Dear long lost readers,

Almost three months later.... Geez, I'm really bad about keeping up with this. As one friend has recently reminded me, nobody is going to log on to read about what's happening if I don't post once in awhile. So, what's happening out there? Haven't heard from lots of people in a really long time, would love to hear from someone. Maybe someone from across the pond? Also, I'm wondering if I shouldn't just start to have a 'topic of the week'. Maybe that would motivate me. I mean, how many people (besides you, John) really want to read about my existence on a regular basis?

Anyway, I'm sitting here, finishing my third (or fourth? or fifth?) glass of wine thus far this afternoon, so I might as well ramble. The McGann Clan - at least our little branch of it - is currently in the south of France, Provence to be exact, about five kilometers from a city called Grasse (near Nice) to be more exact. I'm sitting on the terrace, looking out at a beautiful old church, the village, the mountains, and the sea in the background. The view, which cannot possibly be described adequately by me, is breathtaking. There is always a perfectly clear star-filled sky at night, with the church lit up on the hill, and all the lights from Cannes in the distance. Heaven on Earth, and that's an understatement. Saturday evening was apparently 'the night' of the year to see shooting stars, so we sat here and watched. I saw five, and that was before midnight when I headed to bed. So very cool. Bill and I would absolutely put this place in our top three retirement destinations. He's sitting next to me, and I asked him to rank it. He says that the place is great, but the culinary experience far outweighs anything else. The grocery store here compared to Budapest is like comparing Saks Fifth Avenue to Walmart. And even scarier, the prices here for everything are far more reasonable. We just bought a ten liter box of wine, very drinkable although not by any stretch of the imagination sophisticated (I don't even know what it means for a wine to be sophisticated), for 17 EURO. We decided that it would be more economical to drink that way, but I'm not sure that doesn't just make us drink more :)

We are here for two weeks, staying with our very good Danish friends who used to live in Budapest, Susanne and Ole. Ole (pronounce Oh-leh) is Bill's former boss, who retired in 2005, so they always have lots to catch up on. We spent lots of time with them in Budapest, and just generally love hanging out with them. A friend asked me last week how we could manage to stay in someone else's house for two weeks with three kids without someone (mainly the host or hostess) going bonkers, but I must tell you that this is one of those extraordinary places where it just works. Everyone pitches in with the meals, everyone is responsible for their own stuff, and everyone is in ultra-relax mode anyway, so it's all perfect. The daily routine goes something like this - eat breakfast, lounge around, eat lunch, lounge around, flip a coin to see who goes to the grocery for dinner, eat dinner, lounge around. Who could ever complain? There is a pool five steps outside of our bedroom, so the kids wake up in the morning and get ready to jump in. The boys are in a tennis camp here in the village (Cabris) this week, so they are getting a bit of French before school starts back on September 4th. We are also having private sessions of 'school by the pool' each afternoon for 30 minutes to get their brains moving again. I had the best of intentions to accomplish great things scholasticly this summer, to no avail of course. The summer has gone so fast, how can we be halfway through August already? Furthermore, how is it possible that Riley will turn eleven in nine days. God, I'm getting old.

We are trying to get a few outings while we are here (Language lesson for today - outing in Hungarian = kirandulas (key-rahn-dew-lah-sh), but it's so hard to motivate ourselves to leave the house. Last night we took the kids down to the carnival in the village, where we were given the usual extortion treatment, but they had a blast. Bumper cars cost 10 EURO for about 15 minutes of total drive time, and that ridiculous game where you fish for ducks and pick one with a number to get a 20 cent prize - 4 EURO. Nevermind, it's vacation. I often wish that Bill and I (or at least one of us) could just throw caution to the wind and spend money without thinking about it. Tomorrow we will go to Cannes in the evening to have pizza and watch the international fireworks contest taking place every Tuesday through the high season here. Each country puts on a big fireworks display, and the spectators go online to vote at the end for the best. Friday we will meet some new friends from Budapest in Nice and spend the day at the beach there. We found them by luck/chance in July when the boys were at pottery camp and Liam made a new friend, Abel. They moved to France a week later, and will stay here for a year so the kids can start to learn French. They will put the kids in the French school in Budapest from next September, so Liam will have a penpal (guess you call it a Skype-pal now) for the school year. Small world. Other than that, I have grand plans to get to the local farmers' market a couple times, and maybe to the new shopping mall in Nice, but that's about it. We stocked up on school supplies today at the local hypermarket, which was also a bargain compared to home.

We left Budapest last Monday, spent two days in Venice on the way down, and then drove the rest of the way here on Thursday. Three monkeys in the car, total driving time was 17 hours (including short breaks), so needless to say I was ready for a few drinks when we arrived. What can I say about Venice?..... It was beautiful but totally different from what I expected. Sort of run-down but charming nonetheless.

