Noah is a jeune ambassadeur francophone through his high school, and got to participate in the 19th Summit of the French Language, held at the Cité de la Langue Française in Villers-Cotterêts today.
He got to meet President Macron, the first lady, and other dignitaries.
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| Macron and the young ambassadors |
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| Noah and the young ambassadors |
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| Macron with the young ambassadors |
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| fancy food! |
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| "family photo," as they call it |
We had a quiet celebration at home for my birthday. As is tradition, airplanes are worth 10 years. The gooey butter cake was delicious!
Benjamin's swim club had their first meet of the year at Saint Louis University this weekend.
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Noah and I visited AstonFly aviation school today. The school is located southwest of Paris, in the Yvelines department. Their training program lasts two years, and lessons are in English.
Benjamin attended the fall career fair. They're expected to dress professionally to meet the recruiters. Over 400 companies come to meet students at the fair, and we hope this will lead to an internship at some point. At any rate, it gives the students good experience for interviews later.
Benjamin once again represented France in Missouri S&T's Parade of Nations. To our surprise, there were two other French kids this year, on an exchange from their French engineering schools, so Benjamin carried the Europe banner instead of the French flag this time.
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| Peter, Benjamin's apartmentmate, representing Bulgaria, and Benjamin |
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| Benjamin told the spectators how to say "hello" in French |
Today Noah did a few circuits practicing L-approaches with the instructor, where you approach the runway from the perpendicular instead of head-on.
Then he did a couple of solo circuits. To get his PPL license he has to have at least ten hours of solo flying time out of the 45 hours total.
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| learning about L-approaches |
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| Noah landing solo |
The weather being what it is in northern France, Noah is trying to get hours in when he can. He gets out of school at 4:30 pm on Thursdays, which gives him enough time for an hour of flying if he can find an instructor available.
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| Abbaye St Jean des Vignes in the background |
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| Maverick back on the ground after a few solo circuits |
Benjamin is right back in the swing of things. His solar car team kicked off the year with a murder mystery night. Benjamin is on the far left in the classy red plaid shirt & tie. As the token Frenchman, he was Jean-Pierre Monseigneur.
Senior year ("terminale") is pretty intense in France, with the baccalauréat test at the end of the year. The pressure is not quite as bad as it used to be since they reformed the bac to include more portions that simply count your grades from the year instead of from one testing session, but the results of the bac help determine what educational or career path one may pursue after high school, so it's still a pretty big deal, and seniors have a lot of homework and studying to do.
Juniors and seniors start school a day after the sophomores, so Noah took advantage of the extra day off and found an instructor available to fly with him for his first flight after vacation.
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| checking the oil |
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| towing the plane out of the hangar |
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Frédéric's cousin Manu and his family invited us over for an end of summer lunch before back to school time. Coming from the farthest away, we managed to arrive before everyone else.
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| Mélissa, Frédéric, Axel, Noah, me, Sophie |
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| Mélissa, Sophie, Axel, Manu, Kimberley, Pascal me, Frédéric, Noah, Sandrine, Christian, Sheila |
After we returned to France, Frédéric left for Normandy for ten days to make some progress on the house. The goal of this stay was to finish the kitchen.
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| He painted it |
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| Gaudeline helped lay the floor |
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| Then they added the kitchen cabinets, fridge, and dishwasher |
Benjamin sent me his first day of school photo as he starts his sophomore year at Missouri S&T as a mechanical engineering major.
Frédéric, Noah, Elyse, and I drove to Chicago to fly back to France.
We got to fly back in style, too.
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By some miracle we managed to get our timing right so we could move Benjamin into his campus apartment at Missouri S&T, and he got to show Elyse around the campus.
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| Benjamin's new apartment building |
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| Elyse and Benjamin |
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| Originally Missouri School of Mines, then University of Missouri at Rolla |
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| Checking in on the solar car |
