Swimming

Today Abe and Ella discovered the joys of living just steps away from a swimming pool. Abe managed to negotiate, in French, the various rules of the pool (speedos only, no boxer bathingsuits, swim caps, no shoes in the locker room, ambiguous partition/openings between the men's and women's changing areas, etc.), and enjoy a couple of hours of swimming. Ella swam under water for the first time, and played underwater tea party. Although the pool is "right out of the 70's" (i.e., tile pool with people swimming breast-stroke and wearing swim caps), it was a great way to spend the morning.

In the afternoon, we returned to the Parc de la Vilette, where, having mastered the garden of dunes and winds, we tried out the garden of equilibrium (see photo). We had hoped to have a picnic supper while listening to the open air concert. However, the concert tonight turned out to be the most ear-splitting, awful, hip hop music ever, so we found a spot to spread our blanket almost out of ear-shot of the noise instead. The kids ran in circles on the grass for almost an hour - we're optimistic about a late morning tomorrow :)

Finally, progress on the language continues. Ella said her first complete sentence in French today just out of the blue. At lunch, she said "Je voudrais du fromage, s'il-te-plait" (I would like some cheese, please"). We also bought a couple of second-hand French books at the market today (Call of the Wild for Abe and Braveheart [based on the Mel Gibson movie] for Dara). These were the only two books we could find under 200 pages, which seemed like a reasonable cut off for a book in French! We can now blend in with the typical Parisian citizens who read novels on the Metro. Which reminds me that today, Jonah saw a man running to catch the Metro, and Jonah yelled out to encourage him "vite, vite" (quick, quick).