A big week...

As I mentioned in my post yesterday, we have been pretty busy the last few weeks and one big milestone was reached this week (albeit a bit prematurely by normal standards).

Louis had his first day at school last Monday, he is only 2 years 5 months but our village school was in serious danger of closing down as they could not fulfil their necessary quota for students. So the village banded together and a new mini 'class' for 2 1/2 year olds was formed. Louis has 5 classmates his own age and for the moment he goes from 9 am-12 noon.

When you look at the postcard photograph above, not much has changed since and the building is still as is, with the addition of a modern gravel footpath outside and a wheelchair access ramp. The only other change is that in earlier times the school was divided in two, the Ecole pour filles et l'Ecole pour Garcons. Now the classes are mixed and split between the ages.

You can't imagine how excited I was for Louis to start school here in Lacoste, not only for purely selfish reasons i.e. that it would allow me to take the mornings off for the last three months of pregnancy. I also had widely romantic notions of what it would be like to take classes in this beautiful old building, with french children (speaking french... I know it sounds very dumb), eating a civilised three course lunch in the canteen.

Walking to the school in the morning sunshine, poor Papa looks sad here, and so he was to see his little boy go off to school, he is growing up too quickly!