Frenchparents Blog: For Parents with an interest in the French Culture

For you families who travel abroad,
For you parents seeking a host family in another country for your teenagers,
International Parents was designed with you in mind. By one of the Frenchparents network co founders!

International Parents seeks to both stop short and go further than Frenchparents.

• To stop short of giving detailed local advice by major city worldwide, as is done elsewhere on the Web and as Frenchparents aims to do for San Francisco.
• To go further by enabling members to keep in touch and connect, both near home and across the globe, according to their interests, their native cultures, and their children’s ages.
  The anti model is Facebook, the supermarket of online networks, where one finds everyone and everything.

International Parents is:

• Both local and global, being organized by major city worldwide- à la CraigsList
• Highly respectful of members’ privacy and intimacy – identities are not visible to non members
• Set in a colorful setting, making for a warmer, in my view more feminine approach
• Not based on a volume, pure advertising model but on a qualitative, premium membership approach
• Membership is on a by invitation basis only

International Parents has also been designed to help professionals offering the products and services you seek and need as global parents to connect with you, because you are hard to find and so are they!

We love it when people contact us to be local representatives for the network.

Looking forward to seeing you on International Parents, Frenchparents members! The invitation link will go out soon.

Bayard Jeunesse, the leading French publisher of fun yet educational magazines, books, and CD Roms for children 2 to 20 has come out with its own online destination for kids: BayardKids.

With two diferent offers by age group ( 2-6 and 7-12), the BayardKids sites offer online educational games and content, advertising free and with a strong attention to quality.  The sites are a real parent’s friend.  No need to tell the children time’s up on the computer, the sites automatically log the child off after a predetermined time- 20 minutes I believe.

Isn’t that great? No more fighting with children to free them from the lure of the screen, the show stops all on its own!

This being a beta version, BayardKids is initially offered free of charge as a complement to its magazine subscriptions to children’s magazines like Pomme d’Api,  j’Aime Lire and Astrapi.

The 2-6 year old site is due to be open by subscription to non magazine subscribers in early 2009.  Prices announced are 5 euros a monthor 60 euros a year.

Bayard group is quite discreet about its initiative.  There is no information about it on its main site, whether in French or in English.

– > Info on Bayardkids edutational sites (in French)

A friend of mine, a French journalist in France , maried to a Spaniard, with two teenage children, is working on developping a unique web based travel guide service for us, traveling families!

Finally, she’s proposing to offer, for major cities worldwide:

• Travel info suited to families
  IE, not your typical: best restaurants and great museums, but rather, restaurants, outings and activites children or teenagers will enjoy.

• Text guides we can print out or have on our mobile devices with child-specific content, to give children and teenagers information and games they’ll be interested in, at last…

She’s asking all international families to answer this survey to help her assess your needs better. It’s here- and its in French. Thanks for taking 5 minutes to respond!

A new breed of magazine for children 5 to 7 has come out in France in 2008.  ‘Champions du CP‘ and ‘ Champions du CE1‘, which can be translated as: ‘ First Grade Ace‘ and ‘ Second grade Ace‘ are high quality, 80 page magazines for kids that combine:

•  edutational content typical of high end children’s magazines (offering illustrated stories, games, stickers and a poster)

• and true instructional content that parallels what children are to be learning that year in school, ie:
  •  Math
  • French language
  • and History and Geography content.

In a country where there is a real worry on the part of parents as to what their children are learning in school, given the comparatively poor results the French educational system has had since the 1970’s, this magazines is clearly designed to calm their angst.

The magazines are beautiful, with a glossy cover, thick paper and brilliant colors, and the instructional content in appealing to the eye as well as in its approach.  A six year old boy not particularly known for his love of school work was found deeply interested in the magazine’s exercizes, not only in the ‘ fun ‘ sections!

They are bi-monthly publications.  They are sold in French press kiosks by the unit and on a yearly subscription basis.  They cost about 7 euros each in a kiosk and 36 euros a year for a  6 issue subscription, in France.  Prices will be higher outside of France no doubt.

Milan Presse is the French publisher behind the idea.  Milan was recently acquired by Bayard Presse, a worldwide leader in children’s magazines, with tens of language adaptations of its leading French titles such as J’Aime Lire, called Adventure Box in the UK.

