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| Scottie and Marc-Aymeric, Cassis |
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| Scottie jumping off the cliff - Cassis |
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| Elisabeth gives it a shot |
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| Scottie, Elisabeth, Jimmy, Mary - Cassis |
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| Cassis |
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| Cassis - Cap Canalle |
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| Cap Canalle |
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| Cathedral of Notre Dame de la Garde - Marseille |
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| Lake Como - Italy |
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| Look what we saw swimming next to us in Lake Como! |
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| Varenna - Lake Como |
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| The celebrated ski town in Austria |
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| View from the start house of the Hahnenkamm downhill race in Kitzbuhel, Austria Much steeper than it appears in this photo! |
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| Scottie and the champions |
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| Future downhillers? |
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| If the racers are lucky they go only 50 meters off this blind jump. It they are unlucky, they go 80 meters! |
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| The kids are each standing 50, 60, 70 and 80 meters down the hill from where the skiers come over the jump. |
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| Hut to hut hike in the Alps. We started in Germany, but now we are in Austria! |
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| Bad weather did not dampen spirits. |
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| We arrived at the hut, but had to wait just a short time for Elisabeth |
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| The final approach of Elisabeth and Alex |
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| Beautiful scenery from our hut |
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| The kids had a great time playing with Max, from Berlin - despite the fact that he did not speak English and they did not speak German |
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| Jimmy - heading out on day 2 |
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| The Mozart museum in Salzburg |
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| Does anybody recognize this scene from The Sound of Music? |
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| Even McDonalds has a fancy sign in Salzburg |
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| Yes . . . We succumbed to the "traditional" Austrian outfits |
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| Scottie, Elisabeth, Mary, Jimmy - Salzburg |
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| Jimmy's horse bite. Beware of those nice horses that you see in "The Sound of Music" |
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| Back to Annecy to pack and say goodbye. Jimmy and his very good friend Augustin Balay exchange gifts |
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| Fireworks - our last night in Annecy - what a send off! |
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We were not sad to leave for too long because a week after we arrived on Cape Cod, our friends the Garreaus visited us from France. We were thrilled!
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July 2012 – our last month in Annecy! As I have previously explained, Scottie finished school at the end of June and headed off to a ski camp in Tignes, while Jimmy, Mary, and Elisabeth did not finish school until July 6th. I think it is fair to say that the school year was a success for all of the children. Scottie received an award at the end of the year and Elisabeth won an award for the best reading/reading comprehension in her class. Of course school was not without difficult moments and moments of frustration, but it was really interesting as a parent to see each child become more comfortable with the language as the year progressed, watch them make more friends, and integrate into daily life. The teachers and the directors of the schools were very complimentary of all the children and they were also genuinely appreciative of all the effort the children made both socially and academically. The teachers have experienced other foreign students who were mere “bystanders” for the year and thus they very much enjoyed having “la famille Bocock” in their schools. The children were all quite pleased with themselves, made friends, and were sad to say goodbye. There were even a few tears shed on the last day of school!
Immediately after Tignes, Scottie took the train from Lyon to Cassis (a small town on the Mediterranean), to stay with his good friend Marc-Aymeric Viollet for a week. Scottie was delighted to be going on this adventure alone, and he and Marc-Aym had a great time together. It was his last experience with 24/7 French immersion, and the report from the Viollets is that Scottie was completely at ease and had great success, not to mention a wonderful time! Swimming, ping pong, ice cream, jumping off cliffs, crepes - what a life!
The rest of the family spent a weekend with Scottie and the Viollets in Cassis, and then continued to Lake Como in northern Italy, where we stayed for a few days. We stayed in a lovely town called Varena that was not too touristy. We hiked, swam, ate delicious food, and really enjoyed our brief exposure to this region.
One thing that the children really wanted to do this year was to go to Kitzbuhel Austria to watch the most famous World Cup downhill ski race, the “Hahnenkamm.” The Hahnenkamm is considered the most difficult race on the World Cup circuit and is a wildly popular sporting event throughout Europe. On race day more than 85,000 fans and camera crew flock to Kitzbuhel to watch the race. It really would have been exciting to see, but we just couldn’t make it work with the kids’ schedules. Nevertheless, the children were determined to see this race hill even if we had to go during the summer. So, after we left Lake Como, we made the spectacular drive through the Swiss Alps and on to Kitzbuhel, Austria. From Kitzbuehl, we took a gondola up the mountain to the start of the course. We were able to stand in the start house of the race and then hike down the course. Even walking down the slope was difficult!! Many of the gates from the race have been left up which gave us a real idea of the course that the racers run. They have also placed several video screens on the slope that show racers skiing that particular section of the course. We could not believe how steep and scary the slope is. It really was amazing. Unfortunately our photos do not do the course justice, but none of us could imagine trying to race down this mountain at 80 mph! We had a great time walking down the hill, seeing all the famous jumps, turns, and steep blind spots that we see and hear so much about on the TV.
After our exciting visit to Kitzbuhel, we made a short drive to Germany and passed through Berchtesgarden, in the German Bavarian Alps. In the 1930s, this area became a kind of Nazi party headquarters, and many of its senior members had houses here - Hitler’s mountain house, The Berghof, among them. All of the homes of former Nazi leaders were destroyed at the end of the war. However, the “Eagles Nest,” which was built as a tea house for Hitler’s 50th birthday, remains and it is perched high up in the mountains overlooking the town and valleys. The view from the “Eagle’s Nest” is spectacular, but visiting this entire Berchtesgarden region is eerie and unsettling when one considers the town’s history and involvement in World War II.
