I am so happy to be finished with my month of French classes. I learned alot but I’m a little worried that it didn’t improve my speaking of French very much. The teacher for the last two weeks of class was really nice and she did things like play French music or show French movies. It was interesting but I didn’t spend much time speaking French, my biggest need. I passed the test at the end which is only writing. If I had had to speak I don’t know if I would have passed.
We had a little party on the last day and I talked with some people that were in the first class that I moved out of. They said that the situation with the two girls who were so slow never improved and that one day they showed up to class about two hours late, opened a bag of chips and made so much noise that they couldn’t hear a French tape. It turns out the two girls did lots of drugs, which doesn’t surprise me and one of them was seen staggering down the street one afternoon pretty much out of it. Sad.
On another note, Aix is celebrating the 100th birthday of Cezanne. There has never been an exhibit of his work in Aix and they have had a museum full of his paintings for the summer. The museum is crowded and hot but it is still worth the time to take a look at his work. He lived in Aix and painted certain things in the area over and over again, especially Mount Ventoux. He was considered an impressionist but he said that he wasn’t, he was doing something entirely different. He was a rather tortured individual and it sounds like he was schizophrenic, driving away many friends. I like his paintings but I still think Van Gogh is my favorite.

This is on a fountain in Aix. There are also medallions on the ground which you can follow to various places where Cezanne lived or worked.

A statue of Cezanne in front of the Tourist Information Center.

Yes, an amazing new diet requiring no special food, no watching what you eat, no weighing yourself everyday. The last woman to try this diet (Maurice’s grandmother) lived to be 106 years old! It was a way of eating that I thought upon hearing about it, “Hey, I can do that!”

What is it?

A piece of chocolate and a glass of champagne every day! Isn’t that easy? Doesn’t it sound great? I’m going to start today.

My Life As An Indian

My cousin married a Mormon. In their religion they believe that it is very important to be baptized with immersion in water and, in fact, they are baptized in the name of all relatives, even those long dead. Because of this they do extensive geneologic research to explore their roots and be baptized in the name of all the relatives they find.
One day I received a letter in the mail with a very long list of relatives, a family tree on my father’s side. It went back and back in time and I was surprised to see on the list, near the beginning, the name of the famous female Indian, Pocahontas. Pocahontas was an Indian princess, the daughter of Powhatan, the powerful chief of the Algonquian Indians in the Tidewater region of Virginia. She was born around 1595 to one of Powhatan’s many wives. She helped the new American settlers and eventually married one of them, John Rolfe in 1614. Her husband and their young son, Thomas, accompanied her on a trip to England. The arrival of Pocahontas in London was well publicized. She was presented to King James I, the royal family, and the rest of the best of London society. They returned to live in Virginia but she died as they arrived at the age of 22. There are many people in Virginia who claim to be related to Thomas Rolfe so it isn’t certain if he is, indeed one of my relatives. I was told by a Virginian that many people in Virginia are related to each other, so it is a possibility.

(This was a story I told my class, in French, as a project.)

A sign in the market said that these were a type of sunflower.

It is too hot to get out and explore. I half-heartedly looked around for some festivals but there just wasn’t anyway I was going to get out into the sun and heat and walk around. Instead I worked in the heat in our yard. At least there is some shade from a big tree to helps and a swimming to get into to cool down. We are busily trying to make something of the area where I dug up the grass. I think it will look great when we finish but, with the heat, we can only do a little at a time. I discovered an interesting Japanese shop in Aix and I love the things for gardens that they sell so I am thinking of making the area a little zen in feeling. Water would be great but I’m not sure if I want to deal with pumps and all. In any case, here are a few photos from around Aix.

The square has a daily market.

An old sign on the side of a building that I like.

The church down at the end of the street that this artist is painting has been done by several famous artists including Cezanne and Van Gogh.

