expat

Winter no Winter and other TCK musings

Minnesota usually looks something like this in winter. Not this winter. It didn’t get cold, it didn’t snow. Not to speak of, anyway. The year we didn’t have winter followed the year we had the most snow ever. We are living on a merry-go-round. What is next?

I learned the other day that the Andrews Sisters were from Minnesota. One of their biggest hits was Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy during World War II. They were child performers and won their first talent contest when the youngest was 12. The only Minnesotan who has outsold them was Prince.

Just a little tidbit to file away in your trivia drawer.

I put a slide show on my screen saver for my Apple TV that shows pictures of my recent trip to South America. It really seems kind of unreal. Was I really there? Did I really go to Easter Island? It is all kind of dreamlike. It is weird how you can have all these memories of traveling to places all over the world and be sitting in a room in front of a computer thinking about taking out the garbage and going grocery shopping and putting gas in the car. All my life I have dreamed about going to places and seeing things I have read about or studied. For example, I was always fascinated with ancient history and Egypt in particular. It was a place I knew a lot about and when I finally went there, it all came back to me. All those things I had learned all those many years ago. It was so magical. And it was just a blip. I was there and then I was back, going to work, doing laundry, cooking. Planning the next trip. When you grow up living and traveling around the world it is hard to stop, to stay in one place.

I was thinking again about my recent trip and one thing I realized was that growing up all over the world created an environment for me to experience all kinds of spontaneous cultural interactions. For example this tour had organized several “events” for the group to interact with local people in their homes. Living overseas, of course I had lots of “local” friends and often went to people’s homes. But beyond that, I traveled around the countryside and stumbled through villages and met people who invited me into their homes. A few of my friends and I would go hiking in Nigeria and end up sitting in a mud hut drinking palm wine, or on somebody’s porch eating fish stew. I never thought anything of it at the time. They were just things that happened. This recent trip made me realize how unique that was. How most people don’t have those kinds of opportunities. I just took them for granted. Silly me.

Excerpt from my book, Expat Alien: On one of our outings in Nigeria, at the end of the day, we stopped in a small village for some refreshment. There was no restaurant or store but, after having asked around, we found a house where the people were willing to sell us some beer. We sat on their porch and drank beer and the entire village came out to watch us. We bought the grandfather of the house a special drink (ogogoro – gin distilled from palm wine) from somebody down the street and we found one young boy who spoke some English to be our translator. Pretty soon the family brought out dinner for us to share (fish curry and yam paste). Francis looked like he would be sick if he had to eat any of it. I tried some of the yam paste but left the very hot curry to the others. Everybody was getting quite drunk.

Pushing Through Daylight Savings Time

Daylight Savings Time. It is controversial. It is way too complicated for me to go into it. It is kind of like jet lag. Takes about a week to adjust to it. Messes up your schedule. Makes you tired, disoriented. But without the exotic new location.

Book
I finished reading Miss Burma by Charmaine Craig. It is a novel but it is based on the author’s family and her mother Louisa, who won Miss Burma in 1956. It was a beauty pageant she won twice. The beauty pageant was held from 1947 to 1962 when the government banned it. (Interesting fact, one of King Thibaw’s grandsons started the beauty pageant. I learned about that in The King in Exile).

Louisa’s mother was a Burmese woman of the Karen (kar-en) ethnic group who married a Jewish man who was born in Burma but grew up in India. After World War II, Burma became independent of Britain and set up its own government. The Karen ethnic group wanted to be an autonomous state and were promised this if they joined forces with the Burmese. After the new government was set up they discovered they were to be absorbed into the new Burmese state. So they became rebels and continued to fight for their independence. In the book, the Jewish husband, Benny, decided he wanted to align himself with the Karens and do everything he could for them. This included procuring guns and working closely with the rebels. He ended up being tortured and locked up both in jail and in house arrest.