We next embarked on a hut to hut hike in the Alps. In Germany and Austria the huts are called huttes; in France they are refuges; in Italy “refugios;” but the hut system in the alps is similar in all countries. One could hike for hundreds of miles staying in huts and be provided with beds, food (quite delicious food, in fact) beer, wine, running water, and electricity. It is a great system for hikers of all ages and abilities. The weather was not great during our planned hiking window, but all 4 kids were extremely enthusiastic about pressing on. In total, we hiked for about 20 miles and stayed for two nights in the huts. We started in Germany, hiked into Austria, and then back into Germany (the kids loved the idea of hiking into a different country). The ambiance in the huts during the evening is very festive. Because sleeping quarters are not luxurious, everyone congregates in the dining area and has a great time drinking and playing cards or reading. After dinner in our first hut, we were playing cards when Elisabeth said, in her normal/loud voice, “So, is everybody in here a Nazi except us?” A hush immediately fell over the room and Amy and I quickly hushed her up. Given Elisabeth’s comment, it may well have looked to the other guests like we were saying, “Yes, but it’s not polite to talk about.” The next night, we befriended a father and son from Berlin. The child did not speak English well and we did not speak a word of German, but somehow the kids taught each other card games and played a German version of the board game “SORRY.” What a treat it was to be away from electronics for a couple days. We had a really nice time over these two days. Everyone was in good spirits despite the rain, and according to the kids, the hut to hut trip ranks among the best trips of the year.
You can imagine that there are many “Sound of Music” fans in our family, so after the hut to hut excursion, we moved on to Salzburg (only about 25 miles away). While we did not go so far as to go on one of the million “Sound of Music” tours that are offered in Salzburg, we did re-watch the movie and had fun seeing the “do, re mi” garden, fountains, and other familiar sights. But, BEWARE! BEWARE! You may recall from the movie a scene where Maria and the children are trotting through Salzburg in a horse drawn carriage singing their hearts out. Well, the kids spotted the horses and carriages in Salzburg and like other tourists, went up to pet them. They were gentle with the horses and were having a great time until a horse suddenly bit Jimmy on the arm. Jimmy immediately ran away crying, jumping up and down, and screaming loudly “It bit me! It bit me! Ouch! Ouch! Ouch! It bit me!!! The horse bit me!!” I of course thought he was exaggerating and tried not to draw attention to our scene, until I pulled up his sweatshirt and found a huge bruise and a slightly bloody arm! The other tourists who saw this quickly left. The carriage driver, of course, showed no remorse.
We learned a great deal about Mozart while we were in Salzburg. We went to the house where he was born, which is a small, but a very well done museum. His violin is on display, which was fun to see. We had seen the movie “Amadeus” so the kids felt as if they were really “in the know” going to Salzburg already having so much “knowledge” about Mozart . . . We also saw a string quartet play “Eine kleine Nachtmusik” in the baroque Marble Hall of Mirabell Palace in Salzburg, a great choice for us rookies since the room was ornate and fun to see, and we all could recognize the piece.
We returned to Annecy for two full days of frantic cleaning and packing before our apartment inspection with the owner and landlord. In the midst of this, our neighbor Monique invited us to her house for a wonderful dinner and provided us with food as we emptied our apartment. We all pulled our weight in the cleaning. The kids scrubbed their fingerprints off the wall, taped boxes, vacuumed, scrubbed the oven and refrigerator. We almost killed ourselves, and I thought that the apartment was spotless (and I am not a cleaning rookie). All went well for our check-out until the realtor asked me, “So, after you send the boxes, you will clean the apartment, right?” I almost died.
We had a final dinner at our favorite restaurant in Annecy and of course we visited our favorite ice cream shop. Friends met us for our last evening, and the ice cream shop owner who learned that it was our last night in Annecy came out to bid us adieu. He explained that he had been following our children’s progress all year, and even he was proud of them! Based on how many trips we made to this ice cream shop, the poor shop owner really will be sad to see us leave! There was a festival in Annecy our last night, complete with a fireworks display. We pretended that this was our special send off.
Now we are back in the USA. We are on Cape Cod and will soon return to Salt Lake City. Although everyone was looking forward to returning home, it was very sad to leave France. Bitter, sweet. We had a wonderful year that I would not have given up for anything. We traveled, learned about new cultures, history, food, and life outside America. The kids all did extremely well, became more confident, and handled the many difficult situations with courage. They went to school, played instruments, ski raced, went to birthday parties, and made friends in a foreign language . . . all of which were more difficult tasks than I had originally anticipated. Each child has made some very good friends like Marc-Aymeric, Theo, Augustin, Beatrix, Emilie, Valentine, and Anna. We were lucky and so happy to have met many friends, especially through skiing. Several families made a real effort to welcome us in France including the Garreaus, Balays, Viollets, Cartiers, Saint-Didiers, and Monique Giriat, just to name a few. We hope that we will see them again in the not too distant future. In thinking about our year, Alex and I sometimes wonder how this trip will influence our children later in life. Of course time will tell, but no sooner had we finished discussing this when Elisabeth walked into the room and declared that she wants to go back to Paris and play her violin on the street so she can earn money. On va voir. (We will see).
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