tell he was saying 'You can't go in the pool', it's "Interdit" (forbidden/prohibited),' but I had no idea why. When the French say "Interdit" it sounds a lot like "On dirty" so I looked down at my trunks thinking, "What, are they dirty? Did I have a very bad accident and not realize it?"

Then the guy proceeded to explain in English, to my absolute horror, that swimming trunks are not allowed. This not a joke. You can't wear swimming trunks at the Piscine Jules Verne in Nantes. No trunks. Do you understand what I'm saying to you? Yes, that's what I'm saying.

I could tell that arguing would only make me look like the ugly American, and he wasn't going to change his mind anyway, so I just slumped my shoulders and hung my head. He explained that neither Sam nor I were allowed to get into the pool, which was going to be a big issue for Sam. But then he said, "You can't even stay in here because you're wearing trunks, and other people will see you. We can't have that. So you must leave." Sam was about to cry because the man in charge had just he couldn't swim.

I'd already paid my $87 to get into the pool area, so I was thinking ‘how am I going to get my money back?’ when the guy held up one finger and said "Attendez". I know this means "wait a second", so I continued to stand there. He said"asdpiuqerkjafd" to a minion standing next to him, who promptly left. He must have understood the man. I sure didn’t.

About thirty seconds later the minion came back, holding two of the smallest, tightest, revealingest, mostly oily-bohunk Speedos that have EVER been made. And they're someone else's. Other men's penises have been in these Speedos. There's no way to know when or how often, but oh they've been there. Touching the very spots “I” would soon be touching. If I remember correctly, shortly before I vomited then fainted he said something like, "Put these on and you can stay".

Did I really have a choice? The kids had been crying for two weeks to go to the pool and now we were standing at the water's edge. So I took Sam's hand and we went back into the maze and found another changing room. This time I remembered how to lock the door. You just kick it.

I put Sam's Speedo on him. He was not happy about taking off Spiderman but he knew it was the only way to get into the pool so didn't say much. His suit was a hot little black number that was just a bit too large for him so there was some room between where the legs ended and where his privates began. You know, sort of like the dudes that wear those threadbare, stretched out tighty whities where the legholes have become too big for the legs that get put in them? Once, on a business trip, both my 55 year-old boss and I stayed at the house of a colleague who lived in the country we were visiting. One morning I was walking to the bathroom and my boss was walking back into his own bedroom. He was wearing nothing but a pair of old, yellowing tighty whities and the legs were all stretched out. To see that on a grown man was more than I could handle. That was a bad trip for me. My boss lost his job about four months after that. I've never quite recovered. Anyway, with Sam it was sort of like that, only this Speedo was a lot smaller.

Then I put on mine and walked out. It was kind of a blue color, but not just the boring regular blue that those doped-up, greased-up, hairless champion swimmers always wear. It was a gussied-up version with a little design that had varying shades of blue with daring green and red streaks on it. And it had been worn a LOT, so the fabric on the back wads fraying and had those tiny balls of fabric that form on any old piece of clothing. It was very soft to the touch. It's times like this that one wishes for dea…sorry; I mean acutely realizes that one's legs are similar to those of a fowl, why one never became an underwear model, etc.

So I walked out to swim. Since all the other guys out there were wearing something similar (although I can honestly say that - because they knew this was coming when they left their homes for Piscine Jules Verne, they had prepared and that – therefore – mine was the absolute worst suit in the whole place) and since I'm an adult, I said to myself 'OK I'm going to pretend this is normal and will not show my pain to the world lest I draw attention to it.'

This became difficult as soon as I saw Stasha. Her uproarious laughter and pointed finger drew more attention than I was looking for. I quietly asked her to stop and just turned my back on her. Sam ran off to go down the waterslide as I slinked into the nearest more-than-waist-deep pool, where I elected to remain for virtually the entire time. I did get out at one point, to go down the enormous indoor water slide. When I was standing in line for it Abby stood behind and looked me up and down. She didn’t say anything for what seemed like a long time as she stood there dripping and shivering, holding her hand to her mouth deep in thought. Finally, this: "I don't like that bathing suit. It looks dumb," she said. Great minds think alike, I guess.