His wife, Khin, was a survivor and went through many hardships. She had an idea to enter her daughter into beauty contests because the head of state’s wife was involved with them. This made it possible to become close enough to talk her into helping Benny get out of jail. Louisa went on to win the Miss Burma contest and become famous both for that and for acting in several movies. And then she married the head of the Karen opposition and ended up running for her life.

It was a good book. Lots of ins and outs, surviving war, getting by, being rich, being poor, suspense. And some history. Louisa certainly had an interesting life.

In 1959 my family was living in Pyinmana, Burma, and my mother writes:
The all-Burma beauty contest for both men and women (“Miss Burma” and “Mr Burma”) was held here last weekend. The ice cream party was held here at the Institute on the day they all arrived from all over Burma, and then for two nights they had programs, weight lifting contest, demonstrations of boxing, and beauty contests until 2:30 am the first night and until 4 am the last night! They started at 6:30 pm. Bill went the first night for a couple of hours, and I went the second night for about 4 hours. It really was very interesting, and one accordion solo with accordionist singing Burmese songs was perfectly lovely. He was worth the whole evening for me. But we didn’t get to see hide nor hair of the beauty contests because those were the very last thing! The weight lifters broke several SouthEast Asian records, and the beauties told someone they had never been treated so nicely as they had been here, so we are most glad for the good publicity for Pyinmana. Usually all people hear about us as a city is bad.

Random
I dreamed that I met somebody with beautiful pink hair and I decided I wanted pink hair but I didn’t want to copy her. I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what to do. Maybe if it was a very light pink?

William K. Gamble

Bill Gamble was born in 1920. He grew up on a farm in Iowa with no indoor plumbing or electricity. His mother cooked on a wood stove and could tell if it was hot enough just by sticking her hand over it. His sister Dorothy paid for him to go with her on his first airplane ride. He fell in love with flying. During World War II he enlisted in the Navy and flew blimps off the coast of Brazil. He was one of a handful of people who flew both lighter than air and heavier than air during WWII. When he was in Brazil he saw poverty and farms that weren’t producing. It made him think he could make a difference in the world. He could help these farmers.

William Keith Gamble was the first in his family to finish college. He received his Bachelor’s and Master’s Degrees from Iowa State University. Later, married with three children, he went back to school and received his Ph.D from Cornell University. Dr. Gamble. He worked for the Ford Foundation as a Specialist in Agriculture and a Country Director in Burma, Mexico and the Caribbean, Colombia and Venezuela, and West Africa. Then he went on to be the Director of the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) in Ibadan, Nigeria. From there he became the founding Director of the International Service for National Agricultural Research (ISNAR) in The Hague, the Netherlands. He was known internationally as somebody who was making a difference.

The farm boy from Iowa traveled to over 90 countries. He was invited to testify at the Foreign Affairs Committee of the British House of Commons. He received the Distinguished Achievement Citation from Iowa State University that reads, “A pioneer in bringing science and technology to tropical agriculture, he has improved living conditions for millions in developing countries.”

He also gave back. The Gamble International Agriculture Scholarship at Iowa State University was made possible through an endowment generously established by William K. Gamble and Sara Virginia Liggett Gamble. Its purpose is to support international experience for graduate students in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences who intend to pursue a career in agriculture on an international level.

The family lived through several Coups. One in Burma in 1962, and two in Nigeria in July of 1975 and February of 1976. Life was never boring. Travel was always a wild card with delays, cancellations, re-routes, and bad communication. Sometimes we had phones that worked, sometimes we had indoor plumbing, sometimes we had electricity. Sometimes we did not. Through it all my mother entertained exquisitely and supported my father in whatever he did. They were together for 76 years. My mother died in 2019 at 99 years old.

Bill was a fierce opponent on the tennis court as well as the badminton court. He enjoyed a beer before dinner for many years and then turned to red wine. Even at 103 years old he loved a meal out with a good bottle of red wine.

My father wrote a note to my son on the inside cover of his memoirs. It reads, “I want you to do your very best to help achieve a better world and to always be considerate of your fellow man. In doing so, I hope that you, as I have done, can live happily and enjoy life to the fullest”.

