Visitors...

Ten days, two couples, 35 sq. metres in France - I'm going to pitch it as a reality tv series.  It was pretty cozy up in our studio, and I'd hate to disappoint but there wasn't the drama worthy of reality TV...maybe just a pseudo romance between Jordan and Paul, but that story was years in the making and if it didn't get made while they were tenting up together in the Yukon...it's probably never going to get made.  My dreams of producing reality tv aside, it was GREAT!  Jordan and Vanessa were super guests - they indulged me in my food craziness by being interested and hungry (all the time), they cooked some great meals for us, did dishes AND got us some really thoughtful gifts.  And it was just fun to share Toulouse and our little transplanted life in France.  All fun, all food all the time.   

Ask anyone, I'm always the first one to fall asleep at sleepovers.

Vanessa and I decided that Jordan needed a haircut.  There was a whole series of photos, but I thought I'd spare some of you the photos of people you don't know cutting hair in a bathroom.  The end result looked pretty good to us (but that's because we're not professionals).  Good work everybody.

Riverside, outside our apartment.  On sunny warm days, there are a lot of djembe drummers, and we hear them from our fourth floor apartment.  Our Toulousian friends warned (more like mocked) us about it...like we should have known or something.  

The boys decided to grab a drink at Cafe des Artistes and delegated grocery shopping to us.  This is them saying good bye.  I'm posting thumbnails these days, so you can't really zoom in to see, but trust me they look smug.

On our riverside walk - this is looking at the other bridge.  I should know what it's called, but all we ever see and think about is Pont Neuf...which means "new bridge", but is actually the oldest bridge in the city.  

Jornessa & Pault in Aix-en-Provence

The 4 of us took off for Aix-en-Provence after a week in Toulouse.  It was a cute little town and, from our conversation with the roadside chicken rotisserie guy, seems to be overrun with Brits and Americans.  We went by train, but the next time we go to Provence should be by car...and should be in the summer time so that we get that whole fields-of-lavender-and sunflowers effect.

Lunchtime in a square in Aix.  Like a modern day Renoir - non? It's a pretty typical scene in France.

 

We ate inside that day.  Here is me morphing back into my T1000 form.

"Have you seen this boy?"

I'm holding a contest for the best caption for this photo.

Goodbyes at the train station - Jordan and Vanessa were on their way to Nice, Italy and then Paris.

How did THIS happen?

It's 8:22 friday morning.  I've got class today at 9:00, usually it's 8:30 but 9 for fridays, not complaining.  P's got classes at 8:30 still and I love love love being the person that gets to stay in bed while the other has to get up.  I've been e-absent of late because long gone are the days when all I really had to do was wake up, think about food, read and cruise the internet.  We are full time, elbow-deep in French classes.  I miss the retirement schedule of december, but it's been so great to learn french.  Tradeoffs.  We've gone back to "easy" food for dinners and lunches, but the weekend is coming and I'm going on a market tear for saturday and sunday AND it's Chinois Nouvel An so gotta figure out something to eat...fish, I think it's a must for new years.

Nuther post to come.

Back to (Catholic) school...

School started this week and it was kicked off with some placement tests and a tour of the facilities.  We're taking an intensive month to month course at l'Institut Catholique.  It was established as a university in 1229 (OLD right?) and "inherited" by a Catholic institution.  So, here we are at a catholic school.  The university specializes in theology, philosophy and religious studies.  Aside from the polish monk that's in my class and the name, the French language program isn't all that "catholic".  They don't start the day with confession or anything - but we dress like catholic school children for a more authentic experience.  It was a cold walk for P in his shorts this morning.  P and I are in different classes, which means that we have designated time apart from each other, which was a bit of a surprise/let down at first - but really, it's better that we spend just 19 hours/day together instead of the whole 24.  This will be healthy, I often find myself at a near breaking point at hour 22 or 23.

We took a tour of the school on the first day, and I swear we went up a set of stairs right out of the Harry Potter wizard school - all dark wood and big, and then it led to a hallway with a locked armoire full of what looked like spell books.  For serious.  It better be french we're learning and not spells.

I'm in a level that's a bit further along than I think I should be, but I think I can follow along if I just put in extra time on my own...and if I work with the polish monk, because he seems to be the best in class at this point.  Show off.  We're learning subjunctives now, here's an excerpt from the text I brought from Canada:

For most verbs, the stem for the forms of the subjunctive is found by dropping the -ent  of the third-person plural form of the present indicative, and by adding the subjuntive endings: -e, 

-es, -e, -ions and -ent.  

I'm lucky I have this textbook which is written in ENGLISH.  IT's ALL IN FRENCH DURING CLASS.  I've never really studied a language before and besides my native languages, I don't speak anything else.  Learning a language is ha-ard.  I didn't even know what a "subjunctive" was before yesterday.   The truly difficult part is just knowing the linguistic and grammatical terms - imagine reading a sentence in english with words like, "direct object pronoun", "subject", "indirect object" etc..., just deciphering it in english is hard enough (this is coming from someone who knows just enough grammatical terms to mad lib).  Essentially it's like learning 2 new languages.  "Grammar" and French.  Mad props to anyone who is fluent in another language from studying in adulthood.  

Aside from feeling ESL as well as FSL (it's FLE in french), I'm really excited.  Yay, I love back to school and that perfect first blank page in a notebook where you write everything in the nicest, neatest handwriting (according to my friends I've got ugly handwriting) - the only difference for going back to school this time is that I didn't start the year with new LA gear running shoes.  Don't think the pink and white running shoes would cut it here in France.  

In other exciting news, we got a whack of books from Amazon.co.uk (a gift certificate; I wonder if spending it will help the British economy).  Among them, the biggest, most badass and most occupational-health-threatening to the courier is my "Larousse Gastronomique: the World's Greatest Cookery Encyclopedia".  I think it weighs in at 4-5 kilos (I'm all metric now, so convert it yourself) - I was just informed that it just crushed a stray hazlenut shell (christmas carnage). 

 and...WE HAVE VISITORS!!  J and V are staying for over a week, and eating only gets better with more people.