I am in the midst of my third week of my French class. I have no idea if I am making in progress. I seem to have hit a wall when it comes to using conjugations of verbs while speaking. I can painfully do it if I am writing but as soon as I start to speak I am back to the “Me talk pretty one day” type of French.
It turns out that we are going to have two teachers. The first one was very elegant and very well-dressed rivaling anything I’ve seen in Paris as far as fashion sense goes. She had long, blond highlighted hair in casual ringlets, a svelte body to die for with a waist size almost in the single digits. She wore a different dress or top and skirt every day that looked very high quality and that were all lovely. A different pair of shoes graced her feet each day and a different purse matched each outfit. I also happen to know that she had fabulous underwear, a different bra each day, as a strape would show now and then-not the serviceable plain white strap, but one in peach satin or blue and pink flowers and lace. Noticing things like this always make me realize how unimaginative my underwear is. Anyway, other than her fashion sense, she was a very good teacher, really drilling us and making us speak French quite a bit in class. The other students thought she was a little intimidating but she didn’t bother me, probably because I am older than she is and it takes alot to intimidate me. So, she left for a trip to Vietnam.
Today the new teacher showed up. She is a very sweet and friendly woman with a lovely smile and no fashion sense that I could see. The first impression I had of her was that of a hippie, maybe an earth mother. Her hair, turning slowly naturally gray, was pulled back off of her face in a rather severe way, more function than form. She wore a simple tank top and plain skirt with shoes that were worn at the heels. I really don’t care about how people dress but it was interesting to see the difference. Her teaching method is totally different and she takes more time to teach us things, such as verb conjugations and explanations on how they are used however we don’t seem to get much time to actually speak French in class. She loves words and French history and gives us all sorts of information. We learned alot about Marseille and its very interesting history the first day. The class is much more relaxed and less stressful and I’m not feeling as pushed as I was by the first teacher.

The students in the class, as always interest me. On most week-ends they take the opportunity to visit other cities in Europe. Two returned a day late from Rome as there was some sort of major transportation strike-normal for Italy-and they missed their train. They finally caught another, slower one, and one of the girls had all of her money stolen, another lost her passport, and the train conductor charged them 45 Euros because they had filled out the dates on their train tickets incorrectly. All just a normal day for young people traveling by rail in Europe.
Another girl-they are all staying at French homes where they are provided with room, board and, hopefully, some French conversation-has ended up in a bad situation with an older lady who expects the student to stay in her room with the door closed at all times. She is served dinner but is given dirty looks if she tries to come into the kitchen during lunch time to get something to eat. Once she opened her bedroom door to come upon a naked man getting into the bathtub right across the hall. She isn’t happy and has written to her university to see if she can changed. The other girls seem quite happy with their living arrangements. I’m glad I can just go home but the long trip each way is getting old and I will be glad to finish this class.
Most of the students wander into class late, if at all. Most of them are checking out the party/nightclub/disco scenes in Aix and I hear them talking about how they didn’t get to bed until 3 AM, some of them 6 AM. I feel exhausted if I don’t make it to bed by 11 PM, being an old party animal.

We are in an old beautiful building with no air-conditioning, as I have mentioned before. France is in the midst of a canicule which is a way of saying that it is hotter than hell and it gets hard to pay attention in class when you are so miserably hot. There are three classes of students up on the second floor, probably about 50 people in all, and two toilets on the same floor. We ran out of toilet paper a week ago and I went and told the secretary and she said she would call and tell whoever to replac eit. Then a light went out in one of the toilet rooms. I did occasionaly use my own kleenex and sit in the dark. When, a week had passed, the toilet paper was still missing and the light went out in the second toilet, I went roaring down to the office. With all of the money we are paying, this was unacceptable. I went up to the secretary sitting on her can in her air-conditioned office and demanded lights in the bathrooms and toilet paper. She told me she had called the person responsible three times and I told her that wasn’t enough that toilet paper was necessary and to give me the blinking money and I would go buy the blinking toilet paper. (I was thinking, “Why don’t you leave your air condtioned office and go down the street and buy it yourself?”) By then, several women had come out of their offices sort of fluttering around but I was on a roll. Enough was enough. Well, it worked. We now have lights in both of the bathrooms and toilet paper. I wonder if I threw another fit if I could get us a fan in our room?

When you live in the country surrounded by trees, bushes and vegetation which are all dry due to lack of rain, thinking about fires can be scary. I’ve heard about some serious fires in this region with people being required to evacuate and always hope that won’t ever happen to us.
We’ve had some heavy thunderstorms the last week or so due to the very hot weather and lightning strikes along with them. We are in the foothills of the Luberon Mountains and are often very near the lightning and thunder, sometimes not able to hear ourselves talk. A couple of days ago lightning starting striking all about us. A few minutes later I walked outside and smelled smoke. Walking around to the front of our home I could see brown clouds blowing over a nearby hill. Of course, I started worrying about the fire heading our way. In ten more minutes we heard the sound of airplanes which turned out to be fire fighters, Canadian Air planes, and there were eight of them. They made three trips back and forth doing their thing and it must have worked as all was quiet. Since then we have had several heavy soaking rains which I am hoping keeps it all quiet here in the country in more ways than one.

Here is what we saw over our house.

Close-up of one of the planes, obviously not taken by me.