An introverted expatriated Emily

It was recently recommended to me that I read a book, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, by Susan Cain.  This recommendation was made to me by my parents, both of who are some serious world-champion introverts.  They told me it would be like reading a psychological profile tailored just for me, as it had felt to them.  I’m a stellar, gold-star introvert, as are most of my family, and my boyfriend.  I would much prefer to stay in with a good book and a cup of tea every single night of the week than go out and socialize; and that’s pretty much what I did while I lived in DC.  (My DC friends are rolling their eyes right now in recognition of this familiar Emily trope.)  After a long week of work, I recharge best by being by myself.  I have few, very dear set of friends, but I panic and lose focus in big groups.  There’s nothing I dislike more than small talk.  I actually have to give myself pep talks before going to parties or using the telephone.

Living as an expatriate in a land where I don’t speak the language is both a blessing and a curse to my introverted self. 

Sometimes I find myself wishing I were more extrovertly-oriented so that I wouldn’t care so much about bumbling my French.  So that it would be so easy for me to strike up a friendship with new people I meet – French- or English-speaking.  And so that asking the chicken man to cut my chicken in four wouldn’t merit a blog post, but it would have been simply one more thing I did that day.  For years, I’ve wished that I could stop being so incredibly awkward when I meet new people, especially people with whom I want to be friends.  I wish that I could march into any situation, job interview, audition, etc, and literally fake it until I make it.  But I meticulously prepare and visualize every possible scenario, and I don’t reach out and grab opportunities unless I’m entirely sure I’m qualified or have done enough research.  I wonder how many great things have passed me by because of this.  On the other hand, I know my in-depth preparation leaves me feeling far more satisfied in any experience.  My first real memory of this was when I was maybe 9 or 10.  My family used to visit New York City every February or so to catch a New York Philharmonic concert and an opera at the Met.  When I was young enough, I would fall asleep on my dad’s shoulder, and wonder what I had heard the next day.  I’m pretty sure I slept through Strauss’ Death and Transfiguration one year.  But then my dad suggested that I listen to the concert pieces before we traveled so I would know what to expect.  I did this, and I was suddenly so excited to hear pieces of music live that I never slept through another concert again. 

But how does one prepare to go live in another country and try to get by on limited knowledge of the language?  How does an introvert especially learn to cope with all the new, new, new?  I’m drawing heavily on my years of music performing experience.  Even though I’m about as introverted as a person gets, I adore performing.  I love being on stage performing a piece of music that I’ve spent hours learning, practicing, and perfecting.  I get a huge rush from accomplishing something and presenting a beautiful piece, and I’ve never really suffered from stage fright.  But at the end of any performance, I’m happy enough to go back alone to my room and chill with a beer and a movie. 

Living in France is going to be like a performance, although a far more difficult one than I’ve ever given.  I can’t possibly perfect my repertoire because it will take time for me to converse unhaltingly in French.  Yet the show must go on!  As much as I’d like to, I can’t hole myself up in our new apartment and stuff my face with baguettes and call that an expat experience. 

From this angle, I see a very great advantage to being an introverted expatriate.  I think I will experience this change of life far more deeply and maybe more meaningfully than an extrovert.  I don’t mean that to sound self-congratulatory, and I can’t profess to say how an extrovert might approach this situation.  But I think I observe more, and I try to pick up social cues after standing on the sidelines rather than just barging in and announcing my American-ness. 

Just to round this out – it’s a blessing to be an introvert because I’m confronted with a lot of alone time.  Or else it’s just Ben and me.  After reading this book, I know that I would be going crazy from the almost total lack of social structure if I were an extrovert, but the lonely time suits me just fine.  To be sure, I’m looking forward to making new friends, and I think our lives and our relationship will be enriched when we spread ourselves a bit more socially.  But I’m thankful that we’re both totally ok with retreating to separate corners of the apartment to read rather than only one of us requiring socialization with the quietly recharging other.

