Well I found out where all the parents of the smoking teens are... not here! There is an international boarding school in town, so while these parents are paying good money, their kids are learning to smoke. Friday Lucy and I walked to the closest school called Saint Denis and knocked on the door. We were taken to the principals office where we had to sit out in the hall until he was ready to see us. When we went in we explained our situation and learned that t...

I would like to give a shout out to all my teacher friends who are finishing up their first week of school with kids today! Congratulations for making it through this very tiring week of school. Now gome home and enjoy your weekend with your family and do NOT come in to your classroom (Gina Friend) over the weekend. And a big thank you to Hope Marshall my substitute while I am off eating french bread and drinking very strong coffee. You are the best Hope! Teache...

So what's the deal with smoking in this country? Everybody smokes! When we were in Paris we noticed that young 20's couples were smoking, parents with small children were pushing their strollers and smoking, and now here we are in this cute little village and all the teens smoke too! You can't smoke inside restaurants anymore, but if you sit outside at a cafe, every table around you is smoking. We saw a table of 3 attractive men in their late 20's at a sushi plac...

Wednesday and Saturday are market days here in Loches. The streets close and there is everything from clothes, to food, to jewelery, to flowers, even a man to help fix your weedeater! We purchased local goat cheese, a yellow mum for the patio, fresh raspberries, local honey, a jacket for Lucy, and a rotisserie chicken that we made into chicken salad for lunch. It's sort of like going to walmart - ok not at all - but what I mean by that is it is one stop shopping...

Hi, it's Lucy! While my mom and I were in Paris, we kept reading about these amazing book stores that they are famous for. We were all set to go until we realized that, duh, the books would be in French, so the plans got cancelled. It was when my mom and I got lost that we ended up in one of the very cool bookstores asking for directions, and I saw this book right in front of me. I'm a die-hard Harry Potter fan- I could tell you anything you wanted to know about ...