The kids are after me to get in the pool with them so I will finish later...

Friday morning. Where was I? Venice. We stayed in Mestre, just across the bridge and not far from the old part of the city. There was a bus 200 meters from the hotel, which was a 15 minute ride out. We spent the first afternoon/evening just meandering through the tiny alleys and along the canals. The kids had so much fun trying to figure out where we were in the maze. The second day we used the public transport (boats instead of buses) to get from one end to the other, and found lots of beautiful places to sit and watch the world go by. I would love to go back once more without the kids, as it was fun for them but is really a place where I could sit happily all day people watching. The Hotel Venezia in Mestre was good, not too expensive and in a great location. The carpet in the room was disgusting, that was my only complaint.

Accomodations are much better here in France, and the rate/night even better - free :) We've had a very uneventful three days since I started this post - was it Monday? The days just run together. Anyway, we have been enjoying the amazing weather and sitting on our big butts by the pool, which was the grand plan. The boys are having their last day of tennis camp today, unless they decide they want to go again next week, and tomorrow we will adventure off to Nice for the day. Last night we went to Cannes and watched the fireworks with 200,000 people. It was fantastic. We sat on the beach and the show was on the water right in front of us. As I mentioned before, it's a contest between seven countries to see who puts on the best show throughout the summer. Last night it was the Germans, and it was choreographed to music extremely well, as only the Germans could do. Ole told me afterwards that he still thinks the Spanish show last week was better.

Keira wasn't thrilled with the fireworks - she kept her fingers in her ears the whole time - but today she remembers it having been a great time. I'm convinced that for most people, kids in particular, the memory of the things/places they experience is much happier than the actual act of experiencing it. As I very often remind myself now when we have these family outings that inevitably turn out to be something different than we planned, we are indeed making memories. Having said that, if I could find a better way to just accept things as they are and move on we would all enjoy ourselves a bit more. I'm probably worse than the kids in many ways, because I'm the one who has an expectation about what a great time everyone should be having. Being children, they are very happy to just go with the flow and have no pre-conceived notions of how the day will/should go.

So, other than holiday news, there's not much to report from McGannland. We will head back to Budapest next Thursday, arriving on Friday the 24th. Keira will start back at the kindergarten the following Tuesday (she's home with me on Mondays but I may change it to Wednesdays) and the boys have one more week before heading back to school. The summer came and went in a flash, as it always does. Bill is still looking for a job. He is working with a few headhunters back in the US and has talked to several people here in Europe. I would say at this stage that we are leaning towards opportunities in the US, but nothing concrete. He could easily find something new and challenging in Russia or the Middle East, neither of which I'm really on board for. I would be happy to go somewhere totally different, like Southeast Asia or South Africa, but at the same time I would be more than happy to head home for awhile.

I have always maintained that I would prefer for the kids to have their high school and college educations in the US, or at least college. Once more, we can appropriately insert my absolute favorite saying here - 'life is what happens while you are planning it'. As I said, Bill is still in a very early stage of the job search, which didn't even gear up until the end of May, but it's fun to think about where we might be in a year. In talking about possibility of something in the US, we started out looking in the Philadelphia area, but we have also been looking at houses, etc. in the Ft.Myers, FL. area, and aren't ruling anything out. I'm happy to go anywhere, as long as the school district is good and I can return to a few of the civilized household accoutrements I've been missing for ten years. For example: a garbage disposal, a big, fat, double sink, a normal sized oven (one that's actually big enough for a small turkey), a walk-in closet, etc. I'm pretty easy, but if I get to have a couple of those things I will be happy.

It goes without saying that there are alot of things I don't look forward to in the face of possibly moving back. The biggest thing is probably the consumer/consumption factor. Our kids have spent ten years living in Hungary, where they don't have to wear the same thing as all their friends or have the latest trendy clothes/shoes. They aren't fixated on the have-to-have-it toy or fad of the moment, although there are occasionally things like trading cards, etc.. that they collect. I don't have to ever worry about walking into a store and spending too much money on things that I don't even need - it just isn't available. And when I look around at how the Europeans live with respect to what they need and don't need, I prefer the mentality here. Mostly, I worry that I will be the one who goes completely bonkers after being deprived for so long and becomes a serious shopoholic :)

Well kiddies, it's going on noon here, and shall now proceed to plant myself in the sun for a bit. I won't even promise to write soon, since I never do, but maybe I will surprise myself. xoxo. K.

One more note before I close - I have posted some new photos on the photo blog (http://mcgannphotos2006.blogspot.com/) and you can also check out my photos on another website, http://www.flickr.com/. The link to my photos is: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mcgannclan/. There are alot of the same photos on both, but the flickr account allows me to post photos directly to my blog. Next stop - myspace.com. I've been meaning to set it up forever, just never get there. Not enough hours in the day for this technical age of wonder.