My inner peace will is also looking forward to being restored when we finally move on Friday.  I can’t wait to beast together some Ikea furniture and take some pictures…

Homeward found

After our frantic week in Lyon, we’re back in Pertuis cleaning up the entirety of our lives.  Both the search and the wait were emotionally and physically taxing, and it took me half of Saturday and all of Sunday to recover.  But somehow the universe pulled through for me, and on Friday at about 3:30 pm, we got a call that the number one apartment on our wish list had accepted us.  Birthday present, extraordinaire. 

My birthday didn’t start so cheerfully.  Friday dawned drizzly and humid, and I had three appointments to see three more apartments—alone.  Ben had a seminar all day at the university, and we weren’t yet confirmed for a place, so what choice did we have but to send me out on the hunt?  The first two places were a bit out of the city – and out of our desired location – so Thursday afternoon was spent tracing the journey so I would be able to do it alone Friday morning.  When the time came, Ben kissed me goodbye, and a small part of me wondered if I’d ever see him again or get kidnapped Taken-style and require Liam Neeson to come rescue me.  Good thing we aren’t looking in Paris…

Of course, the obvious thing to do would have been to whip out my phone and let the Google machine guide me to my destination, but alas, I’m too poor to pay for a data plan.  So I relied on my memory and some really terrible screenshots of the map I had saved on my phone.  I managed to find the first apartment with no problem.  The agent who met me there had been warned that I don’t speak much French, but that didn’t stop her from talking at me rapid fire, while I nervously laughed and pleaded that she slow down and repetez, s’il vous plaît?  I really find it quite rude when someone knows I don’t speak French well but doesn’t even try to speak slowly so I might understand, especially when I make an earnest attempt to speak French with them.  Not only did she not slow down, but she mumbled and muttered her way up to the 3eme étage (4^th floor, if anyone wasn’t familiar with how the French number their stories.  It’s evil.  You think, 3eme étage, third floor, ok I can live with that.  Nope.  4^th floor, sucker.).  In any case, there were a couple other people viewing the apartment, so I wasn’t stuck awkwardly looking around in silence while she judged me for not knowing her language.  Even when I asked her questions in halting French, she answered bewilderingly quickly. 

I ended up liking both the apartments I saw in the morning, which was both fortunate and unfortunate.  Fortunate because it was looking necessary to have more viable candidates, but unfortunate because it meant Ben would somehow need to turn in our dossier to the agency before end-of-business.  That would have been nearly infeasible since he was needed at the university until 5pm.  So I headed back to our AirBnB apartment, uneasy over how to accomplish the dossier submission.

In the early afternoon, I walked to the third apartment, which doesn’t really merit much description, so I’m not going to waste words.  I plodded home again in the rain, and grumbled pitiably to myself that this was a very fine 25^th birthday, UGH.  Of all the things I thought I’d be doing on my 25^th birthday, apartment hunting by myself in Lyon, France was never in the top 10.  But I’m an adult now, and this is what responsible adults do, and no one cares that it’s your birthday. 

I spent the afternoon agitating on the couch.  Surely, something would come through.  It had to.  IT WAS MY BIRTHDAY.  And then, at 3:30, my phone rang, an unknown number.  I didn’t pick up because, you know, I don’t speak the language.  But the caller left a message.  I played the message.  The first time, all I heard was “accepté” and “votre dossier,” and then a request to call them back at a number I couldn’t discern.  My heart started racing.  This was it!  I replayed the message about 5 times, and I began to understand that the person was calling me about the address for the #1 apartment, our dossier had been accepted, could we please call the agency?  I texted Ben.  CALL THEM.  No answer since he was in class.  Never have I felt so helpless and annoyed at myself for not taking French classes in college.  I thought about calling them, but I didn’t know what to say, and I figured they would hang up on a stammering fool.  Finally, finally, Ben let me know that he called them and that he was coming home. 

