trace de pas

St. Aubin

Sitting in the shade of some trees at the base of the church St. Aubin, finished with my shopping at the market and listening to a really talented street musician on an instrument I don't know the name of.  Really, just a wonderful day.

The silhouette of the musician, and all his admirers

Sunshine streams down around me, illuminating the deep brick colors of the buildings and roofs across the street and putting in a serious bid that we're not quite done with summer. Pain au chocolat from my usual market-baker, and some dried mango make the perfect early Sunday afternoon snack, and finally, I'm peacefully content. There's something so wonderfully French about renting one of the city bikes (free for the first half hour) and riding into the city to do my shopping at the Sunday market (organic tomatoes, fresh fruit, dried mangos, almonds, candied ginger, fresh garlic)...   Makes the harder days seem far away and reminds me of some of the reasons I decided that to pick up and move to this far away continent.

Back home: It's nice to just find the little things -- the bookseller who has an open bottle of wine, the pleasure of having a clean apartment, painting while sitting and drinking my cup of tea, talking to family and friends on skype -- are starting to be incredibly reassuring, rather than strange.  Friday night I went over to Emily's apartment to help her with her internet -- Emily's one of the other new Americans, but she's 18 and this is her first company, neither her nor her mom speak any French -- so I called to find out that there is a mouse on their line (not so sure if that's literal or a French turn of phrase) and set up a technician to come on Monday for them.  It makes me grateful that of all the places I could have ended up, the country where I already spoke some of the language is where I ended up -- the helplessness is really a huge factor when you can't even say "can you please send a technician to fix my internet, it's been a few weeks now and I neeeeeeeeed to have contact with the outside world!" or some such thing.  

Saturday night was Flavian's 18th birthday (one of the youngest dancers in the company; he grew up in Toulouse), so we went out to dinner at an African restaurant.  I still am somehow astounded by the number of languages spoken at the table -- Russian, French, English, Spanish, Armenian, Portuguese, Norwegian, Italian -- and those are just the native speakers, with all sorts of crossovers in between.  It just brings a whole new dimension to discussions, with points where you're limited by your lack of knowledge, and where your communication base is broadened by getting to pick expressions from each of many languages that fit the situation the best.  

And my relationships with the family are continuing to deepen.  I've been alternating reading bed time stories to the kids with playing multiplication flash-card games (great for me to practice my French numbers), and Colombe came home this week with cinquante sur cinquante (50/50) on her multiplication times table.  They also taught me my new favorite French word, "trace de pas" which means foot print, or the trace of a step :)  Again, it's the little things that are the ones that make you smile :)