One of the advantages of living in another country is getting to compare your new experiences with the ones you are used to. We were watching television the other day and a political ad came on. That’s not a topic we pay a lot of attention to but in the hopes of improving our language skills we watched it anyway. As with much of what we see that doesn’t come with French subtitles, we didn’t fully understand the message until the commercial concluded and the sponsor’s logo and name flashed up: Parti Socialiste. Oh my, that would never happen on American TV. Continue reading “Not there you don’t”

We went to the Palais de Justice yesterday but not to attend a hearing although we did visit two different courtrooms. We were also in a couple of assembly rooms, many corridors, and even a lounge where lawyers dressed in long, flowing black gowns with white scarves tied at their necks looked quizzingly at us. I overheard one of the avocats tell her colleagues that we were there to see the exposition. We had gone to the city’s courthouse to see an art exhibition. Continue reading “Art is where you find it”

If you live in the US you’ll be aware of a rivalry between the north and the south that dates back to at least 1864 when the Civil War ended. Bill once had a boss in Atlanta who said that he was taking his family back to New Jersey so that his kids would learn in school which side really won that war. There’s a rivalry here between those same two regions of the country except it’s centered around something much more interesting: sports. Continue reading “North vs. south”

We can buy 3 daily newspapers in Carcassonne and for a town of 50,000 people, that’s not bad. These are actually regional papers, all owned by the same company, but we still think it’s amazing to have that kind of coverage. Many of their articles are published for free online and that’s one of the ways we find out what’s going on. Here’s a quote from the president of this region’s governing council regarding the upcoming fiscal year’s budget: “A tax increase is the only solution”. Oh, la, la, can you imagine ever reading that in a US newspaper? Continue reading “You read that in the paper?”