The story doesn’t end here.  Nothing is easily done in La France.  All persons and guarantors must be present at the signing of the lease, and nothing may be faxed in by those who don’t live in proximity to the agency.  Our guarantor lives in Pertuis, so we wouldn’t be able to sign anything or get any keys on Friday or Saturday, the day we were scheduled to return home.  So we lugged our heavy suitcases (that we had intended to empty in our new place and take back to refill) back home on the TGV.  But we had done what we came to do.  The universe listened and got me my birthday present, though wrapped with a less tidy bow than desired.

This week will be spent packing and cleaning, cleaning, cleaning.  We have no internet since Ben cancelled it right before we went to Lyon (in the hopes that we would move a bit sooner than this).  We’re getting the keys on Friday.  I’m dying to take pictures, but I don’t have any yet since when we viewed the apartment, it still had the previous renters living in it.  I’m not going to describe it yet either as a terribly unclever way to drive readership and pro-long this cliff-hanger of an experience.

Now, I’m just itching to start nesting.  I’m also anxious to start classes and settle into a routine and begin our life.  We’ve been back for almost four weeks, and the summer is decidedly over; time to throw on the cardigans and scarves and dig into life, not leisure.

In other noteworthy news, Friday was the first birthday Ben and I have ever spent together in our almost 5 years of dating.  We’ve somehow never managed to be together on either September 19^th or December 1^st.  He took me out for a lovely dinner.  We both ordered burgers at this adorable bistro in Vieux Lyon, and I’m terribly ashamed to admit that I succumbed to the local culture and at it with a fork and knife.  I’m so sorry, America, I feel like a traitor.  But one is allowed to do anything one pleases on one’s birthday, SO THERE.

Frenchy French stuff

This week has been a trial of patience.  We've pounded the pavement, visited agencies, apartments, and almost all arrondissements in Lyon.  We've refreshed rental and agency websites over and over until our refreshing fingers were raw.  Every time Ben's phone gives an email notification, my heart races.  This is how Pavlov should have done his experiments: take a group of people looking for apartments and see how they react when they hear a ding on their smartphones.

We've seen some absolutely gorgeous places and some absolute merde-holes.  We've talked with some extremely helpful and kind agents, and some who clearly didn't take us (and our foreign accents) seriously.  I know we aren't being judged by age because many other prospective renters in the agencies were our age or younger.  Finally, at the end of today, we were able to get in our complete applications for three places, two of which j'adore (original hardwood flooring makes me weak in the knees).

This guy also makes me weak in the knees.

One of the agents we talked to on Monday is the agent for one of these top two; she was a life saver.  She explained to us all about needing a guarantor, how the application process works, what kind of paper work we do and don't really need.  She took the time to walk us through each step, and she genuinely seemed to be rooting for us that we get the apartment we want.  When she realized I don't speak French, she asked me in English, in the most non-patronizing way possible for my passport.  She also apologized to me for explaining everything in French, because I could only understand about half.  She happened to be our age too... many of the older agents we spoke with could barely spare us half the breath it takes to say, no, nothing for you in my city, get out!

No!  I want to stay here and eat baguettes!

The reactions of many of the agents actually really shocked me.  We would find an apartment we liked online, and then we would physically go into the ad's agency and inquire about listings.  Countless times I felt like I was walking into a laundromat or a boulangerie and asking the proprietor to check if she had any locations in the 7eme arrondissement.  Rather, like we were walking into a rental agency and asking for fresh baguettes.  I thought that going to the source in person would yield the best results.  I was mistaken.  Every time we called ahead first, we had greater success in securing a visit or at least being told of other similar listings.

And so now we're waiting, Pavlovianly glued to Ben's phone, to hear if we got anything.  In the mean time, I made a profile for myself on a website to get hired as a nanny/babysitter/tutor/pet-sitter.  Ben was kind enough to take a picture for my profile with the make-me-pretty filter on his phone:

Hire me to care for your children?

