French Showers

Today was a gorgeous, sunny day but it never got above 8 degrees Celsius so not exactly warm. Beautiful running weather this morning for my friends and I, however. I finally asked my friends how they take showers around here! I just haven't been able to figure it out.... every place has no shower curtain and only a handheld shower head. After their initial surprise at my question.... they said that they soap up a certain body part, then turn on the water just long enough to rinse the soap off with the shower head before turning the water off again to do the next part!! It sounds awful to me!! Cold and not very relaxing! They were equally surprised at our style of showering and commented on how they don't like water running down their faces and what a waste of water it must be. Yes, but... at least it's warm and relaxing. Anyway, we then began discussing Easter traditions as I have been unable to find any plastic Easter eggs, Easter grass or egg dye around here. They said that there is no Easter bunny in France, just the Easter bells (you read that right, B-E-L-L-S) that magically deliver and hide eggs and candy at noon on Easter day. Hmmmmm.... I never thought a bunny delivering eggs made too much sense but bells?!! Anyway, they paint eggs but actually paint them with real paints and they empty the egg from the shell first. Thank goodness that they at least still do the candy thing.
Max is at his first French sleepover tonight. Hope it all goes well and we don't get a French phone call in the middle of the night telling us that he needs to be picked up. He was quite excited.
Max and Calvin play marbles at school all the time, every recess that they get, they play with large groups of kids. After school today, in the car on the way home, they were discussing their latest marble conquests, victories, etc and they were speaking only in French to each other. When I would interrupt periodically to ask what something meant, they would either give me a one word answer and go back to French or ignore me completely! It's a good thing they don't have anything secret to discuss at this age!