Living in France is different than living in California. My experiences of growing up in Willows, a small rural community in Northern California, are far different from my children’s experiences of growing up in France.
The language is different: My daughter, Chelsea’s, first word was, "Maman," (which means Mother.) That didn’t last long because she saw I wasn’t responding to it. Soon thereafter she caught on that, Papa spoke French and Mommy speaks English. Can you image our conversations at home? A swirl twirl of words, in both languages.
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The Food is different: As a child I ate cereal for breakfest and had peanut-butter and jelly sandwiches for lunch. My children’s breakfest is, chocolat chaud in a cafe au lait bowl, with a baguette from the "good bakery" around the corner. Foods such as, endives, leeks, mache, never entered my mouth, nor did any of the 365 cheeses of France! Come to think about it, I never ate a "chestnut," I only sang about them at Christmas!
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The customs are different too: This morning, when my son Sacha lost a tooth, he told me, "The church bell started to ring…DONG 1, DONG 2, DONG 3 and DING my tooth fell out at 4 in the morning!" Teasingly he added, "I wonder who is going to leave me some money under my pillow, the American tooth-fairy or the *French little mouse?"
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"…The most commonly accepted belief by academics is the fairy’s development from the tooth mouse, depicted in an 18th century French language fairy tale. In "La Bonne Petite Souris," a mouse changes into a fairy to help a good Queen defeat an evil King by hiding under his pillow to torment him and knocking out all his teeth..." Copied from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tooth_fairy
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