We rewarded ourselves this evening with a walk through Vieux Lyon and to the other side of the Rhône River.  I finally, finally let myself take in my surroundings in the city.  Lyon is just so French.  It's the most charming city with beautiful old French buildings, a lovely French river, and lots of arching French bridges (also a big French cathedral on the top of a dauntingly steep French hill).  We plodded up to the top of said hill and were delighted by the view looking out over the entire city.  Lyon really is a huge city, but it feels so intimate and approachable.  Public transportation is ubiquitous - a sprawling metro, street trams, and electric buses - and nearly every main road has dedicated bike paths.  People don't seem to smoke as much here as they do in the South, which is a huge plus for me...

Photo credit to Ben and his new smartphone

We climbed the hill to that cathedral in the top right

At the end of our evening excursion we walked through the most adorable and chic restaurant quarter on the other side of Vieux Lyon.  It afforded the cutest of French pictures and a relaxing end to a gut-wrenchingly stressful day.

It wouldn't be a French city without an old cathedral

Looking out over the city from the hill 

Cute restaurant quarter!

Already loving this city.

Apartment hunting (my feet hurt)

We've been in Lyon only a little over 24 hours, and we've already walked - walked - over 8 miles.  That is, we walked 8 miles just today hunting for the elusive perfect apartment.  Not too expensive, not too small, not too far away from the university, not old and worn, not too new and brutal.  Must be close to a supermarket, but please not the top floor of a walk-up, sans ascenseur (those teeny, narrow elevators that have been inserted in 100+-year-old European apartment buildings).  Such a place may or may not exist.

On the TGV to Lyon.  Before the stress really set in...

Au revoir for now, Provence!

And a really old church on a hill.

We saw four places today, each one surprisingly better than the last.  Renting an apartment in France is très,  très, très compliqué.  France has a Craigslist equivalent called LeBonCoin.  Both private and agency rentals can be found on this site, and it's just as unreliable, sketchy, and filled with hidden gems as is Craigslist.  This week, we're staying at an apartment we found on AirBnB.  This apartment happens to be perfect for everything we want.  Ideally located, big enough for two people (an actual bedroom, and not an alcove off the living room, as we've seen in many ads), an equipped kitchen, and even separate spaces for desks.  The wood floors, lighting, walls, etc are in great condition.  We asked the girl who rents it how much she pays and how she found it - on LeBonCoin (sight unseen!!!) and 590€ a month... a little out of our range, but still, it gives us hope that we can find something, something that checks all our boxes by Friday.  I secretly hope the girl who rents this place will decide to move to Lisbon while she's en vacances there, and we can take this place...

The living area of the AirBnB apartment.

If one has no luck with LeBonCoin, one is stuck renting through an agency.  Agencies are also a bit hit or miss, but they pile charge upon charge on every rental.  Also, if a prospective renter can't pay a first year's rent up front, a guarantor is required to sign and provide a guarantee that rent will be made with no problem.  Sure, we have co-signers in the US.  My parents co-signed my first place in DC, no problem.  In France, it's totally normal and expected that two students would need a guarantor.  No biggie.  Thing is, the guarantor has to be physically in France.  No biggie: not so much.  Now neither Ben's nor my parents can co-sign, and we have to scrounge up a guarantor post-haste before we lose out on the one apartment we really liked today.

Still, I think we accomplished a lot in one day.  We saw four places, got pretty intimate with the agency rental process, and still had room for margaritas with dinner.  I swear, Lyon is a really pretty city - I just haven't noticed yet since my head is wrapped around wood flooring, monthly utility costs, and a guaranteed guarantor.  While walking home from dinner, I had to stop myself and realize, "this is my home now.  This is where I'll be living for at least the next year.  I'm not a tourist, this is my city."

The Rhône River, walking to the old city Lyon.

This is my city now.

Tomorrow brings another day on the hunt.  We have a few more places lined up to see this week, but our hope is that we find something before Friday.  I hope the universe is reading this: it would be GREAT to find a place before my birthday *hint hint*.  

Marché partie deux, and other collected thoughts

We went to our last Pertuis marché this morning.  The chicken man was delighted to see Ben, of course.  They exchanged pleasantries, but they both knew it would be for the last time.  We'll have to find another chicken man in Lyon, but Pertuis chicken man will always be the chicken man of our hearts.

