Humility Reigns

This morning I went through a full range of emotion from pride to annoyance to defensiveness to boredom to doubt to introspection. In my head, I am bilingual. I have known French for 29 years (holy crap!), it is in me. Or is it? It seems that I have neglected it for the last decade and I am seeing the consequences of that in the form of a disconnect between my perceived ability in French and my actual ability. Oh man!

I am tripping over words, genders, tenses and accordances. Sigh. This used to be so much easier. This is a truly humbling experience. Then again, life is all about learning and continuing to do so. As for the French, it seems that a week won’t be enough to dust off the cobwebs in my brain! Would I ever love to live in France for a year or two! Or maybe Québec (how I love Montreal!)? Or maybe join a local Alliance Francaise? Or maybe watch more French TV? It's important enough to me that it'll be worth the effort to keep up and work on. It's a skill that needs honing, it’s just a bit rusty right now!

A pleasant afternoon was had at the beach today though. Nicole and I hopped on the bus to take us to La Grande Motte beach, a beach a bit further out and, from the map – what looked like the last stop for bus 106. An hour later we realized that we may have missed our stop – it was only supposed to take 45 mins to get there. That’s the trick with the ‘’next stop’’ button on buses – they only work for those who know the route! Instead we spent a couple of hours at Le Grau Du Roi beach - no problem. It had lots of sand. It had the sun. It had the 1000’s of scantily clad bathers you would expect on a hot day in ‘Southern France’. Both Nicole and I looked at each other and knew this wasn’t exactly our scene. Still, we managed to find a spot and relax for a bit. I waded in the La Golfe d’Aigues-Mortes which was lovely despite the film of sunscreen on the water’s surface. It sure did the job to cool me down and the popcicle we had afterwards did too!


As a result of all of the carbohydrates we’ve been eating, my ‘bread-baby’ couldn’t be hidden while in my bikini. Sigh. Good thing we’ve been walking everywhere and running in the mornings. Man, I don’t know how the French ladies do it. They have bread and cheese every day and they all look fabulous! Well – tonight we opted for our 3rd ‘picnic’ in a row at our French pad. The place is really cute – the owners are obviously artists. Oh – today I learned the French word for ‘gezellig’. It’s ‘douillet’. So there we go! Ici, c’est douillet! We ate upstairs on the térrasse and did some homework. What we get out of this week is a direct result of what we put in after all! Alors, en conclusion – aujourd’hui était une bonne journée mais maintenant je dois faire dodo. Je suis fatiguée!

Favourite French expression learned today: métro-boulot-dodo et pédalo-boulot-apéro!