Applied Hermeneutics: Word from multicultural France

During their visit to Australia in 2002/3, my cousin and his wife and child from the Netherlands stayed with us in between gadding about the country, including an extended campervan trip up and down Western Australia early 2003.

Little Marc, who turned 1 year old during his sojourn here, has been one of the most widely-travelled babies in the world, and now lives with his growing family in the Pyrénées-Orientales area of southern France.

His Papa recently emailed:

Marc is almost 6 and is a real boy now. Now and then we talk about Australia and then he says he remembers everything but you never know. In his bedroom is a map of the world on the wall and he knows where Melbourne is where his auntys, uncles and cousins are living.
He is in his 3th year of school and speaks french as a real french boy. Of course at home we speak dutch and ones in a while we go to Holland to meet the family. It’s funny but Bart doesn’t know any bad language in dutch, but after a visit to his nephew (7 years) he picked up enough in one afternoon to shock us.
At his french school is doing ok and he has a couple of good friends. There is already a nice french girl, Justine, in his live!!
Johanna turned 4 today, it’s not the best day to have your birthday just before xmas but we have celibrated it never the less. It’s the month of pressents. First we had Sinterklaas in Holland at the 5th of december, today she had more pressents for her birthday and tomorrow there is even more under the xmas tree.
For Johanna it’s more difficult at school but it’s getting better now and she starts to speak better french. She is a happy girl and really 100% female, everything concerning pink, prices, or make up is very very interesting and the rest is cava as they say here in France. Also Johanna is in love and already knows who is the lucky boy who will be the father of her 8 children!!

Yep, they grow up so fast in this age...

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