First real swim meet

At long last, Noah got to participate in his first real competition, instead of sitting on the sidelines watching Benjamin. He had a fabulous first swim meet, and managed to come home with two 3rd place medals, and one 2nd place!

Short Winter in Picardy

We didn't have much of a winter this year, which was fine by me.

But Noah was excited that we got some tiny snow flurries.

And Gala is always excited to stay near the fire.

Metaphor

Benjamin is a budding writer, I think. At lunchtime, he told me:

"Le week-end est comme une île, inondé d'un tsunami de devoirs."
[The weekend is like an island, inundated by a tsunami of homework.]

St Paul market

Friday, we decided we'd go check out the market at St Paul that we had heard about.

 It was large, crowded, and full of lovely fruits, vegetables, flowers, local food products, and tourist items.

Unfortunately, it was extremely hot out. And it was even hotter under the market stall umbrellas. Poor Benjamin was close to heat exhaustion, so we had to cut our market visit short. We did buy some samoussas before leaving the market, and stopped on our way back to the car to pick up some bouchons, so we had a great lunch when we got back to the villa.

That evening, we were treated to an amazing sunset. We had such a great view from the villa!

Super Tourists!

This was one of the absolute best things about our trip. Fresh lychees and pineapple any time we wanted them! 1€ / kg for the lychees. Absolutely, positively the best in the world.

Thursday, Christian took us on a tour of the island. We started out at Niagara Falls. (No, really.)

Then we drove up the mountains for a while...

To go see the "Bride's Veil" falls (la voile de la mariée). It had been pretty dry, so the falls were apparently less impressive than they might otherwise have been.

Then we went on to the "Bassin de la Paix" (pool of peace).

We stopped to look at this beautiful church, which has been repainted in its original colors. And we found some lychees and sweet potato cakes to add to our picnic.

We stopped for our picnic near the old suspension bridge of the East River. We had "bouchon" (pork dumpling) sandwiches and the aforementioned lychees and sweet potato cake. Yum!

Then we went to see the church Notre Dame des Laves (Our Lady of the Lava), renamed after it was spared by the lava flow of 1977.

More waterfalls after lunch.

And some more lava field visits on our way back to St Gilles, where we were staying. These were my favorite part of the island.