(Dan's) First few days

So our first morning here (Monday 1/12) the sun came up at 8:40am. This means that when you wake up, it's dark; and when you shower and eat breakfast, it's dark; and when you get to school, it's still dark! I've never been in a place (to my recollection) where the sun came up so late. (The sun goes down at about 5pm, which doesn't seem too unreasonable.)

I've been nursing an annoying but not horrible cold or something since around Christmas, and with all the stress and lack of good physical exercise of the past few weeks, I started getting lower back pain. These pathologies collided on Monday when I had a massive cough that just about threw my back out. Only through sheer heroic grit was I able to maintain a semi-erect bearing. I've started back exercises that have already made a big difference for pathology #2, I'm (comparatively) happy to report.

Every day we've been here, there's been some non-zero level of rain. I don't know if it really pours here, but it's certainly been a drizzly, overcast city. But on the other hand, I love walking around without needing gloves or a hat-- it's definitely warmer than Madison.

And of course there's plenty of French being spoken around here, and that's been fun. I really hope the girls pick up a bunch of it during this extended visit. I have concerns about JoJo in particular having difficulty in this regard, since she has several English speakers in her class, which can obviously enable not speaking French. Another parent in a similar situation moved her kid to the class with no English speakers, after her kid wasn't learning French very quickly. Hopefully it won't come to that for JoJo.