Wandering Around in My Head

Fall is creeping down from the mountains into town. Here are a few shots:

The leaves are changing in front of the church tower

Everyone knows you should paint your shutters to match the fall leaves on the tree. 

Yesterday at the Esperaza market, after enjoying coffee with Jim and Theresa, Earl and I meandered toward the parking lot. A youngish woman stopped in front of me tilted her head forward and said something about "lunettes," which means glasses. She was looking down, so I looked down, wondering if she had dropped a screw to the glasses on the street below. I started to help her search when she stopped me and pointed to the glasses propped on her head. The glasses had gotten tangled in her hair. For a minute, I stood in the middle of the market  helping her free the sunglasses from her hair. It's happened to me before, so I understood the need. Sunglasses freed, we moved on toward the car. "That was weird," Earl said. "Yeah." But maybe I have a pleasant, I can help you look on my face.

This morning, I woke up early thinking of the time change. The clocks get turned back next Saturday in Europe. They don't turn back until the following Saturday in the U.S. Why should I care? Well, my schedule for teaching at VIPKids is in Eastern Time, so although the time may say 6 a.m Eastern, which would be noon for me, now the time will be 11 a.m. for at least one week. 

My schedule is in US Eastern Time, so I'm always converting it in my head. 

For week days, it doesn't matter so much, but on Saturday and Sunday I usually teach a few classes from 7-9 a.m. I was trying to figure out if I had scheduled it at 7 a.m. or 6 a.m. Translating time from France to the U.S., which is 6 hours different, can be challenging, and then I throw in Chinese time, which is 6 hours before us. My mind cannot think linearly about this. I just about get it figured out when I'm thrown into confusion again. 

The past few weeks have been unseasonably cold and rainy here in Quillan, but this week, we're having more days in the 60s and 70s, (16-22 celcius) so I'm not missing the opportunity to get out and enjoy it. I had a bad reaction to seeing myself this morning in my running clothes. I didn't want to go running. I know it's ridiculous to feel like I'm too fat to go running. Shouldn't that be a reason to go running? So I took off my jacket, put on a long sweater and went for a walk in the mountains. It's beautiful there. 

Sometimes it isn't the mountains, it's the clouds between the mountains

More clouds filling in the gaps as I crested the top of this hill. 

I hope you're finding beauty wherever you are today, rainy or clear, warm or cold. 

First Post From France -2017

I never know whether I should post about the things that happened the past few days or jump to today. But if I start posting about the past, then I never seem to catch up.
Traveling here was exhausting. I took melatonin on the plane but never managed to fall asleep, instead just dozing a few times. Maybe I'm getting too old to fly overseas and skip a night's sleep. Someday, I hope to relay the entire story -- two planes, two trains and one automobile, which the rental people seemed very reluctant to give us. "It is a new car," the woman said.
"Look, we aren't planning to wreck it," I wanted to say
But things improved rapidly after we got to the BnB, I took a shower and we went out to dinner.
The town where we are staying is fairly small. It has a boulangerie, a small market that sells everything, a pharmacie and a couple of wine makers. But it doesn't have a legitimate restaurant. Instead, it has a restaurant rapide, pizza place.
The woman in the market said it had good food, so we walked there.
We started with a glass of moscat, which is made locally.

It is very sweet and tasted delicious.
The menu offered goat cheese pizza with black olives, so that is what I ordered., along with a $14 bottle of red wine and a salad. About halfway through that bottle of wine, things started to feel much better.

By 9:30, we returned to the room and I fell asleep by 10.
I started my morning with a run. It's strange to run in a place that is unfamiliar. I needed to make sure I didn't get lost. So I ran through town and turned right. That took me out into the country a bit. I heard a rooster crowing and in the distance a ridge of mountain jutted up.

That distant spire is the church in the town where we stayed. 

 In Ohio, it's very flat so I'm not used to real mountains, only fake ones in the clouds that look like mountains.
I only went about three miles so we could go off on our daily jaunt. Our goal is to visit cities with markets in hopes of choosing an area we want to move. Not many cities have markets on Friday mornings, but Séte, a city on the Mediterranean said it had a small market, so we headed there. It's just half an hour by car, and although I nearly got us killed when we first started driving there, I got the hang of it and didn't put a scratch on the new rental car.
The market at Place de Stalingrad took up nearly two blocks.

It had every kind of fruit or vegetable we would want to buy. The cherries seemed quite popular. And it had lots of prepared foods too, like this paella. The man had several giant pans of food.

We enjoyed the sunshine and walked toward the Mediterranean. The town is quite industrial with a lot of fishing boats and other industries along the waterfront. The canals seemed to be the places that people enjoyed the water.
Some of the architecture reminded me of Nice,

while others reminded me of typical French style.

The restaurant where we ate lunch had mediocre food, which is always a surprise in France, but we have made up for it in other ways, with lots of other foods.

Thanks for visiting. I'll try to get a post written tomorrow before we run over to Aix en Provence to visit our friend Delana.

Dreaming of France -- Bursts of Color in A French Market

Thank you for joining this weekly meme. Grab a copy of the photo above and link back to An Accidental Blog. Share with the rest of us your passion for France. Did you read a good book set in France? See a movie? Take a photo in France? Have an adventure? Eat a fabulous meal or even just a pastry? Or if you're in France now, go ahead and lord it over the rest of us. We can take it.

One beautiful thing about France is all the outdoor markets. Once we live there, I look forward to doing most of my shopping at the markets.

These oranges were at a market in Marseille. 

Flowers are ubiquitous in French markets. I imagine that everyone takes time to make their apartments more beautiful by treating themselves to a bouquet of flowers. 

Here's a collection of colorful baskets, which would be handy to use when carrying home all of my belongings from the market.

The markets always have scarves, tablecloths or even bolts of material.

Thanks for playing along with Dreaming of France.  

Saturday Snapshots -- Spices

To participate in the Saturday Snapshot meme post a photo that you (or a friend or family member) have taken then leave a direct link to your post on Alyce's blog At Home With Books. Photos can be old or new, and be of any subject as long as they are clean and appropriate for all eyes to see. How much detail you give in the caption is entirely up to you. Please don’t post random photos that you find online.

Today I'm taking another picture from Grace's travels. These are from the market in Aix en Provence. Something about these spices just says exotic:

And up close, they just make me want to dig my hands in and watch them pour through my fingers.

Saturday Snapshot

To participate in the Saturday Snapshot meme post a photo that you (or a friend or family member) have taken then leave a direct link to your post on Alyce's blog At Home With Books. Photos can be old or new, and be of any subject as long as they are clean and appropriate for all eyes to see. How much detail you give in the caption is entirely up to you. Please don’t post random photos that you find online.

In honor of the Tour de France and all the great French scenery I'm watching on television, here's a market scene from Aix en Provence.

And this was a seafood market in Paris along the Rue Mouffetard.

And, of course, who can visit even a market in France without thinking about wine.