– > More on Champions du CP et du CE1 and on subscribing

A nice initiative from the writers and illustrators at Astrapi, a leading children’s magazine for the 9 to 11 year old crowd, in the country that invented the concept 30 years ago: France, with Bayard Presse Publishing. Lulu, one of the star characters in a cartoon in the magazine, now has her blog!

Its truly fascinating to see the hundreds of comments she gets from faithful readers, ie, pre-teenagers, to every post. She talks about everyday issues these pre teens face in France: the end of year school show, arriving late at school, being nervous about going to summer camp, etc…

–> Lulu’s Blog

– > Astrapi magazine information online

As with most things in France, other than buying a baguette and going to the restaurant, buying a house is much more complicated than in North America.

FEES:

There are fees of course:

• Homes are not all listed in all real estate agencies. I know of one network, ORPI, that lists its properties through all its network’s agencies, but this is a recent and novel approach.

• Agency fees are about 6% (but run from 5% to 10% depending on the price of the home)

• State fees are about 8% on homes more than five years old, and 4% on recent homes.

So that’s right there between 10% and 14% of the house’ s cost in fees!

Then there’s the administrative hassles.

LEGAL and ADMINISTRATIVE CONSTRAINTS :

Think you’d like to renovate, and maybe add some rooms to your new property? You’ll have to ask for a building permit ( ‘permis de construire’), which may take up to 3 months to be granted or refused, for reasons you often do not completely understand.

There are rules pertaining to the land you may be buying, restricting how much you can enlarge the home. In one instance, even though the house is on 5 800 square meters of land, ten minutes from a city, the only possibility is to enlarge up to twice the size of the existing home. In this case it was not a huge home, with 170 square meters. This means the owners can only up to 85 square meters to the home, leaving a huge part of the land unused for housing- thereby reducing its value.

Information on the land and the home is supposed to be maintained by the local town hall ( at what is called ‘ le cadastre’) , but it is often incomplete and not considered as legal proof.

In conclusion, be forewarned, buying a home in France is an adventure!

France Home Finance is a Paris-based company I’m familiar with who helps non resident buyers find loans.

- > Here’s a good page they have on buying a home in France.

Here are some books my children ( and us as parents) really enjoyed for our children, when they were between 4 and 7 years old.

Apart from books we got a lot of great stories, quality illustrations and writing from magazines (which look like soft cover books really) published by Bayard Presse, a France-based publisher that sells worldwide.

For 3- 5 year olds who are smart enough to read or have someone who can read to them , the magazines are: Pomme d’Api and Belles Histoires. They are available only by subscription, although Bayard Editions eventually publishes book versions of the stories.

For 3-5 year olds:

• For a great look into French society today and really fun text and illustrations, there’s a collection of fine hard cover books from Bayard Editions with the following titles:

• 
  • ‘Des Grands Parents, quelle aventure‘, by Roser Capdevilla, A-L Fournier-le Ray – (’ Grands Parents, what an adventure‘)
  • ‘Un Bébé, quelle aventure‘, by Gaudrat Ma ( ‘ A baby, what an adventure’ )
  • ‘Une maman, quelle aventure‘, by Roser Capdevilla, A-L Fournier-le Ray ( ‘ A mom, what an adventure’)
  • ‘Un papa, quelle aventure‘ , by Roser Capdevilla, M-Agnès Gaudrat ( ‘ A dad, what an adventure‘)

The kids love to read them over and over as they depict tens of everyday situations they really relate to, in a fun way.

• Other charactersfound in book series for this age group:
  • Tchoupi: a cute little bear, a boy symbol
  • Martine: Martine is a little girl probably about 7 years old. She does babysitting, etc…
  • Caroline: Caroline is a cute 7 to 9 year old girl who seems to live with a ménagerie of animals, all very human-like in their behaviour, so that the little ones can find an interest in her adventures. A typical French culture story is ‘Caroline et la Galette des rois’: Around the Epiphany, on January 6th, called ‘ la fete des Rois’ in France, traditionnaly a ‘galette’, a French pastry, is eaten with a ‘ fève’ in it, that designates the queen or the king. Here the event is full of surprises as one of Caroline’s pets eats the ‘ féve’…
  • Léon le Bourdon, Mireille l’Abeille, and other animals series: A cute series with very original illustrations that I liked a little less because it had some mean, sarcastic elements in some of its stories.

