Yesterday was Easter and as you might expect most places were closed. In fact, almost everything is closed around here on Sundays: shops, restaurants, even the buses don’t run. Having moved from being within a 5-minute drive of several supermarkets and a supercenter that literally never close we thought it might take a long time to adjust. It didn’t. Continue reading “Falling in”
My first long term relationship was with someone who lived in New York City. The first time I went to Manhattan it was truly overwhelming; skyscrapers, people, endless avenues of shopping, bumper to bumper traffic, Broadway, Times Square, and noise. In the daytime it was exciting but at night it was too noisy to sleep. After a week there I kind of got used to the crowds but nighttime sirens, garbage trucks with clanging cans, and screaming drunks validated the nickname The City That Never Sleeps. Continue reading “Night and day difference”
We bought a bathroom scale today, or as the French call it a balance. I only know that’s the name because of something that happened in the supermarket. Fruits and vegetables are displayed much as they are in the US on large angled tables where each shopper is free to choose the produce that she or he wants. The big difference comes next and that’s where the balance comes into play. Continue reading “In the balance”
We had a rental car for the first couple of weeks that we were in France figuring that it would be handy to pick up our initial supply of groceries, a couple of small portable tables, and to stock the liquor cabinet (for guests, of course!) with all of those heavy bottles that we would not want to hand carry on the bus or by walking. Now that we don’t have a car for the first time in 28 years or so we are solely (pun intended) on foot. Continue reading “From horseless carriage to carless pairage”
For those of you who missed my lame attempt at clever wordplay with this post’s title, recently we went to the city of Toulouse, about an hour away. Actually, the artist Toulouse Lautrec is more associated with the town of Albi, where we’ve already visited the wonderful museum of his works, but his namesake city of 500,000 people has megashopping. Ah, there’s the real reason we went. Continue reading “La trek tou-louse”
When we lived in Atlanta it was seldom necessary to set an alarm unless we had to get up especially early. We just always awoke in plenty of time to get ready for work. In the weeks immediately preceding our move to France, the stress to get everything finished meant we slept very little, so on most days we were wide awake long before we needed to be. Now that we live in France, we’ve had to set the alarm clock if we’ve known that a package is going to be delivered early or needed to get to an appointment before lunchtime. Continue reading “New routines”
When I was in high school you had two choices about what track you were going to take. If you said that you wanted a “technical” education then you got to take classes like metalworking, carpentry, food preparation, automobile engine repair, and other hands-on instruction. You know, the fun stuff. For the rest of us who said that we were college bound then out came math analysis, calculus, physics, and 17th century literature, for example. Yep, the knowledge that we all use on a daily basis. In France you get some additional choices including the ability to go to a high school that concentrates on the agriculture of your part of the country. Guess what they grow around Carcassonne: grapes. And what do you make with grapes: wine. Yes, in France you can go to high school and learn how to make wine. Continue reading “Wine high school”
Let's Live In France 