By the way, I was also dripping and shivering, which further reduced my chances of looking like an underwear model. Sam, of course, forgot all about Spiderman and was having a great time. I didn't know where he was most of the time because it was a big place. However, several times during the next 90 minutes, which incidentally seemed like maybe twenty - or forty five hundred and twenty - hours, Sam ran by and said stuff like "Hey dad this Speedo isn't bad", then later, "Hey dad I think this Speedo is cool", etc. I think he thought he looked like "Dash" from The Incredibles. I disagreed.

At 2pm we had to leave. I got out of the pool and found Sam and the girls. We all walked back into the maze. I went into a changing room with Sam. I took off my Speedo and was about to put on my clothes when Sam started whining that he couldn't take off his suit. If you know five year-olds you know that voice that says "Dad it's time to drop everything and help me right now. RIGHT NOW." So there I stood, naked and shivering, kneeling on the freezing infested tile trying to undo the knot that had cinched itself in the drawstring during the last 90 minutes. It was cinched really tight and I was really hoping to get it undone quickly because I wasn't wearing any clothes and it was cold and I was in a maze in France and I'd just had to wear a Speedo for 90 minutes. In front of my children. In public. I got the string undone and was pulling the suit off his five year-old body and he looked down at me. "Dad", he said. "Can you buy me a Speedo?"

I English. I Not French.

Dave writing again. I spent all of last week in the US, first to visit my brother, and (later) to get some stuff in Phoenix that Stasha had to have from the US, like syrup. I’m back now. I looked pretty cool checking in for my return flight with two 49-pound bags filled with syrup, diapers and tampons. At least tampons aren’t heavy. Wish I could say the same thing about syrup. If you want to lose weight you should eschew syrup and just eat tampons. The pounds will just melt away.

But this isn’t why I’m writing. I was in Phoenix for three days and I stayed at my house. I observed three primary things:

1. French people don’t use air conditioning. At least not at my house, where the average daytime temperature in the house was between 86 and 88 degrees. Hotter on the 2^nd floor, since heat rises.
2. The house is so clean it’s like no one lives there. Perhaps stuff gets left out but it just disintegrates in the heat. Because there was nothing out of place.
3. The Ginefri kids can speak English.

I want to focus on this last point. 2+ months ago when we spent an evening with the Ginefris in Dijon it was impossible to communicate with the children. I spoke a little French (and by "little" I mean "basically none") but I couldn’t understand them when they spoke, and they didn’t speak any English. That was on August 20^th. Literally not one word. OK perhaps they could count to 20 but it was a joke. They spoke English like macaws.

Fast forward to November 2nd. I arrived last Thursday night and all the children were asleep. On Friday morning I went downstairs to where they were eating their breakfast, which consisted of Dig ‘em Smacks and toast dipped in milk for so long that it disintegrated when pulled from the bowl. Mmmmmm.

I looked at Max (4 ½ years old), ready to test him. “How are you Max?” I said in English. He didn’t really look up from slurping his cereal. “Good”, he said. “How are you?”

“What are you doing?” I asked. The response was slightly delayed and without total confidence, but he said it: “I’m eat breakfast”. And a minute later, with milk pouring out of his mouth: “I like cereal.” The pronunciation was perfect. He looked like an American. And a minute later: “You eat breakfast?”

Virginie was standing next to me. “It’s incredible”, I said to her in French. “A French child learning English in two months. How is this even possible?”

Max looked at me. “I English”, he said in English. “I not French. You’re French!” Then he laughed.

It was like that all weekend. He understood everything I said and – most of the time – could respond. The sentence structure was a bit lacking but I’m not sure what one can expect after 75 days. Certainly not what I witnessed. Clearly it really will all come in time.

Max’s 6-year old sister Margaux spoke a lot less, but she still understood me. I heard her translate my sentences to her father a few times. It was so incredible that I would never have believed it if I hadn’t personally witnessed it. I hope my kids can do the same. We are getting there.

No Iron Maiden Posters in Japan

Dave here. I'm back in France.

I want to talk about some things that happened as I was coming back from the US yesterday, but let me start by saying that it’s impossible to comprehend how big, and full of people, this world is.

