April 14th - Paris Living

Well all my worries about unstructured time here in Paris seems to have been for naught. We are really getting along just fine, and have settled into a daily routine.  There is generally no need for an alarm here, which is nice, and we wake up about 7:30 or 8 each morning.  The noises of the apartment building coming alive in the morning do sometimes wake us up earlier although we are getting used to the noises.  Katie has never lived in an apartment before and was surprised at how you can hear all the other people.  This is an older building and in the evenings you can hear the upstairs neighbors walking around, toilets flushing, people walking up and down the central stairs, muffled TVs and conversations.

We have a nice relaxed breakfast of muselli and yogurt, baguette with butter and jam and café au lait for me and just au lait for Katie. While eating, we usually check on our blogs for comments and flip through facebook to see what people at home are up to.  Around 8:30 we start our homeschool day with a math lesson – we are currently working on graphing equations, using lessons provided by Katie’s math teacher at home, followed by a science lesson using the online textbook from her middle school. We use the internet to look up any questions that arose from the previous day sightseeing trips – today we read about Joan of Arc since she was mentioned at the Pantheon where we went yesterday. We always jot down questions as we go about our day. 

After that, Katie works on her blog and checks her email.  She does that independently and I am not allowed to peek at her email. She’s been getting messages regularly from her friends, so her worries about them forgetting her seem to be for naught, although she does really miss them all.  The whole friend situation is very different for Katie than for me. If I can get together with a friend once or twice a month at home, I’m doing great, while Katie is used to eating lunch with her friends every day.  She’s holding up well though and their emails help. I’ve been Skyping with Paul regularly so that is great for me. 

Once school is done we do yoga and other exercises and Katie practices her karate. She is trying not to lose any progress since she hopes to be picked to test for her brown belt soon after we get home.

We head out for our activity for the day between  11 and 12.  We’ve gone through several guide books and have picked a list of things we want to do while we are here.  Each day we pick one or two and head out.  We are usually out until about 5 or 6pm.  On the way home we stop at the supermarche for our daily shopping, at the boulangierie for bread (Baguette), which is Katie’s responsibility to buy on her own, and yesterday for the first time we were brave enough to try the boucherie for some meat. We got already prepared chicken cordon blue, which was very tasty.

Katie likes some down time when we get back home and usually spends some time reading or playing on the Nintendo DS or iPad while I work on my blog. We eat dinner around 7pm and it stays light here until around 9pm.  After dinner sometimes we play card games or board games (on the ipad) and sometimes we watch TV on the laptop using hulu (I have to log on through Villanova to get an American ip address first since I can’t access hulu with a French ip).  We are keeping up with Amazing Race, Survivor and Modern Family.  We typically call it a day around 10 pm.  It’s a pretty nice routine and we are really enjoying it.  Katie and I are also reading some of the same books in a little book club in the evenings and discussing them together.  So far we have read Diary of a Young Girl, Da Vinci Code, and are currently working on Little Women.  I was named after the Amy in little Women, but I have to say I really prefer Jo.

We are now getting ready for a couple of visits, which will add a little variety to our routine.  Paul arrives tomorrow for a week, and after Easter my mom will be here for a week.  We are looking forward to those visits and what excitement they will bring.