Notice Anything Unusual??

In this short-but-educational video, Shawn takes a good look at the railroad track we will be traveling on to get to the top of a mountain in Switzerland.

Do you notice anything unusual about the track? 

Click here to watch the video then read Shawn's explanation of the difference between Canadian tracks and Swiss tracks, below:

"A Canadian train track goes like this: one straight line, another straight line the same size, and a bunch of little, tiny lines in the middle, which is the 'trapper' that keeps the train from falling in the mud if it's muddy.

A Swiss track is almost the same as a Canada track, but there's something different in the middle.  There are two straight lines, the same length, and in the middle a line and little bumps, pointed, that the gear under the train connects with.  And it's amazing that the Swiss train has gears on the bottom."

DO YOU REMEMBER WHAT THAT IS CALLED, SHAWN?

He doesn't.  It's called a cogwheel train.  That would be something fun to research further...

A Child's View

After watching this video (click here), Shawn reminisced about what he was thinking the very first week we were in Dijon:

"I remember I felt like I was not living in the same place, and like I was learning a new language.  And I remember one thing: I was a little bit scared of what the robbers would look like."

Here are some more images of downtown Dijon, including the fountains (at their friendliest) in the Place de la Libération in front of the 14th and 15th century Gothic style Palais de ducs.

Measuring With Elephants

  

Click here to watch Shawn estimate the depth of the Cirque de Navacelles, a huge erosional landform in the south of France.

How many elephants deep do you think it is??

 

Ma Trotinette

We might not have thought to get Shawn a trotinette (scooter) had we been in Canada, but in Dijon  they are EVERYWHERE.  Kids ride them to and at our neighbourhood park, to and from school, they take them on the bus -- they are even allowed indoors in some areas, such as the downtown market.

We bought Shawn's from a sporting goods store called Decathlon, where the aisles are long and wide (even by North American standards!) and kids can try out the scooters and skateboards before they buy them.  Shawn instantly loved scootering, and he was good at it right from the get go. 

It is just one more way he managed to get exercise without a backyard to play in, and at the same time we as a family were able to travel more freely (not having a car).

 

 

 

 



Shawn quickly learned to run back down the ramps instead of sliding -- luckily for his winter coat.

Les Carottes -- Science in the Neighbourhood

Two blocks away from our house in Dijon, on the way to the tunnel that goes under the High Speed Rail (or TGV) train track, we discovered a very large garden with a single row of carrots.

The fenced-in yard of the house was quite big, and nearly all of it was tilled, but only one single row of lush carrots was planted.

We watched the stages of growth throughout our stay, and at long last could see some of the tops of the carrots starting to show above the ground.  They were green!



"this picshur is of me putting mi sord thro the fens to point to the carit pach."



The carrots never did turn orange.  They remained green!  Were they supposed to be green?  Or had they just not ripened?  (Annabeth says, "This is me and Shawn picking the carrots for the bunnies and deer and chickens."  Hmmmm... she has given us a clue to the mystery...)



 

"this is the carit pach."

We used this mystery as an opportunity to introduce ourselves to some neighbours, to ask them why the carrots stayed green.  Shawn recalls that they told us "the animals eat them."  You see, across the street there was a family that raised rabbits in their backyard, and they rented room in the garden to grow carrots for their rabbits.

And feed carrots (much like feed corn back in Canada), are different from regular carrots.  Mystery solved!

One day just before we left in mid-December, the carrots were all gone, and we knew that the rabbits had a tasty treat that night.




(We never did see the green carrots come out of the ground, but here is a hard-to-find photo from the Internet).

Bags of Flour

Hurray for Shawn and his lively imagination!

In Liverpool, England, we went to a museum and saw exhibits about the history of the shipping industry in this world-renowned port city.  Shawn was quick to incorporate his favourite part of the story into a game in our hotel room.  N.B. We're not certain the actual dockworkers fell down so much.

Comparing Neighbourhoods

Mommy: Hey Shawn, I found some videos of our neighbourhood in France, and our street here at home before we left Canada.  I thought it would be fun to watch them and talk about the similarities and differences...

 

SHAWN: The sidewalks are smaller and there's no boulevard. The garbage cans are different.  The mailboxes are on a post instead of on the house.  The fire hydrants are red and they're taller.  I like the sidewalks [in Canada] because they're flatter so I won't trip and fall.

Shawn says he was never allowed to run down the street in Dijon because it was too close to the road, and there is no grass in front of the sidewalk.  He likes the grass in case we fall: "We'll fall on the grass instead of the road."

In Dijon, says Shawn, some houses have back yards and some have front yards that are not sticking out in front of the house, so we can't see them the way we see everyone's yard in the video of our street in Canada.

"There are no cracks in Windsor houses, and cracks in all of France-houses," he adds.

"The ambulance is different than ones in Canada.  It was always on our street," we think, "because the ambulance driver lives at that house." 

We see walls all around in France, but never in Canada, he notices.

Shawn recalls a story: There was a not-so careful grandma with two little girls, and they were walking too close to the road.  One girl went too far into the middle of the road, and she was walking with her eyes not too open, and a bus was coming straight towards her.  And the bus driver slammed  on the brakes, and her grandmother came running to the child.  And the grandmother screamed at her!