What has your health care done for you lately?

In the past month, I've gotten a new pair of orthopedic insoles which helped my knee stop hurting and saved the government money they would have had to pay for phsyical therapy or even sick leave due to knee problems. I have gotten new glasses for my daugther who can't see without them. She has been wearing glasses since her vision problem was picked up at the state mandated well baby check up when she was 4. I have paid 21€ (which will be reimbursed) for the dentist to check and begin work on a huge cavity in my daughter's molars. She'll have to go back in a week to let him finish. Both visits will be fully reimbursed as will the tranquilizers she needs to take to keep her calm enough for him to work.

My daughter visited the dermatologist and had warts burnt off for a total of €35.

My kids and I visited dear Dr. R (the kissy doctor) who let them play up-down with his examination table while I asked for presecription renewals, vaccinations for the kids, as well as sedatives for the airplane (he wouldn't give me the last). The whole visit, which lasted about 30 minutes costs me €23. I have restocked my basic medications, including the allergy and asthma medecines I'll need for my 2 months in the US and my migraine medecine. Without the latter, the government would have to pay for my sick days when I can't function with a migraine.

The point of this post is to show that while it would be easy to take advantage of the socialized system and that it is costly, it also helps when you need it.

I agree that it is a costly system. But without any of the abovementioned things, the costs would be more. In many ways, socialized medecine as I use it, is preventitive medecine.

So what has your healthcare done for you lately?

May story time and Max speaks franglais

I'm extremely excited to announce the dates for he May storytime for a couple of reasons. First because storytime is cool. Second because storytime is super cool this month because we'll be doing a special edition and third because Multilingual Living published an article I wrote about storytime.

So the dates: the normal Wednesday storytime will take place on May 23rd at 3:30pm at the Wazemmes library. Then, we'll have a special storytime at Gare  Saint Sauveur on May 26th at 2:00pm. There is a book fair and lots of special events going on so we're part of the festivities. It's really exciting because Stéphane Servant, the author of Le Machin/The Thing, will be there for sign books. So he'll hopefully get to see what we've done with his dual language book.

I promise it will be so very cool.

Since story time has really taken off, I contacted Multilingual Living, a really amazing webzine on all aspects of multi-lingual life. And the result is this article that I hope will be helpful to anyone else looking for ideas on how to increase the multi-lingual presence in your life. So here it is: Bilingual Storytime.

On another note, Max is increasingly proficient in franglais. I've previously said that Max doesn't mix his languages...and he didn't until the past couple weeks. I'm not sure what happened, maybe it's just the age where he's trying to say more things and doesn't have the words or grammar to do so in a single language. or maybe he's finally decided that not everything is black and white and can't be compartmentalized. In the past week I've heard Max use English grammar in French sentences a few times and use a couple of words in the wrong language. For example, he said "je veux les" to his grandparents which is a perfect translation of "I want them" (and he really did want those chips!). He also said "C'est pas droit" to his grandmother when she put on his boot. She thought it was funny because it wasn't right as in the direction (ie left and right) but what he meant was literally "it's not on right" ie the sock was scrunched up in his boot and it didn't feel right.

Another things to note is that the kids spent all weekend with their grandparents speaking French. When I spoke to Suzanne on the phone yesterday, her English sounded French. It was very strange and interesting to see how quickly her language adapted.

Oh, tower of babble...

The good enough mother

I have to admit, I've been struggling lately. It used to be that I was so consumed by my kids' bilingualism that I had a definite focus. There are obviously other parts of parenting that are important to me and consume me with emotion and worry at times. And there are obviously other aspects to my kids : they are more than just little bilingual robots.

A while ago, there was an article in Multilingual Living called Stop Taking Your Child's Bilingualism So Personally (I can't seem to find it but when I do, I'll post it here). It really spoke to me. And I am happy to say that in terms of child rearing, we aced that one (baring all adolescent identity crises). And the bilingual aspect of the child rearing is the ONE thing I no longer worry about.

