Alive and well in Olympia

I thought this long summer break would be a time of intense online activity, and a time to revive this blog.

It may well be -- but not yet.

I have here for a week and a half, and have been doing anything and everything but using my favorite social networking sites.

Facebook has been serving as communications central for getting together with friends here; I've issued a few tweets, but haven't felt much desire to follow Twitter; I figure I'm going to have to clear my Google Reader when it gets to 1000 unread posts.

Replacing all of this are emails to my family back in France, connecting to my work email platform to check up on how my students are doing on their foreign internships, and some online work on the syllabi for my classes next year.

Of course, plenty of offline stuff is going on: seeing my family and friends, outings to restaurants and shows, reading, watching movies and baseball games...

It's summer and I think I needed a break from all of my routines. But I'm not gone forever.

I hope you are all enjoying your summer as much as I am. I will be back in touch.

Homeward Bound

(Photo courtesy of Thierry Jouanneteau)

Whether grey and gloomy, cool and misty, or warm and watery, Olympia is sounding awfully good to me right now...and I'll be there in little more than two days.

Online light

My online presence has been very light lately, but I did want to drop in and tell you what I have been up to.

My two worlds are meeting next week -- starting tomorrow -- when the youth choir Kids In Koncert, from my home town of Olympia, Washington, comes to spend a week here in Aveyron.

My youngest daughter sang with this choir during her year in Olympia, and this stay has been three years in the making and planning. I have been the main organizer, but my youngest daughter's high school, Le Lycée François d'Estaing, has done a lot as far as finding host families and helping with the program.

Anyway, the coming week (I'm taking it off work, needless to say) will be crazy but fun.

Just for information, the group will be doing a major concert at L'Eglise Saint Joseph L'Artisan in Onet-le-Château on Friday April 9th at 8:30 pm.

I will return...

Good-bye to this

As every year, it takes me a little time to settle in to life in Aveyron after a summer in the Pacific Northwest.

Olympia, in all its calm yet funky glory, had never looked more charming to me than it did this summer. Was it the resolutely warm weather, or just the mood I was in?

Perhaps knowing that my daughter had spent a whole school year there made me look at my home town with a fresh eye. I wrote this post about leaving her behind there exactly one year ago, and it does seem like all year long, I had Olympia on my mind.

Now it's la rentrée, and time for new experiences here in Aveyron. My youngest will start a new, French high school; my eldest will start la faculté here in Rodez. My husband and I both have plenty of work lined up, and hope to do a little better on the social side than last year.

Good-bye for now, Olympia.