Heat Wave

In the long distant past, when we were planning our sabbatical, we checked out church options in Bordeaux. The search was short… there was really only one English-language international church in the city. Once we were local, we discovered that the church met just a 15-minute walk from our house.It had been three months since we’d been able to participate in church life, and we were primed and ready to get involved somewhere.

Bordeaux Church is a small congregation, very international, and very close-knit. The church is made up of people from Wales, England, China, South Africa, Nigeria, Indonesia, and of course, France. I was disappointed that there were no children in the congregation (it had grown from a college ministry), and I was afraid that the kids would have a hard time engaging in a smaller, quieter, and longer service than we are used to. Actually, however, they have just attached themselves to the adults (they are extroverts starved for attention), and gabbed away. They also have really been able to grasp the sermons that Alan gives. It’s actually been really good for them to immerse themselves in a church culture that is thriving, but different than their own. We have all been so grateful for the way the congregation has drawn us into their way of life and their time together.

We were looking for a French tutor for the kids, and our friend Catrin from church has graciously been helping us. She moved here from Wales at the age of 6, and she teaches English as a foreign language here, so she was the perfect person to come alongside the kids and help them learn some practical phrases and conversations tools.

Vance is the one person in our family who had a birthday during our sabbatical. He was also lucky enough to get two Father’s Days–one in Spain (they celebrate Father’s on St. Joseph’s Day), and one in France. The kids worked hard to make him feel special. Somehow his reign as King of Strawberries has earned him the right to be trumpeted and applauded down our tight, creaky spiral staircase every morning. Still.

It was June, and we had been living through an eternal spring. March is spring in Florida, and then it was spring in Spain and every other country we visited as we moved north. The weather was beautiful in Bordeaux when we arrived, which was important, since our apartment was like all the others in the city: un-air-conditioned. It was blissful to wake up in the morning and their open the long windows wide. But the heat was coming.

In FL we don’t need to check the weather that much in the summer. It’s always hot and humid, with a chance of thunderstorms in the afternoon. It was quite a shock, then, to check my weather app and see a high of 104 one day in June, with other days in the low 100s surrounding it. Fake news. Except it wasn’t.

We checked out the public pool on one of the hotel days, and braved the French bathing system. Like everything else here there is a right way to do things. In this case, everyone must wear swim caps and fitted suits (no bathing trunks for the boys!), and shower before entering the pool. Once we meet all the qualifications, it was a great pool to swim in and relax. As the temperatures let climbing, we wimped out and escaped to the beach.

Arcachon is an easy train ride from Bordeaux, just about an hour away. We found ourselves that rare unicorn of French residences: an air conditioned place, and hopped on that train. We had been coping pretty well with the heat, but the upstairs (4th floor of the building) was getting pretty oppressive with the heat.

Arcachon was a great little getaway… small and quiet, with good food and a place to cool off. We are showed with our FL beaches, but the kids were glad to have any chance to get in the water. I didn’t realize until I was walking on the beach, however, that I had neglected to prepare my kids for French sunbathing culture. Not every woman wears a top on the beach, and in general the French are just much more matter-of-fact about their bodies. I was proud of our kids for keeping it classy, and not getting weirded out or overly curious. They just observed another culture at work and moved on with their sandcastle.

In Arcachon we were able to take the kids out for their first real bistro experience. I wish I had the ability to recreate eating in courses at our house, because it brings such a nice pace and feeling of expectation to the meal. You eat slower and taste everything more, somehow, when it comes just one plate at a time. Alas, I have no sous-chef or house elf, and I don’t think our dishwasher could handle the strain.