When I was 15 years old I took my first trip outside the US, for three weeks to Japan as a foreign exchange student. The family I was staying with, the Inoues, from Himeji (near Osaka if that means anything), lived in a nice house in the suburbs. I don’t know where they actually lived because they drive on the wrong side of the road in Japan and it was so confusing that I never knew where I was. I also don’t know what the father did for work but it probably involved speaking Japanese, which seemed like a really hard thing to do when I was there. So he probably got paid a lot of money, for doing something so difficult. And their house was nice. He was a really nice guy, and very generous. He didn’t speak English and he smoked in the house and slurped his food at every meal and had jagged teeth, but he was a nice dude. The food slurping bothered me a little, but I later learned that that’s not considered impolite in Japan. Plus it was the 80’s.

From the outside their house was normal. Japanese, but pretty normal. But when they gave me a tour of the inside I noticed three things:

1. the house had no beds, because everyone slept on the floor
2. all the doors were sliding doors, on tracks in the floor that separated one room from another
3. the walls were made of paper

I couldn’t understand why anyone would want to live in a house with paper walls. If someone was in another room with the light on it would shine right in your eyes. Plus my Iron Maiden poster would never have worked on that wall. The tacks would have gone straight through it. No Iron Maiden posters in Japan. Perhaps that's why they invented Pokemon.

One Saturday Mr. Inoue and his son Takeshi took me to the city center in Himeji so I could see it for myself. As we stood together at a busy intersection waiting to cross the street, I looked around and for a moment tried to take in what I was seeing. There were literally thousands of people everywhere, milling about in a very small area. To my 15 year-old brain they were like ants, moving in all different directions, heads down on their way to something important at the time. Every one of them looked exactly the same to me. They were all short with round faces and thick black hair. The US is a pretty diverse place in terms of Mendelian Genetics. France is too. Japan is not.

I looked at the people and said to myself, “Every one of these people thinks he/she is the most important person on earth. But that can't be true because the most important person in the world is me. I’ve never seen or heard of any of them, they don’t mean anything to me, and I will never see them again after this moment.” For the first time I was trying to comprehend the size of this world, and that in the grand scheme of things I meant nothing. It was stretching my mind.

In the ensuing twenty years, the increasing accessibility of the world's corners has only brought its enormity into starker relief. Yesterday I was at the Mormon Church on 51st Avenue and Pinnacle Peak Road in Glendale, AZ. I spoke with Courtney Dana, Larissa Boden, Kim Easton, Matt Robinson, and Sam Andrus. They’re all different people leading totally different lives, but all are very nice. Courtney has an amazing sense of humor and is really fun to be around. But, frankly, I like all of them. Especially Larissa, who I would marry if she wasn’t so religious and if I wasn’t already married to someone I really like. Plus my wife speaks French now and Larissa doesn’t. So I guess it’s never going to work out between us.

Only a few hours after seeing these people at perhaps the most American of churches, I’m now on a train watching the French landscape change from the falling red and orange leaves in Paris to the vineyards, cypresses, scrub oaks and pines of Provence. Sitting next to me is Costa. Costa has a bit of wild look in his eyes, perhaps from not sleeping enough, or from drinking too much beer or (most likely) from smoking too much weed. The train ride from Paris is five hours long, so there is more time to talk to Costa than words I know in French. So we mostly ride in silence as I tap away on my computer. But he's a nice guy and he knows more about the TGV than I do. About an hour ago he helped me find an outlet - in the bathroom in our train car - so I could recharge my iPod. Since I had to keep my eye on the iPod we both sat outside the bathroom and chatted for twenty minutes while I waited for it to charge so I could go back to listening to Natalie Merchant. He just wanted to smoke.

“Is smoking allowed on the train?” I asked him, knowing perfectly well that it wasn’t. “No,” said Costa. “But the ride is five hours. I’ve been smoking for so long that I can’t go more than two hours without having a cigarette.” His red eyes darted around, looking for the “Controle", who are the guys that will throw you off the train if they catch you smoking.

Since he was smoking and I was recharging, we got to know each other. Costa was born in Puerto Rico and immigrated to France with his parents when he was three years old. The rest of his family – grandparents and cousins – immigrated to Los Angeles about the same time. Thirty years and eight billion self-rolled cigarettes later, Costa is now working in an industry that has something to do with food. I think he’s a cook. I’m not sure. “I’ve been to California twice,” he said. But there’s no point going again because I can’t speak English and no one there speaks French. So I don’t see my grandparents and cousins anymore.”

