Amsterdam Three: Day Two

I'm finally back to my Amsterdam series, and only on Day Two of our trip! It's been a long time since I've put together multi-photo posts, and it takes a while. But here are a few selections from our second day.

We started off Sunday Dec. 27th with a beautiful but brisk walk to The Amsterdam Music Theater in hope of buying tickets for a ballet that evening. We were advised to come back and buy at the door before the show, as student prices are only ten euros under this system.

We didn't go for nothing, though, because it is an intriguing building both inside:

and outside:

(First three photos courtesy of Thierry Jouanneteau)

Our main sightseeing activity, that afternoon, was going to the Foam photo museum. Before visiting the exhibits, we warmed up with delicious and reasonably-priced soups and sandwiches in the restaurant café:

From what I gather, this photography museum shows temporary exhibits only, and the main one going on was photos by Alexander Rodchenko. It gave an intriguing look at life in the Soviet Union during the 20s and 30s.

The Foam museum is in a larg former home along the Keizersgracht, and we all enjoyed the archicture of the building as well as the exhibit and the atmosphere:


Dinner was Indonesian, although we didn't go in for a large, expensive meal. Caught in a rainstorm at about 5:30pm, we ran into this restaurant and were lucky enough to get in. I didn't write down what we ate, but we all had one-bowl dishes that look very much like the one in their Internet advertisement photo: a great deal at just under 10 euros per person.

There is actually more to tell about this day as it included an evening out...but I can save that for another NaBloPoMo post!

A night at the opera

I've always heard a lot about Mozart's The Magic Flute, and of course know the Queen of the Night's famous aria from the second act. But although I enjoy opera, and would like to enjoy it more through knowing more about it -- isn't that the only way?

I had never actually seen a production of La Flûte Enchantée, so I was attracted by the colorful posters all over Rodez for the production by l'Opéra Eclaté, and decided to buy a ticket at the door.

Although the show was far from sold out, I was quite impressed by the number of people willing to go to the Rodez Amphithéâtre to see an opera during the week.

The necessarily pared-down staging didn't make for an all-out spectacle, but the musical quality was quite strong, and I am happy to say I indulged in a "night at the opera" in my home town.

Out and about and oops

It's not that I exactly forgot to post yesterday, I just forgot that the day's schedule wouldn't allow me to do so in the evening -- and it didn't even cross my mind in the morning.

Yesterday I got home from a cultural outing (photo and explanation to come...) past midnight, so even if I had mustered up the energy to write something yesterday, officially it would have been today already.

So, tant pis. I will chime this evening to make up for the "lost post."

Wordless Wednesday 78

(Photo courtesy of Thierry Jouanneteau)

NaBloPoMo -- over halfway through

I hate to say it right out loud, and I am saying it out loud as I write, but NaBloPoMo has been a bit on the hellish side.

I have never had any desire for La France Profonde to become a DAILY blog, and find it a little frustrating that the (very) few good posts I have written this month get quickly covered up by slop like what I'm typing tonight.

But I will persevere -- we are more than halfway through!

Trouvez La France Profonde

I've probably already blogged about how, along with the insane decision to participate in NaBloPoMo during one of my high-work-level, low-energy-level months, I also signed up for a type of collaborative online class called images4education.

One of our "tasks" has been to post a view from our window to Flickr. By chance, by choice, or because I posted mine late, my photo was selected for this mosaic that was sent out to the whole group.

Can you find the view from my window?

To A Taste of Garlic -- merci beaucoup!

The screenshot for the review of my blog on "A Taste of Garlic"

This morning, I was thrilled to discover through a Google alert that Keith Eckstein had published a review of La France Profonde.

I'd recently become aware of a his most delightful blog where he reviews other blogs related to France: A Taste of Garlic. I think I first got onto his blogging concept when I learned that he had reviewed Living the Life in Saint Aignan, written by my longtime blogging buddy Ken Broadhurst.

If you're looking for France-related blogs, A Taste of Garlic is a gold mine. But read the review of La France Profonde first...

Merci Keith!

Amsterdam Two: Day One

(Near our hotel in Amsterdam)

This week has been so wild that I am only now getting back to writing about our trip to Amsterdam.

Excuse me if I go into a little micro-detail here, but I've decided to do these posts partly for my family. Rather than writing a long email rundown about our trip, I thought it might be fun to write here and include photos.

