Voisins/Amis

Just a quick shoutout to Mohamed and Héloise, neighbors from the next building over, and their kids Mehdi (7), Nahel (3), and Tilal (10 months) who just left after a delightful mid-afternoon goûter (snack). We first met at the pot in the courtyard in September; since then Maggie has done a bit of babysitting for Mohamed and Héloise, and they've generously lent us DVDs from their impressive collection. In an exciting development, Mohamed and Mehdi (avid gamers both) have promised to help me improve my French video-game vocab by playing Assassin's Creed and Call of Duty on their new Alienware computer.

For the first course of our goûter, we enjoyed galette des rois (#4 for us since Christmas Eve). Enfin (at long last) I found the fève (plastic figurine, in this case Asterix), thanks in part to a new tradition we learned about. Apparently it's the job of the youngest person present to get under the table and determine the order in which slices of galette are handed out. Tilal was too young (speech is an important part of the tradition) so Nahel did the honors.

The second course was another quince apple tart that we made fresh this morning (pictures forthcoming on flickr). The amuse-bouche (wordreference.com translates it as appetizer, but I think of it as anything that comes between courses) was chocolate-peanut-butter cookies (thanks to Eden and JP for bringing the peanut butter chips!).

The boys were a little scared of Panda at first, but eventually warmed to her. Tilal spit up a little on the rug, but it was no biggie. Mehdi and Nahel ate about 30 cookies, but weren't interested in taking a doggie bag home. They probably figured that since we live just across the courtyard from the them (literally), there's plenty more where that came from. And they're right.

Tomorrow: Matt arrives!