“Do you speak Spanish?” I asked. “Pas du tout,” he responded. “I only speak French at six million miles per hour.” I’m not sure he said that last part but he might have. I wouldn’t have understood him if he did.

“I don’t get it,” I said. “Your parents are from Puerto Rico. Why don’t you speak Spanish?”

“Vous devez demander à mon parents,” he responded. “When we came to France I think they decided I needed to learn French and so they encouraged me to speak it as often as possible, even at home. By the time I was a teen-ager I would only speak to them in French and since I became an adult I’ve forgotten most of the Spanish that I once knew.”

I explained to him why Stasha and I have come here, and that I hope the kids can learn French better than I'll ever be able to. “Oh they will,” he responded. If I can learn it then they will for sure. I wish you the best of luck in your experience.” I got up to retrieve my iPod just as the train reached our first stop: Toulon, a town about an hour from Mougins. A lot of people got off the train and left empty seats behind them. Looking for extra space, Costa grabbed his stuff and went and found an empty seat in another car. In an hour I will get off the train in Cannes and he will continue on to Nice, fifteen miles further up the track. I will never see him again.

The French Heart

Dave writing again. As you know, Stasha tries to use this blog to post some of the most interesting - and hopefully funny - things that happen to us as part of this experience. There has been much to talk about.

But life is instead sometimes tragic and that is the case in our family this week. Since many that read this blog are already aware of what has happened, and those that don't know may soon find out anyway, it seems that the right thing is to be up front about what has happened and then try to move on as much as is possible.

My younger brother has twin boys that are nearly 18 months old. A few days ago, without anyone noticing, they went into an upstairs bathroom, climbed into a tub and turned on the water. We don't really know what happened, except that they drowned within a few minutes, and both boys died yesterday morning [Update: You can read more details here, in the Washington Post].

This could happen to anyone.

There is no point in trying to describe the anguish in my family at this time, and particularly for my brother and his wife Melinda. I am deeply affected by this, and yesterday explained to several friends why I must suddenly return to the United States. Though Stasha and I told few people, the word got around quickly. The response has further opened our eyes to the people that surround us.

Sophie's teacher at school, Madame Brigitte, found us after school yesterday to say she had been thinking of our family all day. Lawrence, the mother of one of Sophie and Sam's friends came up to me with tears in her eyes and said "my heart is with your sister-in-law and your brother". Another friend, Stephanie’s husband Pierre, called from Marrakesh, Morocco where he often works, to relay his deep sympathy to Paul and to my sister-in-law. And this morning I received the below from the Decemmes, who (you may remember from an earlier posting) we went hiking with a few weeks ago. Chris Decemme is the artist of the painting you see at the top of this post. It hangs in the house here in Mougins. She learned to paint in her late 60’s.

Nous sommes très tristes du drame que votre famille subit en ce moment. Nous prenons part a votre grande peine et vous souhaitons beaucoup de courage , ainsi que a la famille de votre frere, c’est vraiment horrible. Nous vous embrassons de tout coeur. Chris & Paul

We are extremely saddened to hear of the tragedy that your family must suddenly endure at this time. We extend to you our greatest sympathies and hope that you may have great courage, as well as to your brother and his family, for which this is a horrible tragedy. We embrace you with all our hearts.

This is typical of the kind of people that live near us. Just like in the United States.

In the end, the joy of life is determined not by where we live or what god we believe in but by the quality of our relationships with the people that surround us. Each of us may spend our lives emphasizing the differences between us and others, or we can embrace those small differences and also find joy in the endless similarities that exist between us and those we live among, whether in our neighborhood or on this planet. Focusing on those similarities brings great happiness into others’ lives, as they feel embraced by the acceptance that is imparted to them, and respond in kind. The French have treated us this way from the moment we have arrived and we have responded. We will not forget it.

If you want to express sympathies to my brother and/or his wife, please post a comment below and I will forward it to him. The most touching expressions of sympathy often come from people we don’t know, because it further humanizes those we might otherwise dismiss as faceless. And it reminds us that we are all the same, no matter how hard distance, language, culture and religion may try to teach us otherwise.

