You read that Moritz arrived in the overnight between May 5 and May 6 ...
... and was to do whatever his host family did in addition to the other activities planned for his class.
Put the two together, and his weeks have included going to two different churches (ours plus a confirmation ceremony at another church), going to Michael's baseball practices and Boy Scout meetings, seeing minor league baseball ...
... playing minigolf (followed a week later by bowling at the same place) ...
... going to Lambeau Field and the state Capitol, swimming and skating at the same place ...
... going to one of Ripon's best known employers — Rippin' Good Cookies — on a walking tour of the city ...
... Crazy Dress Day at school Wednesday ...
... and, you know, school. (He has homework, which is more than I can say of his host.)
His schedule still includes a farm trip, a trip to the Wisconsin Dells (what the French might call un piège à touristes if they have such a phrase), a going-away party at a horse ranch Sunday night (at which if he's not careful he might end up on TV), and then his actual departure Tuesday morning. It would be worth flying back to Paris with the class merely to see their zombie-like states the first couple of days back in France.
The experience shows, for one thing, the technological miracles we take for granted. The first photo in this blog was shot at 12:04 a.m. after the students had arrived, with my cellphone. I emailed the photo to his parents in Paris; they got it sometime after 7:04 a.m. Paris time through the Internet, satellites and who knows what else. A week later, his parents called Moritz ... from Rome to my cellphone. (Paris and Rome are in the same time zone.) Moritz talked to them in the lobby of the Oshkosh 20th Avenue YMCA.
As I mentioned earlier this month, it amazes me that 11-year-old kids are international travelers. (Moritz was watching CBS-TV's "The Amazing Race" season finale, in which the final contestants were in a museum in Rio de Janeiro. Moritz looked up and casually said, "I've been there.") Moritz's school, L'École Active Bilingue Jeannine Manuel, is the largest nondenominational private school in France, so one might expect its students' families are reasonably well off, but there is the issue of whether 11-year-olds are mentally and emotionally ready for different cultures from theirs. From what I've seen, these kids obviously are.
Tuesday will be a hard day. The biggest problem we've had with Moritz is making sure we choose the right vehicle for the activity, given that my car seats five, which is one too few for everyone. (The skating and bowling involved extra people; fortunately Jannan's minivan seats seven.) Other than that, he's fit right in, including eating my spaghetti sauce and lasagna. (I was told lasagna was his favorite food, but only his mother's lasagna; that was proven untrue two pieces later.) He's quieter than his host siblings, but his host siblings are pretty much a nonstop run-on sentence. And he is so laid back that he hasn't objected to anything we've dragged him to so far.
The experience has been (pardon my high school French) "formidable!" I hope we keep in touch with Moritz, and I'm thinking we'll be doing this again in a few years if circumstances work out.
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