For 5 to 7 year olds:

Nathan publishing, a French publisher, a collection of books called Première Lune ( ‘ First Moon’ ), in high quality, hard cover forma, with text that’s nice and large in size and many illustrations on its pagSome titles in the series we enjoyed are:

• Je le dirai à ma mère, by Béatrice Rouer ( ‘ I’ll tell on you to my mom ‘)

Is about two girl friends who quibble and involve their mothers in their fighting. The mothers first react agressively with each other and then find a way to make things fine again.

Searching for it on Amazon.com it says its out of print, but there’s another book in the same collection by Beatrice Rouer: Le Pestacle et Les Pétards, which looks fun too.

• Calamity Mamie, by Arnaud Alméras (’ Calamity Grandma‘)

There is a series of ‘ adventures ‘ involving Calamity Mamie, a forgetful, disorganized and ‘unny grandmother who gets maried again, puts makeup all over her face by mistake, etc… If you know a grand mother like that among your family circle, you’re sure to enjoy this reading with your children.
- >Petite Librairie online bookstore has some of these titles and others

When we were living in the US with our children, I was faced with the the task of preparing school lunches for my children ages 2 to 5. As one with some French culture in my background, I say you are what you eat, and eating nutritious, balanced and great tasting lunch boxes is a must, including for children. That meant also having hot lunches for my children, which was often a problem in US day cares and schools since they rarely had a microwave available for reheating. I managed, with the help of a small round thermos.

Here are some lunch ideas and techniques:

• I prepared a menu for the week everyweek, which did not vary very much. There was enough to do just preparing the meals!

• For desert, I ‘d most often give them:

- > Unsweetened Yogurt,fruit, raisins, unsweetened applesauce ( in an individual serving). Whole Foods has those.

- > Or mild cheese like Gruyère, Comté or unprocessed cheddar and fruit.

• Here’s what main courses of a weekly menu were like:

Monday:

Peas, cooked, with butter or cream, with small pieces of ham mixed in. Stored in a small round thermos.

Tuesday:

Tuna, rice, corn and tomatoe salad, with oil and vinegar dressing.

Wednesday:

Green beans, cooked with butter, and pine nuts, with some pieces of meat or fish.

Thursday:

Squash with butter and some meat or fish

Friday:

Pasta with fresh tomatoes and pieces of chicken. That was real chicken that I ‘d bought raw and cooked , not the bleach white kind unfortunately found in many Caesar salards in US restaurants…

So there you have it. Alternatives are broccoli with cheese melted on top, whole potatoes with cheese or butter, etc… It takes a little time to prepare but you can plan in advance and you it spares you the thought of what sort of chemicals your child will be eating that day at school!

I do wish I’d had a service that prepared these sorts of meals for me, and remember a person in San Francisco had started doing this but cannot find her name again now.

Yes you read it. Don’t think because you’re sending your kids to school in French schools they’ll eat succulently cooked meals, as might be expected in the Terre of Haute Cuisine… School lunches are most often these days managed by large food catering companies like Avenance, Sodexho and another one, who also run company cafeterias in fact.

But while adults have the means to complain, should there be a problem with the quality of meals served in their company’s cafeteria, school meals of extremely poor quality overall are served to a passive audience: children, at a very high price to parents – and municipalities,who often finance part of the cost in the public school system.

The cost of meals four days a week in a school in France is between 800 and 1 000 euros. Let’s take a 900 euro average cost, and see what that amounts to in terms of per meal cost. Given the number of holidays in French schools, kids only eat there about 3 weeks a month on average. So with 10 months of school, the 900 euros comes down to 90 euros a month, where kids only eat (3*4= 12) meals. That’s 7.5 euros a meal! For this price, I can get a good sandwich with protein, fresh vegetables and quality bread, followed by a desert, at any corner take out. I can also get a medium, thin crust pizza, with lots of tomatoe paste and limited amounts of cheese, the way they’re supposed to be made – making for a relatively healthy lunch- at a local pizza place.

Now let me describe the sort of things served to children at this price..

