Babylonian family babbles

We know all about expat life and mixed marriages. France is my 4^th country and for my South African husband his 5^th. We met in the Netherlands, moved to the Sultanate of Oman, moved again to the UK and finally said the expat life goodbye and decided to settle down in France. Although we try very hard to integrate into the French community we will never speak French at home as our first language. Our children are brought up tri lingual and this gives every now and then Babylonian babbles at the dinner table. Especially if we have personal guests this can be a bit overwhelming. Pauwl speaks English, as he was brought up in South Africa and English is his mother tongue, I speak Dutch and the kids learn French at school. As parents we try to be as consistent as possible. The girls can switch very easy from one language to another, even in one sentence or speaking at mom and dad at the same time. But we see that whenever they can not find a word in the language they are speaking at that moment, they will loan a word from an other language.

To auction

The logo of our departement Yonne (89) in French Burgundy is an "escargot" or a snail. Life goes slow in this part of the world. But some company's take this very literally. Went Sunday to a local art auction to buy some furniture for one of the new holiday gites "au chateau", but boy oh boy you need a lot of patience. As a daughter of an antique dealer I'm used to go to auctions and normally the items pass very quickly, like 2 to 3 items a minute. But in Auxerre they take their time. After 3 hours I give up. The auctioneer had done less than 200 items. Next time I will phone in to get what I want.