Lyon, France - (Week 1)

Hello Family and Friends,

We are off to a rough start in Lyon. First things first, finding childcare for Atlas. In France, school is obligatory starting AT three years old regardless of birth date. So similar to our situation when we were in Brussels, there are no daycares for 3 year olds, because they are supposed to be in school. Now that it is September, the school year has started. So now we are looking to enroll Atlas in school, but for only one month. We decide to not even try to get through the bureaucracy of public schools, but just look at private schools as they typically show a little more flexibility, or so we thought: two programs were full and two programs wouldn't even consider enrollment for only a month. There was another program that was willing to take Atlas, but they needed extensive paperwork that we just didn't have along with local doctor's visits to confirm and translate the paperwork we did have. For example, they wanted a "family book". This is a book that only French citizens have that shows your family's history of marriages and births. They also wanted us to get a French doctor to evaluate Atlas to make sure he was healthy enough to play with other children. We would have to figure out how to navigate the legal and medical system just to register for school for one month. Thankfully, we found another bilingual school that would take Atlas for a month. This school was perfect in every way. They provided everything, including food and bedding for nap time. The only thing I would need to do is get Atlas there. That's where there was a problem as this school was an almost thirty minute bike ride away from out hotel. If we do end up moving to Lyon, we would go to this school, but for a month, it was a bit of a commute. But the seventh school we visited, finally, worked for us. We had to due an "interview", but that was more just an opportunity for me to ask questions and tell them about Atlas. The school is in French, but his teacher speaks English. The whole reason for travelling before Atlas is of school age was so that we wouldn't have to deal with temporary school. But France has to be extra. In fact we have decided that we got American exceptionalism from the French. They really do think very highly of themselves and their food. They claim to have the best croissants(true), baguettes(tied with others), coffee(not our thing), wine(so many have excellent wines) and cheese(only if you like soft, smelly pungent unpasteurized varieties). Just like we claim to be number one because we said so.

Second, our luggage didn't get shipped from Amsterdam to Lyon. The shipping company wasn't responding to any inquiries about why they weren't able to ship our luggage. After almost a week of no progress, Brett drove back to Amsterdam to get our luggage. He rented a car for 24 hours, drove 9 hours, slept 3 hours and then drove 9 hours back.

Atlas and mommy hanging out in the bed because daddy isn't here to kick Atlas out of the bed.

So yea, our first week in Lyon has required some work. However, our hotel location is in an excellent location. We are in the center of town on the central island of Lyon. Whenever we meet people in Lyon and ask where they would want to live, they tell us the center. We are right off of a major shopping street and across from the river.

View of the hill side from the park beside our hotel.

Biking along the river.

Looking across the river to the Grand Hotel-Dieu. This is our landmark to exit the bike path on our way home from school.

This first week has been busy with logistical things, but we have seen a lot of the city just by riding around and looking at schools. Unfortunately after one week, I don't like it. My biggest problem at this point with Lyon is that they speak French. I realize that I am adamantly opposed to learning French, which is my problem. Every other country we have visited, I have been willing to learn the language. Even in Japan, I thought Japanese would be very hard to learn and that I wouldn't be able to do it, but I would like to. Even Dutch, which seemed limitedly useful, I wanted to learn. French, I don't want to learn. Their accent matches their attitude, snobby superialist. Really not interested in assimilating into their culture. We'll see if more time changes my mind.