sami in paris!

 

 it's amazing to me how many times morgana has been to the eiffel tower . . she goes with everyone who visits.

 camille had been in thailand, getting her scuba diving permit, but she is now in paris for a few weeks. i think she returns to thailand soon, to continue her education and become a divemaster.

 at the musée d'orsay.

 looks like a very nice cafe at the museum . .

 with delicious macarons.

last day of french class

 morgana had her last day at the école france langue, paris notre dame.

 outside the school . . it was in a beautiful neighborhood, sitting on the corner of the square rené viviani and with a view of notre dame from it's windows. shakespeare and company bookstore/cafe was just around the corner, and she loved visiting there for coffee and pastry.

with her teacher ms frédérique, with whom she really enjoyed learning. 

i love the map on the wall . . 

morgana loved her view from the classroom window . .

 

it looks like it was a yummy feast and a fun time. i think she'll miss it even though there were some difficult moments. french didn't come to her as easily as german, though, the last time i spoke with her via what's app, and i heard her speak to someone in french, i thought the accent and words rolled quite trippingly from her tongue.

warm weather

 we've finally had some warm and humid summer weather. 

not hot, but warm. 82 degrees fahrenheit. of course the humidity is at 93% which . . is not fun.

i don't know how to get my photos off of chanda's computer. i'm thinking of trying to put them all on a thumb drive.

korrina's latest knitting project

i met korrina on monday to give her the gifts i had brought back from cape cod (fog chaser coffee and wild beach plum jelly) (i finally put a post up here). we had tea at the rubin museum cafe and i snapped this pic before we went our separate ways (she to the lionbrand yarn store, and i to the film forum where chanda and i saw a frederick wiseman documentary titled ballet). i was so impressed with her latest shawl: wild and free, by amanita agata mackiewicz. i hope to make it myself . . soon! i have some yarn morgana gave me over a year ago, from austria, that i think we would be perfect for it.

(i also finally posted -here- about a trip to the nybg that greg and i took on august 26th.)

parisian field trips . .

morgana sent photos of her french class out on a few field trips. here they are visiting the jardin des plantes.

 this is the teacher she has been telling me about, whose classes she has really enjoyed.

they visited an argentinian restaurant as an end of semester get together. morgana's friend sami is in this photo, along with camille.

 morgana and sami have known each other since they were toddlers and attended a pre-school waldorf together. sami was incredibly excited to finally be in paris with morgana. 

(we love her fancy luggage!)

chocolates sent from home.

yesterday was morgana's last day of french class. i wonder how she will feel to have it be finished. with a friend to show the sights to, i suppose she won't miss it very much.

a trip to brooklyn

 chanda and i took the two train to borough hall, brooklyn, today. first we visited a new yarn store korrina has been telling me about called woolyn. 

chanda liked this hat and bought a skein of yarn in blues and browns to make it. the yarn was dyed by a woman on long island. i'll have to take a pic in the morning and check on the name. i love how there are all these independent dyers and spinners and designers! i also love how some are now from my home area of long island. this store carried yarn from north light fibers, which is a small indie dyer on block island (the island we can see on a clear day from montauk). i almost bought a skein, but thankfully i didn't! i have so many projects as it is (and i'm behind with my monthly sock knitting!)

 we were in brooklyn to have dinner with our friends sacha, charlotte and buddy. they have the sweetest and tiniest apartment with two cats, a bunny and a fish (i'm fascinated at how the bunny gets along with the cats!) sacha made a delicious meal of pasta with pesto sauce and the tastiest cinnamon butternut squash soup. we also looked at pictures of their trip to paris in july when they met up with morgana (i also got to meet stuffed animal pals lion, bunny -and in the photo- star or etoile).

buddy always has a special reading and writing project that he likes to work on while we look at photos, or play a game he's not interested in.

adjusting

i haven't posted in awhile because i've been swimming in a sea of change. i've been swimming in this sea for awhile now and i didn't think it could get any worse, but it did. i'm too sensitive to these inbalances. my sister takes all these changes in stride, but i moon and moan and whine (inside myself, of course). hmm. maybe we're just all too sensitive to these changes, but some of us just complain more. like me. well, complain to myself. i'm not saying my sister doesn't feel these things, she just seems to be a lot sturdier. less sappy. less nostalgic. i've been distancing myself from chanda because she needs to take more control of her path, though i'm still helping quite a lot, as any parent does. being the youngest child, i see the struggles that we have more clearly than she does. there's no younger child to pass the baton to. there's a dependency we have with our mothers that the older ones don't have. i'm trying to give her space, but i realize that i hold her back in some respects, because she's the baby. just as i was. we have a home to hold together. we're the last of the children; at home.

she's forging her path, slowly but surely. i have confidence that she'll make it, even if it doesn't seem to be flying at the moment! and slowly, but surely, i'm trying to find my next goals. having been a stay at home mom for so long, i don't know what my next focus will be. as a person who has always had a strong focus, this leaves me feeling confused. i've never been in the position of not knowing what to do. but you know what, i don't know what to do!!!

i'll find it. it'll just take time.

a trip to cape cod

 we decided to have one last trip before the end of summer: we would camp on cape cod at a campground i've always wanted to try. however, my nephew has been staying on a beautiful pond through his work with the national park service, and he invited us to visit with him for the weekend. it wasn't too difficult to change our plans.

 however, it wasn't easy getting our bikes into the car. on the morning of the trip, i couldn't find our bicycle rack. perhaps we gave it away since we have a hatchback now, and not a trunk. morgana was insistent that we would be able to fit the bikes in the back of the car, and she was right. i was surprised, but also relieved. we were really looking forward to riding on the cape cod rail trail.

 thursday night we had a delicious dinner of organic hot dogs, cape cod potato chips (they took up the entire aisle in the stop and shop store in orleans!) and homemade cabbage/apple slaw that i had brought from home.

 we played three rounds of may i, and greg was extremely happy because he finally won a round (he was the last one to put his cards down, but the first one to finally go out).

 the beautiful pond my nephew is staying on. 

 i was calling this trip our "last beach hurrah" for the summer, but when i finally sat down in the sand chair, i realized that it was also our first beach hurrah. we really hadn't had any beach days all summer. we did take a dip in carmel, in california, but we hadn't sat on the beach there, or done any reading, knitting or napping. or eating! a true beach day consists of all of these things.

on this day i had my knitting, my reading (a book about the navajo and canyon de chelly) and my sandwich and tea and cookies.

paddleboards are the latest fad. chanda really enjoys them, but i still have to get more comfortable with them. while at the ocean, we saw a man go out and surf the waves. he did very well, and caught more rides than many of the surfers. i was surprised.

it felt so wonderful to be swimming. i could wake in the morning and go for a swim before breakfast!

 one of the reasons i wanted to visit the cape was to see chanda's photos on moby dick's wall. it was only just last summer that i finally gave the restaurant's owner the two photos she took of herself when in london at the royal ballet school's richmond campus in 2014.

 fried oysters, a baked potato and cole slaw.

the food is so good! moby dick's is one of our favorite restaurants. excuse me. it's the favorite restaurant.

i have more photos on my camera which i have yet to upload to the photo files on my computer.