I suspect that after this weekend we will try to get back on track with normal updates. There are so many beautiful things that happen here; perhaps the quickest way back to happiness is to focus on them. We'll try to do that.

Just Like an Indian Telemarketer

My husband Dave is our guest writer for this post. He has a lot to say.

When I was 15 years old I went to Japan for a few weeks as a foreign exchange student. The father of my host family was a teacher at a girls’ school and one day he brought me to his class. About halfway through the day he took everyone to the gym to play basketball. I mean, it was basketball inasmuch as there was a basket and a ball, but nothing else even remotely resembled it. Never once in their lives had these girls ever dribbled, shot, or passed a basketball. There was a lot of laughing but the ball and the basket never got close to each other. If you asked one of those girls back then if they played basketball they might say yes, but it wasn't really true.

Halloween in France is like that: It exists here, but not in any recognizable form. As far as I can tell there isn't really any Trick or Treating and I haven’t seen a single jack-o-lantern. People don’t seem to pass out candy, either. I mean, what’s the point?

To help right such wrongs, we’re hosting a Halloween party this Saturday. Since Sam is invited to a fake Halloween party on Saturday (one given by a French person), ours will be hosted by Abby and Sophie only. Every girl in their two classes has been invited. It’s juste pour les filles – “for the girls only”. Stasha wrote “Parlez Lentement SVP” on every invitation, meaning “Speak slowly please”. What a great idea.

In the invitations, Stasha also put down our phone number for people to RSVP. This was not a good idea, because it meant they might call, and I would have to speak on the phone.

Sophie and Abby passed out the invitations yesterday and last night the parents started calling. Sadly they must not have seen her request to speak slowly.

Remember a few years ago when companies started routing customer service calls to India? The agents hadn’t yet given themselves fake American names like Joe or Sally. Instead, they would answer the phone and say “Syank oo pour callig AT&T, miee name is Qwelstormophosopholes. Kin eye elp oo?”. Only they’d say it faster than a New Yorker in a hurry.

But now I’m in someone else's country so there is a reasonable expectation that I might have some idea what’s going on. Sadly that expectation cannot be met most of the time, and the RSVP calls are not going well. They say their name: Orellionne, Dieudonné, Valentine, Absolon, Donatienne, Ermenegilde, Marjolain, or Pétronille and I don’t understand it. Then they say their child’s name and I don’t understand it. Finally they say they’ll come to the party. Since those not coming don’t call, I understand that part. Then they start asking things like, “What gift should I bring for your daughters?” and “What should my daughter come dressed as?”

I take a deep breath. “How about she come as a Japanese basketball player or an Indian telemarketer?”

Dave is a Good Actor

Last weekend we were invited to go to Gourdon with a family we know from the Maternelle (the school for the younger kids).

We were very excited to go, although I was a little nervous because the mother, Marielle, speaks faster than any other person I have met in France. She makes no adjustments for me, so I understand about 75% of what she says. Dave maybe understands 20 or 30%?

Gourdon is perched on a craggy cliff and on the approach (very windy and narrow, surprise, surprise) the view is spectacular. I was feeling pretty motion sick by the time we arrived, so I couldn't wait to get on my feet.

The air was cool and crisp and the leaves on the trees were lovely shades of gold and red. Combined with a little overcast sky, the setting of an ancient town with buildings made of stone and cobbled streets, we all felt a little Harry Potter in the air!

The kids ran and played, jumping off stone ledges and in and out of the little shops. Marielle bought some yummy spice muffin things dipped on chocolate, so we all feasted on that fall treat while we stood at the wall and looked down the steep cliff at the villages off in the distance. All we needed was some hot chocolate and it would have been perfect!

I had a great time sniffing the scented soaps, like mandarine, chevrefeuille, magnolia, citron, lavande, pin, etc. I bought a couple of bars and also a very cute provencal tablecloth. The one I REALLY wanted was 170 Euros, but I settled for a different, less "authentic" one for only 30.

The best part of an outing is almost always the listening (you learn way more french if you just close your mouth and say "oui" a lot). So Dave gave it his best shot. Aurelion speaks enough English that Dave could have a decent franglais conversation with him, but as you can see from the picture, he is stupefied by Marielle.

