We thought we had a straight-forward day ahead today. Sophie has no school on Wednesdays, so we anticipated dropping Charlotte off at her school at 8.30am and picking her up again at 12.30pm (only half-days on Wednesdays for Charlotte). Simple! However, we arrived at school to find that Charlotte’s teacher for the first double period was absent (Ed: to be fair, her class HAD been told about this the week before, but Charlotte and her friends had been talking and missed that info!) and here, when teachers are absent, there are no substitutes and the kids just go home! We had to bring Charlotte home and then drive her back again at 10.30am and then go to get her again at 12.30pm. The concept of a ‘working day’ is definitely different here.
At lunchtime, our hosts invited us into their home to see 9 newly-arrived yellow Labrador puppies—just 10 hours old. Gorgeous! I am now working out how to get one of them back to Canada without Simon noticing.
After lunch we drove to the neighbouring village of Castelnou—a very picturesque “village perché” with steep, narrow cobbled lanes and a medieval castle perched on the top of the hill. The castle is shut for January, so we’ll be going back again later in the year to look inside.
Yesterday Charlotte’s class (in Canada) connected with us on Skype during their lunch-break (8.30pm for us). Comparing outside temperatures, presence or absence of snow, and school timetables seemed to cause great excitement!
Posted by Jo
