Holy Cross Monastery

My first days of sabbatical were times of connecting with old friends. I spent 10 days re-connecting with one friend I hadn't seen in fifteen years (eek!) and another friend I've had for thirty-seven years (eek! eek!).

After paying my respects to a diocesan clergy gathering, I spent a few hours with my dear niece who is very busy in medical school but found the time to be with me for a morning. I taught her Cloud Hands in that early morning, and even have a photo of us doing it. However, it is not a flattering photo of either one of us so you will simply have to imagine us.

Next, I drove to Holy Cross Monastery in West Park, New York. Many people don't know that there are monks and nuns in the Episcopal Church but there are. When I was a teenager I became dear friends with a monk named Bede Mudge. Later, after having struggled in silence for a year with a call to ordained ministry, I went on a retreat at Bede's house (otherwise known as Holy Cross Monastery). It was there I first ever said the words out loud, "I think I am called to be a priest."
What a great delight, 20 years later, to be able to return to that place as priest and consider all that has happen in those two decades.

When I was planning my sabbatical, I of course contacted Bede. He told me he too was going to be on sabbatical at that time. So I was planning to go to the Monastery but was sad to be missing him. I was tickled pink to find him sitting in front of me during our first compline service! His sabbatical didn't start until June. It's easy to tell our friendship picked up right where it left off:


The monastery has a rough labyrinth in an upper parking lot. After walking it, I did my Cloud Hands:


The monastery also has this little shrine you pass each time you enter and leave the sanctuary. I was drawn to it and spent some time alone there several times a day. I thought it only fitting to offer Cloud Hands there before I left.

Fiber Art with an old Friend

I enjoy playing with all sorts of art. My current interest is with quilt art or fiber art. A friend I've known since kindergarten, Deborah Boschert, is a professional fiber artist, and I was able to spend several days in her studio learning from her and catching up. It was a delightful time.

I never learned art and design basics, so she began with a quick lesson:

She has some great photos and a review of our time together on her blog. Here is the large piece I completed while I was there. It's about 5 feet long and now hangs in our stairwell:


Here, Deborah taught me her technique where she photographs a work in progress, prints it out, and then uses markers to try out different surface design techniques. I really liked that process. I can play with several different things on paper before I commit to it on the cloth.


And here is a series I completed with Deborah. I'd never done a series before, and when she gave me the assignment, I didn't have any idea how to begin. She was an excellent and motivating teacher, and helped me discover a lot of ability I didn't believe I had.

Besides all the time in her studio I loved catching up on their lives, seeing her children growing up, and even attending an impressive middle school band concert. Connecting with dear old friends was a major goal of my sabbatical, and my trip out East gave me a great start.

From Ohio to Paris

Here we are with everything that we'd need for our three months of travel. We locked up our home, picked up our bags, and we ready to be on our way:

Then we got to the airport. Early, thank God.
We had booked our travel through Travelocity. I showed my confirmation code to the airline representative, and she looked in her computer and we were not listed as passengers on their flight. It took three hours to work out the problems, but she did a stellar job of helping us through our first (and largest) traveling problem. Travelocity, however, failed us miserably both on this flight as well as our return flights. (Friends had the same problem with Expedia). One of our first Sabbatical Learnings is that one should never book international travel through a travel site--always go directly through the airlines.

Here, the airline representative is attempting to convince Travelocity that they need to help us solve our problem. The boys keep entertained by weighing themselves and our bags on the baggage scale:
After an hour or so, I stayed with the airline representative and Shawn and the boys wandered through the airport, connecting with the art:

It worked out well in the end. Our airline representative booked us on better, more direct flights and it was smooth sailing to Paris. Yippee!

Paris Disney

Welcome to Paris Disney: The best way to transition from American life to French life!
Really, this was a great way for our family to transition. Much of it looked and felt American, and yet most everyone was speaking French (and virtually everyone would also speak English as needed). Paris Disney is where we got over our jet lag and got used to a language that was not our own.
Some of the most enjoyable things weren't the rides or the shows, but things like these ducks:

We did get to all the rides and shows we wanted. Usually we were able to do this without standing in lines for too long. However, here we are in the midst of an hour-long wait. The ride was fun, but we encouraged the boys to choose something else rather than stand that line again.

The boys also went "ice skating." It wasn't actually on ice, but a white plastic that acted enough like ice they could use regular ice skates. They even use a zamboni to clean it each evening.

Since we stayed on site, the boys had lots of opportunities for photo ops with the characters. As you can see, our children didn't care about this aspect of The Disney Experience nearly as much as many children do:
We also had a fun family bicycle ride through Disney Village:


And the parents shared job responsibilities. Dad was in charge of skating with the children. Mom was in charge of riding spinning rides with the children:

We spent four days/three nights at Paris Disney and that was just right for our family. Many guides will say 1 day is enough for Paris Disney, but our family would have been miserable trying to fit it all in. With three nights, we didn't have to rush or push ourselves to make sure we rode all the rides and see all the shows we wanted, we had plenty of time to do the extras like swimming and skating, and we could go back to our hotels for a rest or a change of pace whenever we wanted. And our daily cost at Disney was about the same as our daily cost in Paris. Whew.

Paris

During our time in Paris, we stayed at a delightful bed and breakfast through Alcove and Agape. Our host was Claudine who spoke just a tiny bit of English, but who worked hard to help us out and make sure we had what we needed. Her apartment was small, but we had what we needed. Above, you can see how she'd serve us a typical French breakfast of bread, spreads, and cafe chocolate.
Being with Claudine was a great way for us to get more deeply ingrained in French life. We were able to see how she organized her day and her week, and how she worked in her Tiny French Kitchen, and learn the basics of French life.

