School's Out!

     . . . . finally!  July 5th was the last day.  Everyone was ready.  The teachers hadn't been assigning any real work for a long time.  After all, it's been "summer" for a while.  Here's a photo from the last day of school:

It was a great school year.  Everyone was nice to us from the beginning all the way to the end.  Ford and Asha made lots of friends.  And even though the school is a little on the disfunctional side, we think the kids learned a lot.  They sure perfected their French anyway . . . no way around that.

     As the end of the year approached, there were lots of field trips.  One day, Ford's teacher took the class on a 14 kilometer (yes, you read that right!) hike on a 90 degree day.  Ed volunteered with another dad to go along . . . it started at 8:30 and ended at 4:30 and, wow, some of those kids were really dragging their knuckles at the end.  Here's a photo from the beginning and middle of the hike before the sufferin' started:

Ford's Teacher Addresses the Group

Left to Right:  Jules, Soloene, Victor, Shakir, Killian, Victor II, Ford

That same day there was a picnic for the 5th graders and their families:

Averil serves chocolate chip cookies to Ford's other teacher, Madame Mannent

Ed and our friend Dmitri

 As we say, it's been hot and warm for many weeks.  Here we are enjoying Dmitri's pool at his vineyard with his children Nicolas and Jessica.

 On another day we hit the parc aquatique even though it was sprinkling:

  Here we are after seeing "Madagascar 3 in 3D" with Klara and Eliza, whose parents' B&B is behind:

Ivy got dreadlocks behind her ears and went to the dog coiffure to have them shaved off.  She was happy . . . can you see her smiling in this picture?

     With just a few weeks to go until we return to the US, we've been doing lots of things to get ready including, inter alia, shipping some of our stuff back to Seattle, making arrangements to sell our French car (we think we have a deal), making various travel arrangements, and doing odd jobs around the house.  It's tiring!