A Long French Word

As I was dropping my 11 year old son off at school again after lunch today, he absent-mindedly said, in Southern French:

"Anticonstitutionellement."

I say Southern French because he made another syllable out of the "euh" sound between "elle" and "ment," which is typical down here. Up in Geneva they would skip that syllable, making it an eight-syllable word rather than nine.

I replied, "Anticonstitutionellement? That's a long word."

Jason: "It's the longest."

Then he was off to another afternoon at the French village middle school. I was left to count on my fingers (and the steering wheel) how many letters there were, while I drove down the road (24). It made me think of antidisestablishmentarianism (which has 28).

Tonight at dinner Jason was describing how in 6th grade "Techno" class today he got to solder components onto a "circuit imprimé" (printed circuit) for the lighted keychain they are making. That's pretty cool. Then tomorrow with the P.E. teacher they are all off on a mountain bike ride to a high ropes course in a forest somewhere. Wow.

And what was I up to today? Washing sheets and towels, grocery shopping, making lunch and dinner, placing ads on the French used car sales site (which entailed taking both cars to the car wash and then taking photos in front of a pretty pink oleander bush), and receiving the happy email that our son was accepted into 7th grade at the school we picked in England. They are debating which grade to put our daughter in, so they are awaiting more information including a writing sample and a list of books she's read recently.

Fortunately, she just finished writing an 11-page story all on her own initiative, in English, so that's perfect. A partial book list of stuff she really liked includes:

- J. R. R. Tolkien: The Hobbit, The first two Lord of the Rings (The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers). She struggled with the third and didn't finish, but she was interested enough in the first two.

- Enid Blyton: The Faraway Tree trilogy, The Wishing Chair, The Adventure series, The Famous Five series

- Phyllis Reynolds Naylor: The whole Cat Pack series.

- Robert C. O'Brien: Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of Nimh

- Walter R. Brooks: Freddy Goes to the North Pole

- Wilson Rawls: Summer of the Monkeys

- Gertrude Chandler Warner: The Boxcar Children series (at least 19 of them, Emily says)

- Louis Sachar: The Wayside School series

- Dick King-Smith: Ace the Very Important Pig, Martin's Mice (author of Babe)

- Roger Lancelyn Green: The Adventures of Robin Hood, Tales of the Greek Heroes

- Betty MacDonald: The whole Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle series (4 books)

- Mary Pope Osbourne: Magic Tree House series (about 20 books)

- Bryan Davis: Dragons in our Midst series (4 books)

- Elspeth Campbell Murphy: The Three Cousins Detective Club series (maybe 15 books)