Out to Lunch

(L-R) Me with Stephanie and Laetitia in Old Mougins
On Tuesdays and Thursdays the kids stay at school all day! This gives us a chance to "practice french" as I like to call it. What it really means is that Dave and I get to go to lunch with our friends who are french. We go to a yummy restaurant and eat food that someone else gets to prepare and we talk and then walk around afterward. This is especially exciting for me because if you know Dave at all, he hates paying for food at a restaurant. At home we will occasionally go out with friends, but usually he says, let's just make something at home! Aaah, but in France he gets VALUE. It's all about the value. It is a french lesson and a meal all in one, so it is worth paying 50 euros for lunch! Hey, I totally agree.

To Dave's Credit

This is a picture of the house in Nantes. The house is on the left, that yellow building. To park the car in the driveway you drive down the lane in this picture, then you have to turn left into that driveway that you can see. I don't know if you can tell from the picture, but it's a fairly sharp turn. Dave was backing out of the driveway when he scratched the front of the deBricourt's van. Maybe the 90 degree turn in a 10 foot area had something to do with that.

Dave is a good driver

This is the van that we have been using for the past month. As you can see, Dave has taken extra care while driving.

How We Got Here

Written June 2007

In July we're moving to France for a year, maybe longer. How this came about is a lot like life itself: a collection of loosely-related events that together lead one down a very unexpected path.

The catalyst for the move may have come in 2006, when I made up my mind that we were going to spend the next summer in France. Or it could have started in 2003 when my wife, Stasha, and I visited Paris for the first time. Or 2002 when my boss asked me if I would move to England. Or 2001 when I went to Germany on a business trip. Or 1999, when we first visited London. Or 1995, when I first got on the Internet. It could go back further than that, frankly. But one has to start somewhere, and I guess that’s probably the right place.

In 1997 my wife and I were living near Oakland, CA, and both of us worked in The City. For those that don't know, "The City" is San Francisco. Not SF or "Frisco" (the name used by people that love NASCAR), but San Francisco. I was working for the China strategy group of a large consulting firm and was traveling to the PRC several times a year for projects. I was always on the lookout for a bargain airfare to China so I went to the United Airlines website and subscribed to "email specials". Shortly thereafter I began receiving a weekly email. The specials were all to exotic places like Omaha. For like $600. In February. So much for the Internet changing lives. Or even the way we travel.

But once you're in the database the emails keep coming. Two years later, in 1999, we were living in Palo Alto, CA, where I was studying for a graduate degree. One morning I opened my email specials and there it was: London, nonstop from SFO for $270. Roundtrip. We had to leave the next week, but so what? We could go if we felt like it. We were students and it's a free country. My parents, who lived about forty miles away, agreed to watch our daughter Abby. I booked the flights and soon after we were off.

Both Stasha and I had spent time in China and I'd lived and traveled extensively in Asia, but this was the first time either of us had crossed the Atlantic. It’s hard to believe that it was all new to us only eight years ago. But it was. We spent four days in London and I decided right then and there that I might never again go back to China, where I regularly saw children (with their mothers) walk into my hotel, take off their pants so they were naked from the waist down, and urinate in ashtrays. In London I was like Ariel on The Little Mermaid, which my daughters have watched six million billion jillion times: it was a whole new world.

After we returned home I tried to get back to London as quickly as possible by doing a summer internship there. I had an interview with the London office of a consulting firm but then decided I'd had enough of consulting and wanted to try investment banking. The only offer I got was for Goldman Sachs, in Hong Kong or New York. So we went to Hong Kong, where we spent the summer making memories of watching children urinate in the street.

In October 2001 I had finished school and was working in the software world. I had to fly to Frankfurt for some meetings with a company we were trying to partner with. Driving down the Autobahn with 14th century castle ruins visible on the hillsides surrounding the local villages was truly the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. I was traveling alone and several times I just exited the road so I could drive to the castles and take it all in. I got home and said to Stasha, "we're moving to Europe."

A few weeks later I had more meetings in Germany and went back. Stasha came with me and we spent a few days in Bavaria, which is even better than central Germany, except that we got lost almost every time we got in the car. This was in the pre-GPS days. While there, one night we visited a town called Rothenburg (fully-named “Rothenburg ob der Tauber”) and shopped for Christmas presents as snow gently fell on the cobbled-stone streets that are basically a thousand years old. It’s hard to describe what I felt at that time, but knew I had to get permanently closer to this kind of beauty and history. But the partnership I was working on crumbled and the opportunity to move to Europe, if it ever existed, was lost.