I'm a perfectionist, a control freak and lack self-confidence. Without going into the details of all my personal baggage, well, it's hard to be a parent. My parental manifesto is simple: if you love your children and if they know that you love them unconditionally, they will forgive you all your mistakes. But is this enough?

For the past few months, I've been seeing a therapist. Recently, I've gotten so scared that my children, especially my daughter, will pick up some of my unhealthy behavior (ie body image and self-confidence issues). So I decided to stop trying to solve everything all on my own and turned to someone for help.

As I've begun opening up to Dr. D (and let me tell you doing therapy in your second language is not the easiest thing!), I've realized a lot of things. I've realized that I'm repeating "bad" behviors despite myself because that's what I know; I've realized that I can't control everything; I've realized that I am a good parent; I've realized that I'm a good person; and I've realized there's no such thing as a perfect mother. The "good enough mother" or ze goot enuf muzer as Dr. D says, is a a theory by Donald Winnicott, an English psychotherapist. There is no perfect mother. And if there was, you wouldn't want to be that because then you'd be untouchable to your kids. And that defeats the point of it all!

So it's ok for me to buy prepackaged food for my kids (something I don't do because I love cooking and because I place a heavy emotional attachment on food that comes from my upbringing). It's ok to show your kids you are imperfect and make mistakes. And it's ok if your kids aren't invited to everyone's birthday party because you can't be friends with everyone. Just because Gaëlle or Zöe don't invite her doesn't mean you have failed as a mother.

So this brings me back to what I know I've done right (when I say "I", I don't mean to exclude my husband who obviously has contributed a major part of parenting). I've created loving, caring, and gracious little people who always say" thank you" and "please". I've created curious little beings who aren't scared to ask questions. I've created kids who love giving and receiving hugs. I've created happy kids, who cry, who scream and sometimes roll on the floor, but who aren't scared to laugh and smile. And mostly, I've created future adults who I'll be proud of, no matter what they become. And I hope they will forgive me for being imperfect.

Socialism : a four letter word

Socialism  /ˈsoʊʃəlɪzəm/ is an economic system characterised by social ownership and/or social control of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy,^[1] and a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following:cooperative enterprises, common ownership, direct public ownership or autonomous state enterprises.^[2]

Wikipedia goes on to say that socialism promotes social equality, individuality and solidarity of the people.

Last night, France elected a socialist president. And, even though politics are one of those things you're not supposed to discuss (along with religion), I am happy. In fact, I voted for François Hollande. Twice. Once on my own vote and once for a friend who was out of the country.

Suzanne was happy to be able to tag along with me twice, choose the right paper, slip it into the enveloped and keep my voting secret to herself until I told her she could tell her father.

There are a couple things I want to say about French politics. It starts 5 years ago when I was talking to a friend's husband who is a big shot political science professor at a big time university in NY. He told me that Sarkozy's politics didn't seem so bad. At the time, I didn't know what to say because, well, my friend is a liberal like me and so is her husband.

After having a few years to reflect and after having voted in 2 different presidentail elections in France, I can finally say this with certaintly. The French center is further left that the American center because of the nature of the political system. There are certain inalienable rights in France, such as universal health care, centralized government and affordable health care, which fall under the far left politics in the US.

I am very aware of the advantages that I gain by living in France as opposed to the US. I have affordable health care for my whole family, I get so much paid leave every year that I actually have a holiday savings account where my extra days go every year so I can use them whenever I want, and I got a masters degree in France without going into debt (hey, the entire year cost a couple weeks' salary). This is France. It's not socialist.

French socialism is not Marxism, it's far from Communism and it's definitely not Obama-ism. Obama is neither socialist nor communist. And on the French political scale, he's actually right wing. Gasp!

