First Day in France

No photos for this post because I can't get to them. The gurus thought they had fixed the problem, but it isn't fixed yet. I'll publish this post while I see what can be done....

I would like to write on this new Mac Air and be able to find this page when I am finished…not sure how to do that so here goes…

It worked. I’ve learned something new. Actually I’ve learned quite a few new things in the last few hours. I have walked over to Lauryne’s house and it is just on the other side of the garden wall. Kevin stopped by and brought his parents to meet me. His dad seems like a very happy soul. Marie-Annick made a soup for dinner with leeks. I thought the leeks would be in the soup. My mistake. The leeks were a separate dish, served as the second course, and had been cooked in a white sauce. I went back for seconds! I’ll have to learn how to make that dish and serve it when I have company in Vermont. Dessert was an apple crumble made from apples growing in the yard.

I didn’t sleep on the plane. The young couple on my right were quietly arguing about how terrible the other person was. After hours of this, the fellow said that the girl was the most frustrating person, but he still cared for her. Shortly after that they fell asleep in each other’s arms, but I was still wide awake. The fellow on my left had been sleeping all along. The argument hadn’t bothered him in the least. I watched 2 movies with no sound. The first one I guessed at what was going on. For the second one, captions miraculously appeared. I have no idea how that happened.

On the drive home I took a short snooze in the car. Then adrenaline kicked in. I managed to unpack, visit, and then take a glorious shower before dinner. By 9:30 I could no longer keep my eyes open and went to bed. Maybe I turned over once before falling sound asleep. At 5 AM I woke up, didn’t feel tired, so here I am, quietly typing in the living room. I don’t want to awaken anyone else. And I may get tired enough to go back to bed....

Francis came home from work and greeted me, but he didn’t know what I was saying when I told him how happy I was. Lauryne knew. Then Francis was laughing because he hadn’t understood his own language. And I remembered Robert Behr laughing at my French pronunciation of a couple of common words. Here’s the problem. How would you pronounce heureuse? I say something like “her ruse” (rhyming with moose). The French say “er uze” (rhyming with booze). For this visit I’ll have a goal of improving my pronunciation. Francis would like me to go to school with him one day and talk with his students. Sounds like fun. I will mangle French. They can then feel comfortable mangling English. 

The TV was on this evening. I actually recognized a couple of words. That’s an improvement! 

Jean-Marie and Cathie have invited Mimi and me to spend a weekend in Saint-Gaudens. J-Marie had said it was 450 kilometers, but his translation of numbers was as good as my translation of “happy” and it’s really 650 kilometers…over 1000 miles. Not really a day trip,especially since we will want to see the countryside on our way. This will take a bit of planning, but we’ll have plenty of help. Francis has BB ready for me, but I’ll rent a car for that trip…too far to take the old BB. 

I think I’ll try sleeping again…enough for now. 

I slept another 6 or 7 hours until Marie-Annick woke me. Francis was coming home from work and it was time to eat. We have fun with words. One discussion was about age which led to death and funerals. I was asked for the word for the box in which we put a body and replied “casket.” That brought a look of astonishment and then a lot of joking. Our baseball cap in French is a casket, only spelled casquette.