Pertuis marché.  Chicken man is on the right, with the yellow sign.

Olive oil for sale.

Looking back toward centre ville, on the way home.

It's sad to leave a place you've lived in for any substantial amount of time.  At our age, three and fours years in any one place definitely counts as substantial.  In August, I cried big, fat crocodile tears when my Bolt Bus pulled away from Union Station in DC.  It's funny how attached we get to certain places, and not to others.  I lived in Boston for fours years, but I didn't feel much else other than relief when I left.  I lived in London for only four months in college, but I was pretty disappointed to leave.  The chilly, grey day before I flew home, I spent walking around the Tate Modern Museum, across Millennium Bridge, and around St. Paul's Cathedral.  I almost can't remember what I did the day before I left Boston.  Wait, I know.  I graduated from college.

Ben has lived in Pertuis for four years, and I think he's going to miss the warm Provençal sun the most.  He keeps asking me if I'm going to miss the sun.  I will miss it, but when I think of warm sun, I think of baking in the disgusting humid swamp that is DC in the summer.  I'm ready to go to Lyon.  I'm ready to have a place that's our's - not his or mine.  DC was my home; Pertuis was Ben's home.  Lyon will be our home.  Ok, so what?  Just savor for a moment that we've spent the past four years apart, never quite certain if there would ever be an "our home" somewhere, anywhere.  We will no longer be guests in the other's home.  It almost makes me feel like a real adult.

Ben at his door.

All these momentous moments make me think of a phrase my French teacher taught us in high school (how appropriate!).  When learning which verbs use the auxiliary verb être in the past tense, we were to remember this delightful quote, "the ins and outs, the ups and downs, the comings and goings of life, tra la!"  The little everyday things that require special attention from the verb for "to be."  I bet some ancient French language maestro thought up which verbs fit neatly into the past être category and giggled at the obviousness of it all.  The verbs for being born and dying use être, to come and to go, to arrive and to leave.  All of these verbs account for one's present state of existence.  In August, my existence in DC was snuffed out; I left, I went, I was no longer there.  And now I exist in France.  I've had a rebirth of location, a renaissance of my reality.  I "be" here now, not there any longer.

Perhaps I'm also waxing poetic on existence because my 25th birthday is in a week.  Odd ages have always been my favorite, but this one's special because it's a whole quarter-century of Emily.  I'm going to be 25 (ha!).  I was the youngest in my friend group in DC, and when each of my friends turned 25, I wondered why they thought it was such a big deal.  In the past, if at 25 you weren't married with kids, or at least married, you were an old maid, past your prime.  These days, if you're 25 and you're married with kids, or at least married, you're like an urban legend.  So I think we women in our mid-twenties these days just aren't really sure where we fit in.  What should we be doing at this age?  Quitting our jobs and moving to France?  Planning a wedding?  Starting a career?  Going to grad school?  Having children?  I think it's that at this age, anything is appropriate, and so the glut of options is overwhelming.

When I was a kid, I always wondered what I would be doing at the age of 25.  I always focused on 25; not too young, and not too old.  I can honestly say, what I'm doing at almost-25 wasn't in my wildest dreams as a kid.

Finally, apropos to nothing, I discovered the flowers outside the door are called "4 o'clocks."  They only bloom at night, and the scent is heavenly:

During the day.

Pretty yellow and pink blooms at night!

Close up, 4 o'clock.

Make our garden grow

Provence is lush.  Lush and slightly overripe at this time of the year.  Vineyards boast fully mature grapes, lavender and poppies are all but forgotten, rosemary and thyme line the country roads with not a thought to their overgrown presence.  Big, flat plane tree leaves are rusting with each passing setting of the sun; the omnipresent crunch underfoot erases any denial that autumn is desperately trying to nudge summer to sleep.

Our afternoon retreat.

