Our New Normal: Daily Schedule

For this next part, I thought you’d might like to know a little about our average day. On Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays, we have full school days. We get up around 6:30 (ideally) and all have breakfast around 7:30 once everyone is ready. One of us (or sometimes all of us) walk Levi and Amelia down to their school. It’s only about a five minute walk, so it’s no big deal. We laugh that it would take longer to drive there, counting the time to get in the car, buckle car seats, drive, find a parking spot, unbuckle, and walk into class.

Levi in front of his school on our first visit there. Amelia’s classroom is the blue door just inside.

We take Axel down to nursery care at 8:30 and head over to the main building to begin a short devotional time with the entire student body at 8:40. The whole day at the language school is built around the public school schedule, so that our kids can still be a priority and no worries about timing. We have a time of a devotional, or on Fridays, a time of worship, followed by announcements. It may go without saying, that everything is in French (though some announcements to get translated by a more experienced student for the next few weeks so we don’t miss anything critical).

At 9, we break up into our various classrooms, divided by level. While we will move up throughout the year, we will have the same teacher – and since my teacher is awesome, I am excited.

10 or 10:15 is a morning “pause” for 15 minutes. Matthew and I often have breaks that overlap and we see each other at the apartment to grab a second cup of coffee and, frequently, chocolate.

After another hour in class, we are done at 11:20 to be able to grab the kids for lunch. Most often, Matthew walks down to the maternelle (French pre-K) to get Levi and Amelia, while I grab Axel from the nursery and make the trek up one flight of stairs to get lunch started. Matthew also often buys a baguette (yes, daily buying of bread is normal here – I will talk more about this is the next blog post) to go with lunch.

We all gather around for our two hour lunch break, talk about our days, try to get some little chores done, before heading back out to school. I take Levi and Amelia, most days, back to his school at 1:20. Axel heads down to the nursery at 1:35 and our afternoon session begins at 1:45.

We have a 15 minute afternoon “pause” around 3:00 and our school day is done at 4:20, in order to facilitate Levi and Amelia’s school day finishing at 4:30.

After school we have various normal things – dinner prep, eating, grocery shopping, laundry, cleaning, and, of course, homework. We try to spend some time outside, either by going for a walk (to get groceries or bread), heading over to one of the small parks in the neighborhood, or just letting the kids ride bikes around the courtyard on campus.

We’ve also tried to include plenty of fellowship. Once the kids are in bed, we might head to the other apartments in search of games being played or just to hang out, one of the many nice things about living in a small space! Plus, we our kids are great sleepers!

Wednesdays are a little different because, until this year, all schools in France were closed each Wednesday! (Long long ago, there used to be Saturday half days, but that is gone now.) This year, the schools decided to have half day Wednesdays, and our language school decided that this was a great opportunity for parents to stay home and study without distraction. This means, we take Levi and Amelia to school in the morning like normal, but then it’s just us and Axel. It’s a nice quiet time to get some work done before getting them at 11:30 for lunch.

Saturdays and Sundays have been different every weekend so far, and we hope to make time to travel a little bit on weekends once we’re in a good groove. I’ll make sure and get you filled in on those adventures. One advantage to travel is the opportunity to practice French in new situations!

In the next post in this series, I will talk about Albertville and some of our favorite spots!