French Schools Follow-Up: Summarizing My Children's Immersion Experiences

September 16, 2015 by Michele Cherie in French Culture, Travel, Education, French Language Learning

This week marks the third week my children have attended school here in France, with my preschooler attending public school and my elementary-age child attending a private school. I'm extremely grateful that they've had this opportunity, and yet we're all glad that we will return to homeschooling (back in the U.S.) by next month. The flexibility and individualization allowed by homeschooling is wonderful, but we still feel that our time here in Lyon is wrapping up too quickly!

Meal Planning and Grocery Shopping in Lyon & Paris, France

September 09, 2015 by Michele Cherie in Cultural Reflections, Travel, Home Management, French Culture

Bonjour again from Lyon! This is my family's first extended stay in France, so it's also the first time I've had the role of preparing meals for my children here. Living here has improved my meal planning skills and expanded our palates, I'm glad to say! I've consistently tried to plan French meals so my children can enjoy one of the best aspects of living in France--the food and the culture surrounding it. Here's what I'm doing differently here:

Arriving in Paris (and What Not To Do on Arrival)

July 08, 2015 by Michele Cherie in Travel, American Culture, Reflections on Parenting, French Culture, Cultural Reflections

Bonjour les amis! We're in Paris! This is my first trip back to France in eight years, and It's great to be able to share this city with my husband and children. (He and I were last in France when I was two months pregnant with our first child.) I hope to write more frequently about our experiences here, so Intentional Mama will be more of a travel blog for a while, d'accord? Here's how we're adjusting, and what we've learned the hard way:

Living Without Dairy Products: A Healthier Diet

February 24, 2014 by Michele Cherie in Home Management, Cultural Reflections

I've always loved dairy products--I grew up eating cold cereal with cow's milk for breakfast and after-school snack, and if you had asked me in my preteen years to describe my ideal diet, my answer would have included a lot of Kraft macaroni and cheese. (I was an American child of the 80s, when processed foods were proliferating). But in my early twenties I started noticing that certain yogurts gave me gas, and after I got food poisoning in Hungary, I started experiencing brief but recurrent stomach pain. It took a miserable (but free) nasogastroscopie in France for me to understand that my stomach was fine, but it could no longer digest the dairy products I was putting into it.

Nonetheless, it wasn't until I read Alisa Marie Fleming's nutritional guide and cookbook, Go Dairy Free, that I realized that replacing dairy products with plant-based foods was probably one of the best nutritional actions I could take--and it was much easier than I had realized.