Today we ventured out to the plot of land Ben's landlady keeps as a garden.  Once past the paved sidewalks of town, squashed figs littered the roadside, and I had to be very careful not to step in the baking, rotting piles.  The sun in Provence is fairly oppressive during the day, and so anything that isn't actively growing is actively decaying.

Jardin.

The garden plot is down a slender, grassy path.  Many locals own a similarly-sized plot of land in this field; there is little to no green space within the town itself.  Some plots appear to be overgrown, while others look carefully tended.  During the year, Ben and his landlady take great care of her plot, but between June and now, no one has been here to tend to it, so it's a bit weedy.  I wish I could say we came to weed; we came for the cats.

Photogenic kitty.

A half dozen or more feral cats live in this garden, and as soon as we arrived, they all came scurrying from under the brush to eat the cat food Ben poured for them.  Most of the cats were extremely friendly and curious, almost dog-like.  If you know me, you'll know that I'm fairly obsessed with cats.  All cats have their own distinct little personalities.  I think most are bent on world-domination, though would settle for a nice place to nap.  These cats were no different.  They hissed and yowled at each other, chased each other through the grass, but then quickly tired and plopped in the shade to purr themselves to sleep.  I think people should be more like cats.  Always leave someone wanting more, don't be so quick to please or be so fast to form loyalties.  Find a nice place to take an afternoon snooze.  

I named this one Scallop; he/she was very talkative.

Ben is the cat whisperer, so once they sniffed him out, we were joined by an eager handful of felines.  Most have names, and have been living in this garden for most of the time that Ben has lived in Pertuis.  Ben's favorite is Hibou, and Hibou does indeed look like an owl.

Benjamin et Hibou

We ate a picnic lunch and settled in the sun to read.  The heat wasn't so bad under the shade, but the mosquitoes ate up our legs pretty badly.  The whole time I felt like I was playing hooky from school or work, and I had to actively remind myself that I'm not supposed to be anywhere right now; it's ok to relax.  It was hard to completely relax though, with all the kitties lurking around us.  When a cat is present, I can't resist playing with it.  My favorite was this scrawny little thing that I named Tater Tot.  Tater was clearly the runt of whatever litter it came from and wouldn't eat while the other cats were eating.  She (no idea if it was a he or she, so let's go with she) wasn't scared of us in the slightest, so I returned her affection.

Tater Tot the Bold

I don't know when I'll have another chance to spend a hot summer afternoon in a garden with a bunch of curious kitties.  Soon, the autumn will truly descend on Provence.  And soon we'll move north to Lyon.  Classes will start for both of us, and any cats we see will probably be mean street cats or fat house cats.  Summer must end, as she always does, but I think her welcome is over at this point.  I know I'm ready for crisp air and a legitimate excuse to wear scarves and layers and a little more responsibility.

But at least we got to play with some cats today.

Speaking in tongues

Every time I visit France, I hope that I will spontaneously develop lingual osmosis.  I daydream about waking up and suddenly being able to understand every single sound that's uttered in my direction; that I will be able to produce the correct combination of nasal m's and n's, guttural r's, and beautifully mixed vowels.  That I could be able to function autonomously in any situation so I wouldn't need to rely on my darling, fluently French, and dashingly handsome copain.  Alas, human evolution is proving frustratingly slow, so I'm stuck squinting in incomprehension while les françaises blink at me with an unending stream of, "vous comprenez?"

I understand that sunshine on grape clusters is always a pretty picture

I took roughly 8 semesters of French classes from 8th grade to 11th grade.  I loved French right up to the point when we started learning how to conjugate subjunctive verbs.  Il faut que ughhhhhhh.  In college, I was required to take "singer" Italian (two semesters of freshman classes dumbed down enough for a bunch of music majors to squeak through).  I don't remember a single thing from those classes.  Sophomore year, I took two semesters of German.  German grammar is beyond bewildering, so I ended my lingual aspirations in favor of some super useful and relevant religious studies classes.  I nearly double-majored in voice performance and religious studies, but I didn't want to be too employable by the time I graduated.