He certainly did enjoy life to the fullest!

William K. Gamble
February 10, 1920 – November 25, 2023

He leaves behind two sons, two daughers-in-law, one daughter, five grandchildren, and five great-grandchildren.

Fall is in the Air

My photos look a little out of focus today. Kind of psychedelic. Or is it just me? The sky is an odd color. A rainy, dark day. But color starting as the trees adjust to winter.

I actually got a story published this week. No money but think of the fame! The notoriety!

Today is also gloomy and rainy. But that’s okay. We need rain. Rain is good. Winter is coming.

I read today that scientists think mammals will die out in 250 million years. All the land masses will collide, the sun will get brighter, and carbon dioxide will rise. We will suffocate and melt. I wonder if we will really last that long. Will we morph into something else? Will another species thrive on the new atmosphere? Will we build bio-domes like our science fiction writers predict? It is hard to imagine what 250 million years looks like. The dinosaurs roamed the earth for 165 million years and then all blew up about 65 million years ago. Mammals showed up about 225 million years ago. So we are almost half way through our time here. On the other hand the earth itself is 4.5 billion years old. We are but blips in time. It’s like democracy in Russia. A nanosecond. Apparently Earth has another 4 billion years to go. Don’t think I’ll be around to see it.

I’m reading Isabel Allende’s memoirs and in it she mentions the filming of The House of Spirits. I never knew it was made into a movie so I watched it last night. It was star studded, Vanessa Redgrave, Meryl Streep, Jeremy Irons, Glenn Close, Antonio Banderas, Winona Ryder, and a million other people. Of Love and Shadows is another one of her books that was made into a movie. I haven’t read that one but looks interesting.

I read that people who are optimistic and have positive thoughts on aging tend to live longer. I’m feeling positive I am aging.

A friend just found out he is going to Burundi for work. The poorest nation in the world. The most unhappy nation in the world. I first heard about Burundi during the Hutu-Tutsi genocide of the 1990’s. So I have been trying to find positive things about it. It is in the African Great Lakes region bordering on Lake Tanganyika. This is what I found.

They make pretty sisal baskets.

^{https://basketsofafrica.com/product-category/burundi-baskets/}

They have pretty birds.

Nice landscape.

Drums are important.

Lake Tanganyika is big. It has hippos.

See, positive, positive, positive.

An English Woman in India

An Englishwoman in India, The Memoirs of Harriet Tytler 1828-1858
Edited by Anthony Sattin

Harriet wrote her memoirs when she was in her late 70’s. She was a Victorian woman and represented her class and period well.

Her grandfather and uncle were prisoner’s of war in France under Napoleon. Her grandmother and mother lived nearby for 15 years so the family could be together. After the battle of Waterloo, they were released and returned to England. That is where her mother met her father while he was on furlough from India.

Harriet was born in 1828 to a British military family in India. At 11 years old, as was common practice at the time, she was shipped off to England with two younger siblings to continue her education. When they landing in England, their clothes were so outdated everybody laughed at them. Her brother was immediately sent on to boarding school where two older brothers were waiting for him. She and her sister lived with a family they had never met before for about a year, until her aunt came to collect them. Her aunt was strict and cruel and Harriet hated every minute of her time there.

At seventeen she started her journey back to India to be reunited with her parents who she had not seen for 6 years. She traveled by steamer and by land until she reached Aden just off the Red Sea. The group traveling with her were friendly and she had a happy time. At Aden she received a letter from her brother-in-law in India and feared her sister was sick. It was worse, her father was dead. When she finally reached Calcutta, there was nobody to meet her. She saw her mother two weeks later only to discover that she was on her way back to England with the younger children. Harriet was to stay with another aunt and uncle who was serving the in Punjab Campaign.

At 19, she met and married Robert Tytler, a Captain in the British Army who was also a widower with two children.

This woman did not have an easy life.

