Time for a rainy weekend - Mama is going to write this post for me because I am busy eating a tartine...that's a sliced baguette and I asked for butter & nutella:
So, we have had a busy 2 weeks just in terms of daily life and settling into our own apartment. We have a fairly loose schedule in the morning depending on how much work I didn't get done for class the night before. But I do always get the kids out the door and into the streets of Paris even if it's just to do our daily grocery shopping. We live in Beaubourg and it's funny how once you pass the Pompidou it becomes more of a neighborhood. People are starting to recognize us and say Bonjour. I guess it helps to be a tall woman with wild blonde hair being dragged around by 2 adorable twins - one who walks with a cane. Yesterday we went to our preferred boulangerie and the owner gave us our baguette for 80c - that's a discount! The man who sells sandwiches and such to tourists waved and smiled "Bonjour, comment va la petite?" (How's the little girl?) One day as I walked around with Zelda and she was melting down and demanding milk, he had come to my rescue. They know us at G20 our grocery because Creed has to pull the little basket and Zelda needs to hold on to whatever she's buying. Then there are the 2 guys that run a food stand that offered me some napkins when we strolled around on Bastille day with Zelda covered in ice cream. I am dying to go knock on the door of Yohji Yamamoto's showroom which is also on our street - just to say un petit Bonjour - but it's closed up for les vacances.
People stare and whisper - there are no other blind kids on the street. We haven't seen any here. When I see a blind adult with a cane, I want to ask them: Where are the blind kids? What did they do when they were children? Stay home? France or at least Paris and in certain quartiers is very progressive towards "les malvoyants" or "les nonvoyants". In the 11e, where we stayed with Elsa & Laurent, each crosswalk had a beeper to alert the blind that they could cross.
It rained yesterday - Saturday - so I decided to take the kids to Les Halles. Many years ago it was the central market district where the farmers and growers would bring in their trucks before dawn and sell their produce to the restauranters. That's a nice bit of history but it hasn't been like that in years and has since been reduced to a giant underground shopping mall which at times can be quite unsavory. but we went for the steps and the escalateurs and I remembered that there was a playscape on site near Saint Eustache.
