sNOw

OMD, that's French for OMG.  It snowed, a fair amount here, like 10-15 cm.  For the south of France that's a shut down everything, call the newspaper, kind of snow.  Here are some pictures to give you an idea.  This first one is a shot from the kitchen of the east terrace, if you recall the first few entries on this blog, this would be the same east terrace where we were drinking coffee outside in T-shirts the first few days here.

The pneus on a car in the south of France, are not really up to the task of snow and ice, the way the tires on a car in Northern Ontario are; add to that the inexperience of local drivers as to what it takes to drive in slippery conditions, and you get the French Solution. Park and Walk...aka Stationner et Marche.

On the main road, we counted about 20 more cars, that were subject to the French Solution.

Our gold fish pond, the girls are going to try to skate on it later today,

Our tropical plants in the garden, probably wondering what on earth is going on.

C'est beau n'est pas?

This poor looking thing is our olive tree.

The bulk of the snow fell on Tuesday, and greeted us for the start of school.  Kids were delivered and Christine and I went off to an appointment at the local bank.  At about 11am my phone rang....the school asking for us to come an pick up the kids.  So, no the school was not exactly closed, but only 6 students arrived for the grade 1 class, so they sent the teacher home....YUP, I'll say it again, they sent the teacher home, and put the 6 students in the Grade 4 class, and gave them colouring to do.  So we picked up the kids and that was the end of the school day.  Wednesday - no School.

Today - Thursday, we figure that the extra 1 or 2 centimetres of snow will not be an issue so off we go to school, cars parked in the manner of the "French Solution" all down the main roads.  I drop the kids off to walk the last 200m to the school while I park.  A woman comes to the car to say that there is no school today, that it is running on minimum complement..whatever that means.  

So up the hill to see what is going on...turns out that today only 1 teacher manages to arrive at the school, and is sending all the kids home,  the plan right now is to drop by the school after lunch and see if there are any teachers, but we aren't holding our breath.

This is a wide ranging weather system, all of Europe is cold, and snow was falling in Nice, right on the Med.  Forecast is cold for the remainder of the week, in fact this weekend, it is supposed to be warmer in Thunder Bay than here in Venelles.  My guess is we aren't going to get much sympathy.

Thunder Bay Forecast:

 Venelles, Forecast.

 Official French weather - Condition Orange.  Only Red is higher.