On May 11, 1857, she was living in Delhi, eight months pregnant with two small children at home. That was the day of the Great Sepoy Mutiny. The “Sepoy” was the Indian soldier serving in the British Army.

Harriet writes:

“It is wonderful to think how unanimous they were, Hindus and Mohammedans, in the one object of exterminating the hateful Christian in India. On this occasion the Mohammedans and Hindus were one, their bitter antagonism to each other, which had always been our safeguard so far, was for the time overcome. The gullible Hindus, two to one in each regiment, firmly believed Prithee Rai’s raj would return and then they would be masters of India. The wily Mohammedans, who were using these poor deluded men as a cat’s paw, encouraged the belief, knowing all along that they would soon find their mistake, for the Mohammedan meant to reign by the edge of his sword, which would also be used to proselytize the poor idol worshippers.”

However Philip Mason notes in the Introduction: “Harriet, of course, like everyone else, has heard of the cartridges (smeared with pork and beef fat) but does not seem to have known that the original offensive cartridges were withdrawn (therefore confirming that the rumor was true). Like every other young wife in India at the time, she thinks that the Mutiny was a deep-laid plot, instigated by the sons of the king and spread by wicked Muslims who played on the fears of the simple gullible Hindus.”

Harriet ran for her life that day. She, pregnant, with her two children, 2 and 4 years old, eventually loaded themselves onto an already overloaded carriage and rode hard out of town. Her husband riding back and forth checking on other people. The carriage broke to pieces. They found another one, it also broke down. They ended up walking to the next outpost where luckily there was no uprising.

Eventually the British took back Delhi. Harriet bore 10 children, 8 of whom lived, and spent the rest of her life and expat in India.

What a great story!

Stories from an International Educator

Here We Are & There We Go: Teaching & Traveling with Kids in Tow by Jill Dobbe

Jill and her husband were school teachers in Wisconsin USA when one day they moved half way around the world and their lives changed drastically.

What truly amazed me about this book was that they just jumped headlong into it with no safety net and blinders off. They made the decision to move to Guam almost on a whim. They didn’t even know where Guam was. That was either very gutsy or completely crazy. And what was even more interesting was that they stuck it out, learned, and grew through it all.

It didn’t sound like Guam was the dream South Pacific location we all imagined. It actually sounded pretty challenging. But they worked through it and learned a lot. That made their next posting to Singapore a bit easier. Of course Singapore was probably not a hardship posting. But they were still half way around the world from family and friends in a place with a different culture. They seemed to breeze through that one.

By the time the got to Ghana they were seasoned travelers. Although, having lived in Nigeria myself, I know that Ghana was probably not paradise either. But as they came to understand, there are wonderful things all over the world. You just have to be open to them. Jill and her family discovered the joy, frustration, sorrow, and unending surprises one finds when traveling.

I might be reading something into this but it seemed to me they decided to return to the USA for the sake of the children. Their children spent their high school years (or most of them) in the USA learning to be US citizens. This probably made it a much easier transition for them in the long run. It might have given them a clear identity at a young age. However, from my experience, it doesn’t work. My son returned to the USA when he was six and now that he is about to enter college all he dreams about is going overseas. And it seems their children were the same. They were happy to continue traveling.

Returning to the USA was a difficult transition for all of them. Jill says she realized people were not interested in her stories and could not relate. I know exactly what she means. It is so far from what people know, it is difficult to imagine and therefore not interesting. Re-entry is a challenge for all expats but travelers know how to adjust and tweak and adapt. Jill and her family were no exception. They had a good few years back home with friends and family but the itch was still there.

At the end of the book they leave the USA again for distant lands and new experiences. Jill has written two more books: Only in India: Adventures of an International Educator and Kids, Camels & Cairo.

Check them out! Available on Amazon.

Books – TCK/Expat Book Review

When I had the genius idea to move my blog away from WordPress and it all blew up on me, I lost a bunch of stuff. One thing I finally got around to working on was the TCK/EXPAT Films and Book s Page. A lot of my book reviews were no longer linked to anything. Amazingly enough, I do have some of them backed up on my computer. I wrote this a while ago but I am resurrecting it because I just finished her second book, Five Flights Up. I will write a review of that later.

