Bonjour à toutes et à tous.

This year’s letter is running a little late due to a very busy autumn and unexpected complications. Beverley, the partner of Leslie’s father, started to have worrisome symptoms in late October and has been diagnosed with cancer, a large tumour in her abdomen. Leslie has just returned to Paris after a quick trip to Ottawa to provide support. It will be a challenging road ahead for Beverley and Hugh David as they sort out the prognosis and treatment options.

In other news, you will have seen the news reports about les gilets jaunes and the violence in Paris. We live well away from the areas affected.  We have also managed to be out of Paris on the weekends. We have driven through several peaceful barricades where the only goal was to slow us down and maybe talk a bit. We were surprised by one, where the protesters had commandeered a toll station. At another, protesters were actually handing out cookies to motorists. As for the rest, we are appalled by the damage to the city that we love, the result of “les casseurs”—anarchists of the extreme right and extreme left—who are always looking for an opportunity to wreak havoc, and also the looters who follow in their wake. At the root of this is much more than the fuel tax. It is a long-simmering problem of income disparity and a rural/urban split. It’s hard to know where this will go.

2018 was another busy year of travel and welcoming guests, some for their second or third visit. Visitors provide a good excuse to get out and see parts of France or nearby countries and we are always happy to see friends from Canada, or the return of friends we met here in Paris who have resumed their lives back in their home country. Most of the people that we met when we first arrived are no longer here, but fortunately new people continue to appear. Leslie has made a few friends among the locals, particularly Coco who leads tours around the city and meets with a group to speak French every week. The language continues to be a challenge for us as the OECD and our largely expat friends use English as a common language. The pace of our lives would slow a bit if we did less, however we feel the press of time and there is just so much to do and see before our eventual return to Canada, still planned for about mid-2021.

Our trip to Jordan was followed immediately by a visit from Leslie’s brother Michael, wife Lisa, daughter Eva from New Zealand, as well as Leslie’s father. Michael and Lisa were taking a course in England and Hugh David met them there to hang out with 14 year-old Eva. They caught the Eurostar from London and arrived in Paris for a very welcome visit. We hadn’t seen them since they left Canada in 2009! They have settled very happily in New Zealand, near Whangarei, and have become citizens. Michael is working remotely for Adobe on the web version of Lightroom CC. Lisa has started a career in counselling. Sean (married to Rowan) is involved in running a food coop. Matt is farming their land.  Eva is schooling, and playing music, and growing up. 

We enjoyed having Lauren & her boyfriend, Collin, with us for the month of May, which is becoming a lovely new pattern. They have already booked for May 2019. This time around, we tossed them straight into the car and headed to Munich. We continued on to Salzburg and then made our way home through Strasbourg.  We had lots of fun roaming around Paris and threw in a trip to Bruges for good measure.  What will May 2019 bring? Not sure but we are starting to toss around ideas. Meghan came for three weeks in July with her partner, David, joining us for a week. Along with our dear surrogate daughter, Valeria, we did a reprisal of our Munich/Salzburg visit while Andrew attended NEA meetings in Munich.  Andrew’s mother, Margaret, came for a couple of weeks in August and we took advantage of a long weekend to visit Luxembourg.  The trip almost didn’t happen as we had car trouble leaving Paris.  Fortunately our insurance covers a replacement and after leaving our car at a garage, we were taken to a nearby car rental and were on our way with only a minor delay. The French highway emergency service is brilliant!

In other travel, we spent a very interesting week in Cyprus in October where it was still sunny and hot. We enjoyed the historical Roman sites, the beautiful landscape and the delicious Greek food. We were also very interested in how Cypriots live with the division of their island. We learned very quickly that we shouldn’t describe anything as Turkish...unless we were in the occupied north. There is no “Turkish part”, nor is there Turkish coffee or Turkish delight, but rather their Cypriot counterparts. The city of Nicosia is particularly fascinating as the border between the occupied area and the south runs right through the city and has become part of the urban landscape.  More here

The kids are all doing well. Meghan will graduate from Concordia in the spring with a masters in mathematics. She is not sure what her next step will be, but since she really enjoyed teaching a calculus course this semester, something that opens doors towards teaching/lecturing is in her current thinking. She is happy living in Montréal with her long-time partner, David, who works for Nuance Communications. Gosaye continues in Ottawa where recently graduated from a course in sound recording at Raven Street Studios. He works at an ever-changing stream of restaurants and is involving himself in a variety of musical pursuits, making it up as he goes along. Biniyam has relocated to Saskatoon where he continues to work as a DJ and entrepreneur. Lauren is in the final year of a psychology degree at Trent University in Peterborough and hopes to go onto a masters degree in occupational therapy next year hand-in-hand with her long-time boyfriend, Collin, who plans to pursue further studies in philosophy.

We hope that all is well with you and yours as we close 2018 and head into 2019. We look forward to hearing your news and perhaps seeing some of you in Paris in the upcoming year.