There were many points that made me not vote for Sarko. But there is a single point that made me anti-Sarko. As a foreigner in France, I have felt firsthand the effects of his xenophobic anti-immigrant policies. Just after I got married, my husband and I had to stand in line at 1am in order to get my residence permit. See, if we arrived after 1am, we wouldn't get a ticket to meet with an administrator when they opened the door to the cité administrative at 8:30 am the next morning. As an American married to a French national, I was subjective to a retroactive law which did not allow me to obtain my French nationality in spite of the law that was in effect when we got married.

So, yes, I am happy that France has a socialist president. And I'm looking forward to having a "socialist" president in the US too.

OPOL: when your 6 year old sounds like an adolescent

"Papa? pendant que tu es debout, peux-tu me prendre un verre d'eau?" My husband and I looked at each other when this came out of our almost 6 year old's mouth. Isn't that a complete franglais translation of the English sentence : while you're up, can you get me a glass of water? My husband said that no, in fact it was correct but not something you'd expect to hear out of the mouth of your almost 6 year old daughter.

This is a regular occurrence in our house, both the transfer of English grammar to French sentences, and the adult-sounding sentences coming out of the mouths of babes.

I've mentioned many (many!) times, that we are strict followers of OPOL. My husband sometimes speaks English to the kids (like 5 sentences a month) but I NEVER speak directly to my kids in French and rarely engage in French activities (like watching French movies) with them. Both kids know the difference between French and English and are both fully bilingual. So, after almost 6 years as a parent, I can finally let down my guard a little. My kids laugh hysterically when my French husband, who is as bilingual as I am, speaks English to the kids. My son even reprimands his father for speaking English because it's not his language: "Papa tu parles pas anglais!" But when I speak French in front of my kids, they look at me like deers in headlights as if they can't even process what I'm saying to them.

The funny thing about being the sole source of the minority language is that kids pick up all your idiosyncrasies and language ticks. And they end up sounding exactly like you, but smaller. My kids interact with other bilingual kids, themselves products of OPOL homes. When we get them together, we hear a mini Michigander, Floridian, Ohioan, Londonian and New Jerseyite playing barbie using big words and long sentences.

My husband and I don't use baby words with our kids, which can bring about some VERY uncomfortable situations. Like the time my daughter mentioned her vagina to her pre-school teacher. The teacher was so shocked by the actual word vagin coming out of a 3 year old's mouth, that she couldn't even discuss the issue (it was nothing).  So with our son currently being potty trained, I've decided to use the French baby word zizi and zézette instead of the technical terms I would usually use. This will hopefully save us and him - very boisterous and loud as he is - from some highly embarrassing situations. Back to the point of this post...

My kids will be spending 2 months in the US this summer. With Max starting French schooling and Suzanne entering French 1st grade in the fall, it seems like the perfect time to solidify their English while playing with real, monolingual American kids! Suzanne will be going to day camp - you know the kind where they load them into the yellow school bus at 8am, bring them to a local lake, they do dream catchers and drink boxes of milk, and bring them back dirty and exhausted at 4pm. She'll be with my best friend's little girl which is an added bonus. Max will be doing 2 weeks at a local nursery school where he'll be able to practice his bullying skills in English.

And I will, hopefully, be working on my new project while absorbing some much needed New Jersey air.

I haven't found the solution so my kids actually sound like kids in English, but I guess it's not really a problem since one day they will be bilingual adults.

MIA etc

Ever since I turned over a new leaf and decided NOT to be my typical complaining and bitching self at work, I've actually started enjoying my job (I know!) and become busy (I know!!!), too busy to blog from work.

When I started this blog decades ago, I was really bored at work, uncommitted and not really giving a crap about it. But it was a job, an interesting job actually, and it satisfied the need (ie flexible hours, good pay, international environment).