There has been much discussion lately about the term “trailing spouse” and whether it is appropriate or even polite. It projects a sense of “other” rather than something that makes up a whole. I usually conger up a vision of a dog’s tail. Other terms being used are “accompanying partner”, “expat wife”, “support partner”. One blogger says she had been called a ‘stakeholder at home’.

I have used the term ‘world juggler’ before. http://baltimorepostexaminer.com/juggling-world/2014/03/11

But in the end, whatever you call it, the trailing spouse is usually the support system, the glue that holds it all together. Sometimes the glue falls apart and life can be rough.

In Trailing: A Memoir by Kristin Louise Duncombe, things fall apart. Kristin grew up all over the world so when she met her Argentine husband, the thought of moving overseas didn’t seem so strange. Although she did have her reservations about putting her career on hold, she didn’t have a passion about what she did and had not clearly defined what she wanted to do. Her husband, a doctor with Doctors Without Borders was passionate about what he did and had no questions about what he was going to do. She was in love. She married him and went to Kenya.

Being a TCK (Third Culture Kid) myself, I also thought following my husband overseas would be no problem. Even though you have lived in many places around the world, the child TCK and the Adult TCK have different experiences and challenges. I had no support system behind me as we just up and moved. Kristin had a small “family” of doctors but it did not help much since most of them were single and always on the road. Her husband was gone much of the time.

On the other hand, I think she showed remarkable resilience. She found herself some work at a Nairobi hospital helping teens and eventually found a position with USAID at the US Embassy. Unfortunately the Embassy was bombed and she lost her job but by that time her husband had taken a position in Uganda. After having a baby, she finds a job in a small village outside Kampala. She never sees her husband and the marriage starts to unravel.

The happy ending is they move to Paris and she manages to set up a successful counseling practice working with expat families who are trying to cope with life overseas. She now has all the tools after having gone through the worst of it in order to be able to help others in similar situations.

I found myself identifying with this book on several levels. I had a difficult adjustment when I moved to Russia. I had to find my own way as my husband was out much of the time and I didn’t speak the language. I managed to find work, I had a child, my marriage started to unravel. I found my way and started writing and wrote a memoir.

Trailing: A Memoir is well written and engaging. It makes me want to know more about her. It is available on Amazon.com.

Books off the Shelf

I read a couple of books this week and enjoyed them.

Girl Uprooted By Lena Lee

Girl Uprooted is a memoir about a woman who grew up internationally mobile. Her father was a Korean diplomat and they moved every three years. She lived in Korea, Malaysia, USA, France, Norway and went to University in UK. Not only did she have to deal with the constant moves with new schools, new culture, new friends, but she was also dealing with trying to uphold and relate to her parents’ culture and all things Korean. A true Third Culture Kid. It is hard enough to cope with all the changes but when your passport culture is constantly creating contradictions, it becomes hard to know who you are or what to do.

Lena Lee tried to be a good Korean girl and live up to her father’s expectations but she was not a product of his environment. She didn’t understand what made him tick. The culture he grew up in was very strict and almost oppressive. She was used to running around New Jersey doing the teenage girl stuff Westerners indulge in. When she goes back to Korea, she feels like she is in prison, constantly studying and controlled.

For me the best part of the book was her “aha” moment when she googled frequent moves during childhood and depression. I had a similar “aha” moment when I realized I was not crazy and not the only person in the world who had difficulty relating to my passport country. Moving is hard enough, but moving countries, cultures, schools, and languages can really confuse a child. Plus in some of her countries he also had the racism card to deal with. People have different coping mechanisms. Some are alcohol and drug abuse, some are god, some are sports, some are withdrawal.

As we get older and start to understand who we are and what it means to be a Third Culture Kid, it does start to get easier. Lena Lee eventually found her center and as she states in her book, writing her book helped her a lot. When I wrote my book I found it very cathartic.

