Fete des Vendanges

There is a bagel store in Paris that sells H & H bagels. The store is called "Bagels and Brownies" - how bad could it be? They fly the bagels in, frozen. We got delicious sandwiches - turkey, pastrami, cream cheese (to our amazement, they were less expensive than at home!) - and sat in the Luxembourg gardens to enjoy them. Paris is now perfect - having discovered good bagels here, we may never come home!

This afternoon we went up to Montmartre. There's a vineyard there, and today was the day they harvested the grapes. We had a great time at the festival. First we saw the parade in which there were representatives from all of the wine producing regions in France, dressed in traditional costume and singing or dancing as they paraded by. There were paraders handing out grapes or tastes of wines, and there were stilt walkers and jugglers and baton twirlers. It lasted almost 3 hours - there was a lot of starting and stopping - maybe something to do with French labor laws :) but the kids loved every minute of it. Then we walked around the stands diplaying and offering tastes of all kinds of local products - cheese, sausage, and of course wine. We ended up the evening at our favorite Morrocan restaurant for couscous.

The kids had a good week at school. Jonah stayed home on Friday because Thursday evening he didn't seem to be feeling himself, but he slept in until almost 11:00 in the morning, and that seemed to do the trick - he felt much better after all that sleep. Ella's teacher had her last day on Friday because the regular teacher is coming back from her adoption leave. They have done a great job with the transition and Ella is already very comfortable with Mme. Dedaban (the regular teacher), so I don't think she'll have any trouble with the change. The class baked a cake on Friday for Gaelle's last day (and the October birthdays). Ella has learned to write her name in script (they teach kindergarten kids to write in script here instead of printing) which Ella sees as a *very* grown-up accomplishment.

Last night we celebrated Ella's friend Helena's 4th birthday. Her choice was to go to McDonalds dressed as princesses, but she had a last minute change of heart and chose Quick (a French version of the same thing - just as bad, if not worse). Afterwards we went back to their place for cake and brigaderos (a Brazilian birthday party staple made from condensed milk - very yummy).