The Stranger Across the Aisle - IV

A vision for our sabbatical year and planting the flag on our family mountain. Part 4 of 5.

Somewhere in the Loire Valley, by a river, near a mill, on a sofa next to a bed with exposed springs, hidden behind a cluster of bamboo — are our beautiful children, Daniel and Alannah, 8 and 11. Unseen, but fully present, are their mother and father. July, 2010.

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This summer we travel around France in a vast circle staying in ten separate rentals arrayed in one-week intervals. We have stops in the Dordogne, Bordeaux, the Loire Valley, Brittany, Normandy, Burgundy, Paris, the Alsace. The glories of the south of France will be part of weekend jaunts later because they’ll be so close to us.

In the fall the children will attend a pair of international schools just south of Aix. With classmates from all over the world they’ll spend half the day speaking in English, the other in French. We’ve been assured by the headmaster (in worryingly broken English) that if the children don’t speak French by the end of the year, they will erect a statue of them at the front door. Aux …