This book is well written, easy to read and relatable.

Pick up a copy!

Another book I read recently was

Black Cake By Charmaine Wilkerson

This one was fiction about a girl who grew up on the “Islands”, somewhere in the Caribbean. It is really a mystery. The girl’s mother disappears when she is young and she is left with her father who is constantly racking up gambling debts. When she is forced to marry a rich man in order to save her father, the man drops dead at the wedding reception. She flees the scene and everybody assumes she killed him. From then on she is on the run looking over her shoulder. There are lots of twists and turns, some good, some bad. Some unbelievable.

It is easy to read and moves along quickly. I read it in one sitting. It starts out in the mid 1950’s and goes to present day. The girl’s father was ethnic Chinese and her mother was African. Apparently there were a lot of Chinese who settled in Jamaica and other islands. The Chinese arrived as indentured servants around the mid 1800s. In the 1960’s the Chinese owned land and shops but endured racial tensions.

The Black Cake is a traditional fruit cake made for special occasions. The recipe is included at the back of the book.

Burma (Myanmar) Books of Interest

The King in Exile, The Fall of the Royal Family of Burma
by Sudha Shah
I just finished reading this excellent book about the last king of Burma (Myanmar). It is well researched and full of details about the times and about the family up until modern day. The last King of Burma, King Thibaw, was deposed by the British in 1885, and exiled to Ratnagiri on the west coast of India. He, his two wives and four daughters lived in a small palace basically as prisoners. He was not allowed to leave his house without permission. He was given a small allowance to live on and pretty much ignored. His sad life ended in 1916. Three years later his queen (his second wife died before him) and daughters were allowed to return to Burma but only to the capital of Rangoon, not to their former home in Mandalay. Two of the daughters remained in India and two went back to Burma with their mother. The saga continues through their children and grandchildren. It was not a happy life and a constant struggle to meet their debts. Although it is non-fiction and historical, it is not dull. The author does a good job to hold your interest.

Other books about Burma:
The Glass Palace
by Amitav Ghosh This book is historical fiction about the same time period as The King in Exile. It goes into the fate of the king but also tells the story of colonialism in the area covering Burma, India and Malaya. I read it a while ago and remember I did skim over parts of it but I also remember it really captured the deposed king’s despair. If you like historical fiction sagas that have it all, you would probably love this one.

The Golden Land
by Elizabeth Shick
This is pure fiction about a Burmese American woman who goes back to Burma in search of her roots, her childhood, her family. She has memories of spending time in Burma twenty five years earlier and a boy who influenced her. She returns looking for her sister but also for him. It has suspense, intrigue, love, history, politics. It is a good read. Interestingly enough it is the first book written by a serial expat who lived in Burma for six years.

Miss Burma
by Charmaine Craig
This one came highly recommended to me. I have not read it yet. It tells the story of a family and their eldest daughter who wins the first Miss Burma beauty pageant. The beauty pageant was held from 1947 to 1962 when the government banned it. (Interesting fact, one of King Thibaw’s grandsons started the beauty pageant. I learned about that in The King in Exile). This book is about an ethnic Karen woman who struggles with her new fame, civil war and unstable politics of the time.

Golden Earth: Travels in Burma
by Lewis Norman
Shortly after World War II, Lewis Norman travels throughout Burma documenting all he sees. It was a very unstable time in Burma with insurgents running around killing people. He writes about the politics but also about the people and the beauty of the land. He went there specifically because he was afraid it was a county that would be closed to outsiders at some point soon. He was right.

The Lady from Burma
by Allison Montclair
This is a murder mystery I came across by accident. It probably doesn’t have anything to do with Burma but looks like a real nail biter.

And if you are interested….
Aung San of Burma: A Biographical Portrait by His Daughter
by Aung San Suu Kyi Aung San was the man who made Burmese independence from the British possible. He is a revered hero in Burma. This is non-fiction.

