art class for Zander

Zander has been taking an art class with our friends on Tuesday nights, but since Claire was sick this week I went with him. It was interesting to see him in a fully immersed French environment--in reality, he avoided verbal communication, but when he had to, he did speak English. I don't know if he makes more of an effort at school or not, but at home he definitely is improving with his French. Anyway, I grabbed a few snapshots of some of his recent creations. Notice that when he was making a mask, Zander thought it would be interesting to do a profile view instead of the typical face-view...

The other morning on the way in to work everything was covered with a thick layer of frost/dew... it's called la rosée... hard to see in the photo but here it is (the building with the silver egg is my office):

Last but not least... I have to say, I'm still suffering from culture shock here and there. After the winter vacation we wanted to return the car in at least the condition we got it--and with all those miles on wintery roads, the red car was quite salty. I stopped at 4 different gas stations over a couple days (all had signs for car washes), but all of them were closed because of the air temperature... even the indoor wash I found. No one seemed to know where I could get a car wash. I clearly remember with my first car I used to wash it every week or two, all year long... especially in the winter when salt splashed all over it...

Then I found out the other day that a deck of cards here is NOT A,K,Q,J,10 (can't remember exactly what it is, but the K is R instead).

Last cultural tidbit... our kids often sign their letters to family back home with xoxo. But the French have no idea what that means ;)