Without going into boring (or incriminating) detail about what my job actually is, last year there was doubt whether the job would continue or be moved to another country in which case I would have had to make a decision. Or actually, the decision would have been made for me...since I wasn't leaving Lille. But now, the job is staying here and by default, I'm staying and by default (ot more like pure personal effort), I have become motivated and actually work while I'm at work (I know!!!). So the time I used to spend mainting this blog while at work is actually taken over by doing the actual work I'm getting paid to do. Crazy I know.

And with the lack of time to blog, come lack of time to follow other people's blogs so I'm completely out of the loop and no one even reads this blog anymore since it's all about give in take in the blogosphere, right? And I'm not giving at the moment..

So I am going to try to be more regular a blogger, less frequent than I'd like, but more constant. This blog is important to me for a few reasons: the connection with other expats, the connection with other bilingual parents, documenting my kids' language progress as well as my own progress in this crazy country I call home.

So...I promise that next week I will write about Max's language development and our long trip to the US this summer, French elections, and my fears of Suzanne entering CP next year and my personal project which I'm still having trouble moving forward with...

Thanks for reading (to those who actually do come here)....

The One In Which I Discover the Lille Jewish Community

I've lived in Lille for about 10 years but I've been a Jew my whole life.

When I first got to Lille, I tried the synagogue a few times and I really tried hard to like it, but  there were something about the rapid-fire Hebrew, lack of order and the relegation of the women to the upper floor that didn't sit right with me.

When Suzanne was about 3, I took her to the synagogue to hear the shofar for Rosh Hashanah. I recall sitting through endless hours of incomprehensible mayhem before the shofar even got taken out. We then hightailed it out of there and I swore never to return because it just wasn't giving me what I want.

And I do regret the lack of Jewish culture my kids are exposed to, but I give them what I hold important. We do Hanukkah with some family here in Lille, we light shabbat candles sometimes, we eat apples and honey to celebrate the new year and in the past couple years I've had a mini-seder at home based on Sammy Spider's Passover Haggadah. But, there's not community...

When my mother was visiting in March, she gently insisted that I get in touch with the synagogue to see what was going on for Purim. We ended up attending the Purim party, Suzanne and Max participated in the costume contest (Suzanne as a princess and Max as a king), and I even met a nice woman who lives around the block from me. So  I thought I'd give it another chance...I mean, most of the people looked "normal" enough. Even the Chabbad rabbi who was dressed as Super Purim (Suzanne was cracking up because she thought it was super pourri which means super rotten in French!).

So last Friday night, I dragged my tired and hungry kids to the synagogue for the community seder. After entertaining them for an hour and a half while the Friday night service took place (included much climbing up and down the stairs and running in the hallway), we sat down to eat. As I looked around at the other people,  I recognized my eye doctor whose children were sitting calmly and quietly with their parents while mine were jumping up and down, climbing on me while Suzanne spilled her juice literally all over the seder place.  It was a very Pamela Druckerman moment, I must say. To their credit, my children were not terrible, but they were hungry and they were sick of sitting around.

After what seemed like forever but was probably only a bit over an hour (which is in fact forever in when you're an embarrassed mother), I turned to the people at the table with me and appologized that I had to feed my kids. I had absolutely no idea where we were in the seder and whether we had said the prayer for the eggs or the matzah, but my kids just couldn't take it anymore! Meanwhile, I was trying to keep a strong façade but was feeling sad because not only was I not getting the warm fuzzy feeling I was hoping to get from the community seder, but my kids weren't even getting anything educational out of it. It was too quick and not at all on their level. I went home feeling sad.

When we finally left around 11:30 pm, Max had washed his hands at least 3 times and Suzanne had downed 2 eggs, a few sticks of celery and half my food. But I had met some more neighbors who promised to invite us next year.

I suppose my point to this post is twofold. First, if there are any other American Jews in Lille, please contact me. Second, religion means a lot of things to a lot of people. And what the synagogue in Lille has to offer is not what I'm looking for. So, I guess I'll have to do it myself.

For information, if you are in Lille and looking for the synagogue, you can find information by getting in touch with the Beit Chabbad.