Thanks Mommy

Dear mom,

Not sure if you will read this, but I wanted to say thanks for an amazing trip. It was a lot of fun and a very moving experience.

I am so happy we were able to visit with Denise at her home. You should be applauded for introducing me to the French language at such a young age!

You were quite the trooper during the rain storms (les orages) and multiple train trips.

Here's to wee-fee and pain au chocolate.

xoxox JJ

Welcome Home

We arrived in Franklin Lakes Friday afternoon. We were greeted by my parents, Bea and Jack Slater, along with Scott and Jerry.

My folks brought a delicious chocolate cake decorated with sunflowers and a vase filled with pink peonies from Annette's garden.

Scott and Jaime drove out to the Hampton's for the weekend and Diane and Jerry followed an hour later. With the weather report calling for 95 degrees we felt that we could rest and recuperate from our trip while relaxing at the beach.

We clicked our heels and said "There's no place like home!"

"There's No Place Like Home"

One last Jenny snack

We got to the airport so early, we had to wait to check in.

Fly the friendly skies

Enroute to USA

On the airplane now just thinking about the entire 10 days – boy they sure go fast!



From the moment Jonathan met us at the Geneva airport and escorted us through customs, we were on a whirlwind tour of Switzerland and France.



What a roller coaster of emotions!
We were mostly on a high the entire time.

Of course our time spent with Denise Epstein and her daughter, Irene, was the most incredible, life-changing experience for both Jaime and me.

Denise' story is heart-wrenching.
To picture these two young girls after the war wandering in France carrying a valise hoping to find their mother or father.

All of those years, just hoping and dreaming that perhaps their parents were even alive but living elsewhere.

Denise's own book that comes out in September called Survive and Live will tell her story, the one she wants her grandchildren to learn from and remember her parents and all of those lost to the Shoah, the Holocaust.

*For anyone interested a special event will be held in the fall at the Jewish Museum at Battery Park to celebrate Irene Nemirovsky’s life.*

The official Irene Nemirovsky biography will be released in the fall in English; it is already available in French. There is an attempt to make a movie called Suite Francaise; Denise has given her permission to the French film industry and a producer has yet to be announced. If all goes well the film will be released in 2009.

As I sit here on the plane finishing this posting, Jaime is engrossed in Suite Francaise and I hope that for generations to come this book and her others will live on.

When we said good-bye to Denise in Toulouse she thanked us for finding her and said “If there is a God, he has brought my family to France and now my life is satisfied.”

And, so are we…………….signing off from Continental airlines, Diane and Jaime xoxo

Paris continued...

I feel like this is a mini-series.

"When you last left us, Jaime and Diane were leaving the Rodin Museum."

(Dany et Diane: Mere and Mom)

L to R: Dany, Pauline, Diane, Jaime and Marie.

OK, so after we left Le Musse Rodin, we took the Metro to meet up with Jaime’s French family; Marie, Dany and Pauline for a day of shopping.

We started with lunch at Les Deux Magots. It's the cafe that was frequented by Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone De Bouvoir. Diane had a salad, but everyone else ordered toast points with melted chevre. After lunch it was time to shop. Our first stop, Louis Vuitton.
(It was located next to the cafe, so we decided to pop in for browsing purposes only!)

I was with 3 dangerous French, classy women! I thought that I was the best shopper, NOT, they far surpassed me! We visited Agnes B., Annick Goutal, Longchamp et al. Jaime had fun trying out new looks. You be the judge! (Agnes B. was also where we learned that Dany's youngest daughter, Margaux passed a very tough and important exam.)We even visited Scott's favorite store, Muji, to buy him some pens.

France's Bon Marche.

Our favorite part was the little butterfly charm chain they gave us at Annick. You can hang the butterfly from your pocketbooks after you spray it with your favorite perfume!

I so enjoyed listening to Jaime with her sisters and mom, speaking in French, and then translating back for me. I did pick up a few words here and there.

Editor’s note: Jaime’s mom picked up a lot of words! She did great.

We said our goodbyes to Dany and Pauline, then Marie took us to meet her boyfriend Fabrice. He took us to a great Italian place not far from our hotel.

Fabrice (25) and Marie (23) wanted to practice their English, so we helped them out here and there. They understand almost everything we said, but they are nervous about speaking the language. I think they need to visit Professor Rassias at Dartmouth.


They practice by watching American television shows like Grey’s Anatomy.

Fabrice (quite a McDreamy) and Marie gave us a tour of Paris at night. La Tour Eiffel

Wearily we were up at 5:30 and off to Charles De Gaulle Airport for our flight home to Newark. We had a great time and look forward to coming home now.

A bientot

A bientot!

Our last day in Paris was incredible. We kicked it off with a café and pain au chocolate. Then it was off to the Rodin Museum. In case you ever want to visit the museum, it's located on Rue Varenne (just ask Jaime for directions!)


Jaime studied sculptor Auguste Rodin and his pupil Camille Claudel at MKA. The sculpture pictured above is called The Bourgeois de Calais. It's classic Rodin.

Jaime has visited the museum on several occasions. It was Rodin’s home and when he died, he left the mansion and its gardens to the state. Here I am , taking the time to literally stop and smell the roses.
We were lucky to see a wonderful, temporary exhibit on Camille Claudel. We both liked her sculpture, The Waltz and Rodin’s Le Penseur (Thinker) and The Kiss. If you want to learn more about Camille Claudel, you can rent the fantastic movie by the same name. It's excellent. It stars Isabelle Adjani and Gerard Depardieu. It was fun to watch young students sketching the statues in the gardens- perhaps one of them will become famous or the next Rodin.
(to be continued...)

Diane gets to speak a few words!

Diane reporting: I would just like to say first of all Jaime has done a wonderful job selecting the three hotels we have stayed in from Aix, to Toulouse to Paris. Each hotel was a unique, boutique hotel with amenities and plenty of closet space. We always had a mini bar, some had incredible river views, and one even had a shower curtain!! The French have a lot to learn from our showers- they do have excellent flushing toilets. Seriously though, except in Aix where the mini bar was free because the hot water was NOT, Jaime gets an A+ for her efforts. We were fortunate to stay in both Jonathan's apartment in Geneva and the Le Bras home in Tours. Now, that was a most interesting home and they were so generous to have us stay there. Alain, Dany's long time live in boyfriend, built many parts of the house, including a staircase that came from Paris. He also built counters in the pharmacy that Dany owns with her ex-husband, Bernard. They had a delightful dinner the first night in their home and then took us to lunch in Tours today. I especially enjoyed getting to know Margaux, the bubbly 17 year old daughter. Today as we arrived in Paris we were greeted by their two older daughter's Marie and Pauline. We will spend the afternoon tomorrow with all of them. As Jaime said tonight we enjoyed the Jewish quarter and tomorrow we are visiting the Rodin Museum, a favorite to our late cousin Irene Nemirovsky. I would also like to say that this trip has been exhausting for Jaime as she had to think and speak in French and English. I am so impressed by her expertise, she spoke with strangers on the train (ok, I did teach her NOT to speak with strangers) but her French was so good, we arrived everywhere and she was successful buying all of the train tickets, making phone calls, exchanging money, ordering in restaurants. My gosh, I hardly spoke this entire trip. Ok, it almost midnight in Paris and I must get my beauty sleep. Every night we go to bed watching Law and Order in French! Porquoi? I don't know why-I can't understand anything! Au revoir. Tomorrow it is going to duplee (rain) c'est la vie! We have schlepped a big umbrella all over France, at least we won't get wet! To be continued a demain...