Parents in Adaptation picnic

Who's to say that French and Americans are different? I found so many similarities in moving to USA and then to France. The problems of renting a house (if you don't have a Bank account, you can't rent it), the problem of opening a Bank account (if you don't have a house, you can't open a Bank account)...same problems, whether you are speaking in English or in French. 

Now I know they are similar also in welcoming new families to a school: all thanks to a PiA organization, very similar to the PTA in our South Pasadena school. As soon as we had Josh enrolled, they started sending us emails and offering us all types of information through their website. They welcome and support new parents who arrive from abroad. Their website is entirely bilingual and you can find several information regarding the school and the summer camps of course, but also the weather, the Paris transportation system, blogs, cafe', restaurants, markets, language schools, extracurricular activities, doctors, babysitter, yoga, and so much more. 

We went to the first meeting with PiA this Saturday, at the Champs de Mars, just in front of the Tour Eiffel. There were probably a hundred of new parents, coming from all over the world. All the volunteer parents had their T-shirt with their names on it and gave us our personal tags  with a color code for our son's class, so that we could look for other classmate parents just by looking at it. The Peer Leader kids (middle and high school) had a pink shirt with the logo WELCOME written in all different languages: as soon as we arrived they picked up Josh and put him together with other kids in the same class and organized for them all sorts of games. It was really well organized. We met several other moms and dads and spent a couple of hours talking with them and getting to know each other. The location of course was spectacular and luckily the weather was warm. 

 

Now here is the BIG difference between Americans and French: in USA you would never organize such a huge meeting without offering food or drinks...here, despite being a "picnic" and being organized right at lunch time (between 11 am and 1 pm), no food at all. We had to bring our own bottle of water and we were courtesy invited to buy our lunch at one of the  kiosks that are all around the Champs de Mars!

By 1 pm we were starving and Josh was exhausted after so much playing and running: so we decided to go back home and cool off in our shaded patio.

Hint for the Americans coming to France: if you're invited to a picnic, don't assume they're going to feed you!  Just bring your own stuff.