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Things seem to be moving along for us. Numero un, the weather has dramatically improved. The sun-filled blue skies hover over head and the ten-day forecast is for sun, sun et plus soleil. I can tell you, it makes all the difference.
When the sun is out, the people are cheerful, there's activity partout (everywhere) and la vie en France feels totally different. Yesterday, we disocovered a beautiful city park about a 15 minute walk from our flat. It's a sizeable park with rollin
g green grass covering the undulating hills ... friendly trees all about ... park benches interspersed throughout ... all descending down to a quaint small creek.It turns out that France has beaucoup holidays (35 to be exact) ... that is, 35 days that people don't work. Seems highly incomprehensible. Nonetheless ... yesterday was one of those days and people were all about the park ... with children playing and dogs frolicking (Niko still needs some form of training school to learn to play with other dogs). But the best news for us: all kinds of prospects to practice our French with. Saturday afternoon we are attending a picnic gathering at the park sponsored by the International Christian Church we attended last Sunday (services at 5:00 p.m.).
Wednesday afternoon, we spent four hours at the home of Fabienne (a middle aged woman whom I met at Book in Bar, the nearby coffee shop/ book store). She is very motivated to improved in her ability to speak English (she has a son living in North Carolina, married to an American woman). She picked us up in her voiture, along with her husband, and we sped off to their nearby home, about ten minutes into the outer parts of Aix.
It was an intense four hours but we felt we learned a lot. We're meeting again next Thursday. I have another conversation session set up tomorrow with Patrick, a friend of Donal (the owner of our flat) at Book in Bar. I try to spend a half hour a day reading out loud (hard work when there are so many words I'm still trying to learn).
Anyway, some initial impressions of life in Aix: all the young women smoke (men, too; but mostly young girls/women) and you don't see hardly anyone jogging (as in, getting exercise). Sports here is mostly through local sports clubs. It was the same way in Portugal when I played basketball for O Futebole Clube do Porto, forty years ago. My sense is that it is that way throughout Europe. Very different than in the states where highschool sports is such a big thing.
Anyway, we are loving our time here, particularly now that the weather has improved.
A bientot!
Sounds like you're learning French fast. The park you mentioned reminded me of the parks from my childhood in Cuba. We just don't have parks like those in the U.S.
ReplyDeleteSorry to hear that so many young women are smoking, that is so bad for them. My friend and I are anxiously waiting for our trip to Europe next month. By the way, the euro seems to be lower in value now, does this make any difference to the prices there?
Isabel