• For starters: Pizza, ’saucisson’, paté

if any of you have an notions of nutrition, you may know that what is considered good practice in a meal is to start with a raw vegetable, prepared a certain way of course. IN France we are quite good at preparing our world famous vinaigrette and serving it with shredded carrots, tomatoes, cucumbers, corn, or to serve raw mushrooms with olive oil… Basically, we have quite a few options available to start a meal in a healthy manner. Fat rich pizza, saucisson ( salami) or paté made from unidentified meats are NOT part of them.

• For Main dishes: breaded turkey or other types of meats, overcooked and accompanied by a highly salty and startchy sauce, and tasteless ‘green’ beans or other vegetables

To say that kids have trouble eating the stuff is putting it mildly. My daughter says she has to eat a lot of bread to help some of it ‘go through’…

• For desert: highly sweetened and starchy industrial pudding, rock hard fruit, served unscliced or fruit salad out of a can with sugar syrup

Most kids dive on the desert for lack of other options, and those who try to eat the fruit give up after trying to peel it or bite into it.

I’ve seen in four schools so far in France with my children, two public and two private, and in all the parents presented demands for higher quality. Only one school responded favourably and accepted the staff take simple surveys of what was really eaten by all children there during the meals. Quite sad, really.

-> Article on UFC Que Choisir, a major consumer group, about the poor quality of school lunches confirmed by a national agency.

They were envious, all of them.  Whether Parisians or Californians, they said: «  Hey you’re pretty lucky to be moving to the south of France for work ».  The Marseille- Aix en provence region to be exact.  Yeah, I knew the area was sunny, gorgeous, with tons of shops and cultural activities, I knew that.  I also knew we were NOT finding any homes to rent around Aix en provence in May or June, so I was not as excited about the idea as I should have been…

We finally found a house to rent in the end, at the end of June.  We were supposed to move in in July- it was about time!  Only thing is, the house was occupied until… September 3rd.  And holiday seasons ends in August, both for work and for school. Our children were going back to school August 29 to be exact.  After a few days, we were able to negociate an August 25 move in date, but by that time, our movers had filled all their delivery slots and we could only get our things delivered August 27th.:-/

On top of this, we were expected on the other side of France, about 7 to 8 hours away by car, for a wedding in the family August 30 th!  Yes!  How convenient.  So we barely had time to open up some boxes before we hopped into the car for a day-long drive, slept, went to the wedding, slept, and drove back the following mornig.

Finally, we could look forward to a weekend’s worth of unpacking, before school started and work started again…And we unpacked, threw away yet more things, and put the remaining items away ever so neatly.

Now, we didn’t have a phone line at that time.  Did I mention the house is brand new?  Although this could sound as a positive point, here it translates into: it don’t work yet. No phone, no TV antenna, unfinished cupboards, water mysteriously seeping through the floor in various rooms…

The phone story, still unraveling at the time of writing, could make a hilarious Charlie Chaplin movie.  Enter the phone company technician.  Which, by the way, in socialism-ridden France, is NOT an employee of France Telecom, the monopoly provider for land lines, but an outside contractor.  Well well. So much for state-sponsored entreprises with generous worker conditions.

Phone technician is a comical character- if you don’t have to depend on him.  He never comes at the time of the appointment, never appologizes, always complains about the way the wires were laid, about the way his colleague works, and can’t refrain from SHOUTING in your home.Poor guy, he was out of luck with us.  After two unsuccessful tries at trying to locate where to link the house to the phone network, and beaucoup de moaning and complaining, we find out the needed elements had been buried in the ground and covered with grass… Believe it, it’s true.  So he comes back a third time, and there, succeeds in linking the house to the main network, but…Alas, there is a problem on the other side now, with the main network.  And so ten days after having started to pay rent on a house in the middle of nowhere, we are still phoneless, with limited hope of ever having access to such a modern luxury.

I’ll spare you the details on the green pool water we had to deal with the day of the signing, the real estate agent who counts the number of lightbulbs in the house, should we steal them, but cannot explain how anything in the house works, the 20 page move-in inventory (for an unfurnished, four bedroom home)…I’ll also pass on the high tech dishwasher we mastered after two days of head bashing and a call to the owners, who knew the ‘ trick’ to get it to finally start, as well as having no washing machine for 7 days after the movers damaged it.

I will say the countryside is beautiful, the weather wonderful, and our neighbours very welcoming.

Let’s just say, moving in in Aix en Provence, and in the South of France in general, is something which has to be earned.