Aung San Suu Kyi, Burma’s opposition leader and Nobel Prize winner has written several books about her plight and that of Burmas itself.

You can now travel to Burma as a tourist and many tour groups have trips going there. They mostly go to Rangoon (Yangon), Mandalay, Inlye Lake, and Pagan (Bagan). I was born in Burma to a expat parents and my family lived there off and on until the coup of 1962.

As of July 2023, the US State Department travel advisory page states:
Do not travel to Burma due to civil unrest and armed conflict. Reconsider travel to Burma due to limited and/or inadequate healthcare resources. Exercise increased caution due to wrongful detentions and areas with land mines and unexploded ordnance.

Birthdays

girl in floral dress playing mini bedroom toy — ^{Photo by Karolina Grabowska on Pexels.com}

I had a birthday recently and decided to take myself to go see “Barbie”. I was hoping for some fun escapism. Well… it was entertaining but it was also a story of a major existential crisis. So I’m conflicted. Not sure I liked it. But Ryan Gosling was excellent as Ken.

I can be conflicted about birthdays in general. Some good, some bad. Some have associations I don’t care for. Some happy occasions.

My mother writes about the menu for my second birthday: hunks of cheese, slices of bananas with peanut butter dabs all on a toothpick, tiny buns filled with ground spam, graham crackers with honey butter, and then cupcakes with a candle on each, coffee and Koolade.
Sounds like an exotic ‘50s meal, doesn’t it?

My fifth birthday was memorable because the family had just survived a plane crash and landed at our final destination two weeks late – on my birthday. Another memorable one was in Lagos, Nigeria when my mother and I marked the occasion by opening a small tinned chocolate cake. They probably don’t make such a thing anymore…

In 1999, the last year of the millennium, I spent my birthday in France.
We stayed with friends in the suburbs who had a house and small yard and a son our son, Noah’s age. They were about a ten minute walk from the train in a nice little village with a pretty chateau. The first day was spent getting our new visas organized and trying to do some shopping. On Saturday we wandered around the left bank and then the four adults went out to dinner at a very nice kind of ‘new’ French restaurant. It was my birthday so we had champagne and wine and great food. Sunday was the boat ride on the Seine with the boys and then a walk through the Tuileries garden where there just happened to be some rides and of course Noah had to go on them.

We rented a car and on Tuesday left for Metz and the eclipse. Metz is a very pretty town right on the river. We scoped out the area on Tuesday and early Wednesday morning we headed out with the telescope, video camera and other cameras. We set up our camp in the middle of the Esplanade which is a nice park right by the river. The town had organized a big festival around the eclipse and so there were parades, music, etc. going on all day long. It was cloudy. During the first half of the eclipse we were able to see it off and on. But about 20 minutes before total eclipse it started to rain. We could tell when the total was, though, because it was completely dark. It was really cool. All the flowers closed up and all the lights came on and it was really night. Then during the second half it cleared up a bit and we were able to see more. Noah kept looking at the “moon” through his glasses. Nicholas got some good shots through his telescope. And I got a new umbrella. When we got back to Paris our friends who had gone 25 minutes north of Paris on the train said they had seen the whole thing perfectly.

From Metz we drove into Lorraine and the Vosges area. We stopped at the Haut Konningburg castle which is a huge restored castle on top of a mountain in the middle of the forest. You can see forever from it. It is really cool with a moat and drawbridge and inner yard. It would be very hard to penetrate it.

From there we wound our way around down to La Bresse which is in the heart of a big ski area and lots of mountains and forest. Really beautiful. Our hotel was very nice with a good restaurant. We drove all around the area and went hiking around a glacial pool where Noah spent the better part of an hour throwing rocks into it.

On Sunday (the day before Noah’s birthday) we took the boys to the Bois de Bologne to the big amusement park there and I think they went on about 20 rides. They had a lot of fun.

Our last day in Paris we had lunch up at Montmartre with all the tourists in town. It was kind of fun.