We purchased a 3-day museum pass which allowed us access to many of the city's museums. We highly recommend it for anyone traveling with children! With it, you can follow your children's attention span.
Below, you can see the boys and I hunting for dogs at the Louvre. They were pretty excited that day, and I think were ready to go in about a half an hour. We made sure they got a chance to see the Mona Lisa. (That was a surreal experience--people crowding around, but no one gazing at the painting. Rather, everyone was pushing to get a good spot to get a photograph. They didn't seem to understand they could get a better photo from the giftshop or even online, yet this is their chance to see the paintings with their own eyes--without any filter.)


We spent a bit more time in the Musée de l'Orangerie. Like the Louvre, it is situated on the Tuileries Garden which was probably the boy's favorite part of our day. They got to run and play in the grass, dirt, and fountains (and they got ice cream).
At l'Orangerie Charlie spotted this working artist (below) and exclaimed, "Hey, she's painting Abstract!" That really impressed me. His first-grade art teacher was teaching more than I realized--and it stayed with him.

Monet is my favorite painter, so we spent a good amount of time in the water lily room. All four walls are covered in his grand canvases. You might be able to tell from this photo that I was the family member most taken by his art:


We also purchase a 2-day hop on/hop off bus tour. This took us to the front door of most all the top Paris sites. It worked great in combination with our museum pass, because we could ride as much or as little as we desired. When it was sunny, we rode on the open top deck (which has been a wish of Charlie's for the past two years), and when it was drizzly, we were dry in the cabin below.
We attended the Episcopal American Cathedral in Paris on Sunday. The boys looked forward to attending Sunday School. That day the Cathedral completed their fund raising for Haiti and the children sung a song about Haiti during the offering. Here you can see Charlie and Luke joined in like they'd been practicing with everyone for weeks. Thanks, Sharon, for giving our kids a great children's choir which makes them comfortable singing wherever they go:

Here we are strolling through one of many Paris parks we found. Most of their walking trails are dirt rather than paved which caked our clothes and bodies in a deep layer of dust the whole time we were in Paris. Here, you can see the boys enjoying one anothers' company:

Another stop during our days in Paris was the national Museum of Anthropology and Natural History. It had great displays of comparative anatomy, evolution, and even had the real Lucy stuck back in a corner.

Ah, here's the view out our window at Claudine's house. Such a beautiful place.

June: Kerbors, Brittany

We spent the entire month of June in this house in Kerbors. The white door is our door. You can see the direction signs to other villages just to the left of our house.

To the right of our house was the Creperie de la Presquille (above). It served excellent fresh galettes and crepes and AnneMarie, the owner/cook, was a delight.

The view from our front door was the village church, seen below. In France it seems church bells will ring a few minutes before the hour and then again a few minutes after the hour. It was odd at first, but I got used to it quickly.

Hosting Friends in Kerbors

Our dear friends the Reeces came to visit while we were in Kerbors. Cydney was very interested in megaliths and there were some within 2k of our house. Here Luke and I are saying hello from behind these prehistoric monuments.
It was a pretty walk out to these stones, and many mornings I would walk from our house, past these stones, and on to the seaside.

Here's a photo of the wonderful Creperie next door to our house. This was our first visit, but it was nowhere near our last.


Most nights we ate at home in our own lovely kitchen:

Abbey de Beauport

Not far from Kerbors is the Abbey de Beauport. Its lovely grounds were perfect for our families: room enough for the kids to run and plenty of gardens and ruins for the adults to explore.

Luke and I found a knight's grave that had a dog carved at the feet of the knight. The dog is a common symbol of faithfulness in grave markers of the time.


There was ample opportunity to frame some beautiful scenery:


And for family photos:


Cloud Hands in one of the chapel ruins felt "just right":

Carnac

One of our long day trips was to see the prehistoric megaliths around Carnac. I'm surprised that here in the US we hear about Stonehenge much more often than we hear about the Carnac megaliths. I was incredibly impressed.

Our first stop was the Museum of Prehistory. I walked through with the children, which meant our visit took about 4.37 minutes and then the kids ran around outside. The other adults were able to spend a bit more time in the museum, which had enough-but-not-too-much information.
There are thousands of rock structures spread over the region. We drove to the largest one and walked out to see the tallest and a rectangular structure about the size of a football field.



I thought the rectangular area was an appropriate place to do Cloud Hands that day. Cyd mirrored them with me. It was lovely.


It's good to have friends.

Brittany Beaches

Brittany beaches are not exactly what I think of when I think "beach". Mostly, they're rocky and quite cold. Above is a photo of a family trip when we planned to walk to Sillon de Talbert. It was windy and cold and we didn't get very far at all. Then it started raining. Then pelting rain on our face. So much for a day at the beach.

The next two photos are of another "beach" near where we lived. There were wonderful rocks to climb on, but not much in the way of sand. And the air and water temperature were far too cold for swimming--at least for me.



A half-hour drive away was the wonderful Granite Rose Coast. We climbed the rocks on several occasions and also made weekly trips to an indoor ocean water swimming pool and visited a really neat little aquarium all in the same area.


It's good to be a family.

Pinata

It's actually hard to say how we spent our days in Kerbors. Our life was very simple, very different from life in the US, but we were rarely bored. I finally finished the children's christmas stockings. We read a lot. We took walks, played games, and used up batteries on the iPods. And here's documentation of another project. It catered to my crafty side, and to the boys' love of hitting things, and Shawn's ingenuity.
Luke and I spent several days making our pinata.

When it was dry and full of goodies, it was Shawn's job to get it hanging using supplies on hand. After a bit of thinking and trial and error, he had the solution. (Editors note: Contrary to what it may look like, Charlie was not about to hit Luke in this picture.)


And then it was time to play!