A year later my boss came to me and said "We need to grow our European business. Would you consider moving to London for a year and helping out?" We had just moved into a brand new house that had taken eight months to build. Everything was basically still in the garage. We now had a second daughter, Sophie, and our son Sam was less than five months old. Abby was going to start school that fall. "I'm sorry", I said. "Your timing is really bad and Phoenix is too great of a place to ever leave."

I'm kidding. We rented a house in the English countryside and bought a car that got exceptionally good gas mileage, since “petrol” was about $8.00 per gallon. Abby started her formal education at the Tavistock Primary School and quickly began "speaking in British" as Stasha and I called it. We cut her hair shorter than it had been in the US and bought her school uniforms at Tesco.

England is like heaven, only much more expensive. The food was mediocre and the weather was pretty cold, but the architecture is beyond description. We lived in a small town about ten miles from where King John signed the Magna Carta at Runnymeade in 1215. Quite close to our house was a thatched roof cottage that had been continuously inhabited since the 15th century. It had really low ceilings.

English people are great: some of the best people there are. They love to laugh, mostly at their teeth, and are mostly incredibly nice, and for the most part they know their place in the world: their long history helps them understand it all. For an American, England offers a glimpse into what our lives might be like if some relative a hundred, two hundred, or three hundred years ago hadn’t gotten on a ship bound for Ellis Island. And I have to say, that glimpse wasn’t half bad. It was a great year.

In April of that year Stasha and I flew from London to Paris for our wedding anniversary. Despite her having taken seven years of French from junior high to college, she had never visited France. Since the cab picked us up at 4:30 for a 6am flight that Friday morning, I woke up as late as possible and wore my slippers in the cab. I was bound to forget something. I just didn’t think it would be my shoes.

I walked around Paris in slippers the whole weekend and we visited every site we had time for. I even wore my slippers with my sport coat at dinner. No one said anything.

There are few things in the world that are actually better than advertised. Like a hundred small villages in France and Italy, Paris really is better than people say it is. During that year in England we went back three more times. Neither of us ever got sick of it.

Unfortunately, as 2004 approached, it was clear we were going to have to come back to the United States. We missed the US and liked the thought of living in our own house again, but our preference was to stay in Europe longer. Unfortunately my company had changed its strategy (this happened a lot, for no discernible reasons, other than the CEO was basically an idiot) and, since they had sponsored my work visa, we didn’t feel like we had the ability to stay in the UK. But, wanting to stay in Europe, our last two months Stasha and I subscribed to some real estate websites and spent huge amounts of our free time on the web, looking for a home to buy in perhaps the only place in the world that's better than England: France. I wanted to renovate an old church in Normandy; she wanted to buy a small run-down castle at the foot of the Pyrenees, neither of which was particularly expensive. We would put the kids in French school to learn the language and culture. Maybe we would come back to the US someday, maybe we wouldn't. We strongly considered it but in the end were too afraid and didn't think we had enough money. Instead, in February of 2004 we moved back to Phoenix.

But we still talked about spending a summer or two in France and trying to give the kids an opportunity to learn another language. To us, this seemed like the best gift we could give them. The US is a big place, and its three hundred years of western cultural development, combined with complete geographic isolation from the region that gave it its current identity is one of the things that makes it great. But there is a downside to that isolation: most Americans spend their lives disinterested in other cultures and countries, and the idea of learning another language is ludicrous. "Everyone speaks English anyway, so why bother?" Or, "If English was good enough for Jesus then it’s good enough for me." The problem with this, of course, is that it’s hard to know who you really are until you have at least experienced something different. Spending every day of one’s life in Nashville (and a weekend a year in Vegas) doesn’t teach a person very much.

The talk of France never went away, but with kids getting a little older it was becoming increasingly difficult to consider a normal travel experience as a family. Putting children in hotels for two weeks on vacation is like taking them to Ruth’s Chris Steak House: you’ll pay a fortune just to have them cry about how they really just want a Happy Meal.