What I did learn in college was diction.  Every classically trained singer must have beautiful, correct, precise, and exquisite diction in whatever language is being sung.  If I do say so myself, I'm a tad gifted in the diction department.  I've gotten beaucoup compliments on my French pronunciation from French people.  I spent hours in college shaping my mouth around mixed vowels, learning the nuances of a nasal consonant, and perfecting the elusive pure "e" sound (we don't have it in English; it's one of the most difficult sounds for a native English speaker to produce in my observation).  I adore the way French sounds, but I never really made the time to study the language itself in college.  I do have a delightful smattering of vocabulary, though much of it is archaic as I sang texts that were written as far back as the 16th century.  I'm able to get by in conversation, and I can get the gist of most any written text, but now is my chance to truly immerse myself and proactively participate.

Who needs to talk when this is the scenery?

So far, much of immersion is absorption.  When Ben speaks to his friends in French, I actively absorb everything that's being said.  At first, everything was a bit rusty, and I was still translating everything into English before understanding.  After a little over a week here, I don't rely so much on my inner google translate, and the French words are beginning to take on their own meanings.  All that inner translation takes precious time from any dialogue, so when I don't need to translate, I have that much more time to formulate my own sentences.  I also try to absorb new vocabulary, structure, spoken cadence, and even the physical attributes to speaking French.  Context is incredibly helpful in any conversation.  If I can pick out a few keys words early in a speech, it helps direct my brain to comprehend everything that follows.  Even if I don't get precisely every word spoken, I'm able to at least understand the general atmosphere of the topic.  Confidence is crucial to participating in conversation.  I'm my own worst enemy; I detest being incorrect, so I'd rather be quiet than be wrong.  Unfortunately, that doesn't progress one's language skills very far, so I'm learning to accept that being wrong is ok; being understood is the most important thing for me right now. It doesn't matter so much that I used the wrong verb conjugation, article, pronoun, sentence structure, masculine/feminine form of a word, so long as I can convey my fundamental needs.  I learned about Maslow's hierarchy of needs in a college psych class, and language comprehension reminds me of that pyramid.  First, one must have his basic needs met: shelter, food, clothing.  The bread-and-butter of existence; the "être" and "aller" and "bonjour" and "je, tu, fromage, pain, et vin" of French.  IThe hierarchy then moves up through functional relationships, stability, rich vitality, up to self-actualization.  I've got the food and shelter of my French production down pretty well, so now I need to start stabilizing my friendship with this beautiful language.

Stabilizing my friendship with French beer, for starters.

All in all, the process of learning a foreign language is exhausting.  It takes an extreme commitment to active listening, processing, trying, failing, and discovering.  By the end of a day, my brain aches from the kind of stimulation I haven't received in years.  I spend most conversations squinting off into the distance because right now, that's how I best process what's being spoken to me.  If I look directly at someone's face, like I would when conversing in English, I get distracted by their looks, their mouth movements, their expressions, stray eyelashes, smudged glasses.  But it's wonderful.  I haven't been challenged like this since college, and the rush of triumph I feel after speaking correctly and being understood the first time is matched by nothing.  Tasting the delicious French words and producing the correct combination is exhilarating, even when just requesting the chicken man quarter the roast chicken.  I never accepted that failure is an integral part of learning when I was a kid, so that really prevented me from trying many, many things.  Now, it's do-or-die.  If I want to be understood, I need to speak the language.  I'm going to be wrong; that's ok.  Thankfully, I'll be taking classes soon, and I live with someone who has a master's degree in telling me how to speak this language correctly, so the errors will eventually get corrected.

I don't have a clever segue for this: these are snails.  Seriously, escargots grow on plants.

We also finally, finally got confirmation for our location this year!  We will be moving to Lyon in the next few weeks.  That means leaving behind warm, sunny Provence, but we're both pretty excited to get out of this limbo.  One can only spend so many days sleeping in, taking long walks in countryside vineyards, and lazily munching on baguettes et fromage...

Au revoir to this beautiful vista!