Céline (on right) and I became friends when I received a fellowship to teach in France in 1995-1996. In fact, she was my first Internet friend, since I had newly discovered the Internet and searched for (I can't say "googled" ... I think the search engine was called Mosaic) the name of the town where my new husband and I would be living. Céline found it strange that I'd located her name on a French governmental website where it had landed as part of a "pen friends" project when she was just a kid in school.
In 1995, she was a nurse, working in a neighboring town. She sent me maps and apartment notices and we met when I arrived. She rescued me during a mysterious power outage and took me to meet her wonderful parents, with whom we Skyped with this weekend, who fed me dinner while my husband worked the vendange (the grape harvest) and sang French karaoke, one of his many talents. It was the start of a long friendship, and so much more fun than me looking up the phrase "fuse box" in my French-English dictionary. Balzac never discussed fuses in his Comédie Humaine, as I recalled.
Jump ahead 18 years. Céline is a nursing professor in Québec where she lives with her husband and two lovely daughters, close in age to my sons. We love spending time with her and her family and see them once or twice each year, in Québec or in New Hampshire.
I hastily finished syllabi Friday so we could spend the holiday weekend in Québec with our friends. The kids love it, and we are hoping to exchange children next summer so that they can improve their language skills with my sons learning more French than "Tête, épaules, genoux, et pieds" and her daughters more than "Five Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed," although you never know when those songs might come in handy.
"Les Grands" had fun swimming, jumping on the trampoline, playing video games, and exploring the Biodôme together in Montréal. No longer in strollers or requiring naps, we took the metro into Montréal with ease.
Finding a seat on dad's lap is always a good deal!
The Université de Québec à Montréal marks "la rentrée," the start of the academic year . . . to which we returned today, too.
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