Only in France, with the dollar at historic lows against the Euro, it would be like $700 per night, since we now have four children. And there was no way we were going to pack and unpack every few days. Kids need to sleep in the same bed as often as possible. We needed to stay in one place, get a huge van and just drive to nearby sites during the day.

And by the way, who was going to watch our house while it was empty for two weeks (or more) while we were in Europe? Once when we were traveling in San Diego our water heater exploded. We found out when a neighbor called to say that thousands of gallons of water had poured into the street during the last day or so, and it was coming from our garage. I gave him the code and he went in to find it underwater. We weren’t going through something like that again. An empty house in Phoenix and hotels for the kids was not going to work. We had to find an alternative.

So last November I subscribed to a website I'd heard about: www.homeexchange.com. I think most people understand the concept: you join a site that provides you with access to listings of homes anywhere in the world (including North America), and you contact whoever you want to see if they’re interested in an exchange. I did my research before joining and concluded it was the best site available for this sort of thing. Perhaps I was right: within two days of joining I had exchange invitations from people in Germany, Holland, Sweden, and Northern France (“Le Nord”). Within three weeks we had agreed to a month-long exchange for the coming summer in our chosen destination, the Loire Valley, known for its chateaux. If you don’t know about the Loire Valley, go on Wikipedia and look up Chambord, Chenonceaux, Blois, and Saumur. This should give you an idea. Then start breathing again. At the time it baffled me that anyone would want to come to Phoenix in July, but this family wanted to do it and we were happy to oblige. We would spend four weeks exploring the Loire Valley and Brittany in their minivan (with GPS, so my wife and I wouldn't come to blows on virtually every trip), and at night would return to their house with five bedrooms and a full kitchen. It was almost perfect.

The only thing that nagged at me a little was that we would drag all the kids to France but would never see Provence. It would be too much for the kids to handle.

But a few months later – one day in March – I received an email from a new family, this one in Provence. I had forgotten to update our listing to say that we’d found our exchange for the year. Never mind that I couldn't read one word of French:

Si l'auteur du message a indiqué un numéro d'offre, un lien a été automatiquement ajouté à ce message. Par courtoisie, nous vous remercions de répondre à ce message.

Même si la proposition contenue dans ce message ne vous convient pas, quelques mots comme: "merci de votre message, mais nous n'envisageons pas d'y donner suite" évitent à l'auteur du message d'attendre indéfiniment une réponse et de manquer ainsi la conclusion d'un autre échange. Nous sommes à votre disposition pour tous renseignements complémentaires.

LE MESSAGE: good evening, we live in the south of france,(cote d'azur), and we would be really interested in exchanging: your home seems perfect, and what's more, april to august is just what we look for: I'm Virginie, my husband is Jean Paul, and we have 3 children. Just let us know... Best regards

"I'm sorry", I replied. "We've already agreed to an exchange with a family in the Loire Valley for this summer. Perhaps next year might work?"

He replied the next day:

Bonjour,
I am Jean Paul the husband of Virginie:
It's a pity that we cannot exchange now; but we also want to spend a year in the usa. Than if you agree, we can see you when you come in France. We can meet you in the Loire Valley or in Mougins.

We have three children; I think they are younger than yours: Margaux is 6 years old, Maxence is 4 and Benjamin is 2 ; We have now the children in a small school at about 2 miles from the house. In France the school begin in september just to june;

I think we have a very pleasant life here in an area with nice weather, people sympathic, no delinquency. It's why we have moved here 3 years ago.

Best regards. JP

They were proposing that after we did the exchange in the Loire Valley that we go to Provence and exchange with them for a year. They showed pictures of their house, a sprawling French-Italian villa just outside a small village called Mougins. He attached a picture of his children, who looked like a lot ours.

I had been working for a small software company in Silicon Valley for a couple of years and, though I had quit a few months before to focus on some other things, the company had recently been sold and Stasha and I had flown to California that morning to celebrate with my former colleagues. I had taken a big chance to work for that company, and two years later it had paid off. I had learned a valuable lesson about taking risks and doing what you think is right when it feels right. Perhaps my wife had already learned it.

When I received Jean Paul’s email we were on a rental car shuttle at San Jose Airport. I handed Stasha my Blackberry so she could read the message. “Well”, I said. “Are you ready to move to France?”

“Sure”, she said. “Why not?” And she smiled.