First, below you can see our hotel. I would highly recommend the Hotel Mercure Arthur Frommer provided you can get a deal where you pay about 25% of the normal room price, as we did:

(Our hotel, clearly NOT on a very busy street!)

The price my travel agent found for us for three nights (two rooms a night) with breakfast included seemed highly reasonable, but I didn't know just what a great deal we were getting.

Imagine my surprise when we arrived and I saw that the posted price for one double room for one night was practically 300 euros, and breakfast 16 euros per person!

My knees were going a little weak until I remembered that we had prepaid our hotel, and I had papers to show for it. Each room had cost us about 80 euros a night, breakfast included. I had never bought a prepaid hotel package and may well look into this possibility again. It sure allowed us to have nice accomodations for a reasonable price.

This hotel has the advantage of being on a very quiet, residential street, yet only about a ten-minute walk in any direction from many of Amsterdam's major attractions. It is located on Noorderstraat, just south of the Prinsengracht canal.

Although it had been a tad bit challenging to leave Aveyron at 3:00 am to catch our early flight out of Toulouse, we were in Amsterdam by noon and that meant having a full first day.

As I like to do when I first get to a city, we spent our first day just walking around and getting our bearings. We were surrounded by beautiful views:

(Photo courtesy of Thierry Jouanneteau, who deeply regretted not taking his mega-Pentax with him...)

I had been to Amsterdam just once before, in 1994, and didn't remember much; nor had I done much research before this trip. So I didn't really know what to expect in the restaurant department. Overall, we were pleased by the quality and reasonable prices of food and drink in the city.

I didn't do any food blogging as such, so no photos of our meals...but I will tell you where we had them. Our first evening's dinner was in the Castillo Tapas Bar and Steakhouse on the Reguliersdwarsstraat, which has plenty of reasonably-priced restaurants.

We all enjoyed being able to eat early, and on our first evening, we got back to the hotel just a little past 7pm! We all wanted to make up for the previous short night and to be able to hit the town running on the next day, Sunday, December 27th, which we figured would be pretty calm....

Not to be confused with...

...Le Dîner des Cons , incidentally playing, and already sold out, at the Rodez Amphithéâtre on Feb. 23.

What a week!

This week has been crazy. The weather has wreaked havoc on driving conditions, our bunny died, I have had several evening meetings. Basically, I'm feeling behind on everything.

And here I am doing NaBloPoMo PLUS I have signed up, rather insanely I must admit, for a 6-week EVO class called Images4Education that started Monday.

I don't even know what EVO stands for, but the class platform is on Ning -- I hardly understand what that is either, but I'm starting to navigate the Ning thing...

Image courtesy of Hallmark by the way. Click here if you want to buy a "What a Week sound button" -- whatever that is.

Wordless Wednesday 77

(Photo courtesy of Thierry Jouanneteau)

Good-bye Blacky

Until today, my daily life in France included a sweet little dwarf rabbit that roamed free in our house like a cat.

At the ripe bunny age of five and a half, Blacky slipped away from us today. I am philosophical about the loss of pets, but I will still miss the pitter-patter of his paws, his funny antics, and his general presence.

For the first time for almost 10 years, we are left with no pet. (We had a series of guinea pigs from 2000-2008, including one who lived for eight years!)

Anyway, tonight my husband cried. I cried. My youngest daughter cried.

Then a bit later, she said "Wouldn't you like to have a dog?"

Amsterdam 1

What Christmas present is suitable for teenage daughters who have, by their own admission, virtually everything?

A trip.

This year, rather than going overboard on packages (we still had a few), all four of us took off to the Dutch capital from December 26-29.

It was a crazy idea, in a way. Winter travel can be hell, and we had proof of that just a week and a half before our departure when a snowstorm shut down Paris airports and temporarily paralyzed the roads in our area. But I had checked out the weather report (read: plans were made at the last minute) and everything looked viable for the week between Christmas and New Year's. And it was.

Four full days, only three nights, but a rich experience for "the whole family" -- a family that had been separated for ten months during my youngest daughter's stay in the USA last year.

I have a lot to say about this trip, and am going to try to find the words this week to say it...

Weekend = gone

toothpastefordinner.com

Sorry, I don't even have time to make a blog of mine, much less a graph...

Gla-gla-gla

The world from my window today

The French expression for "Brrrrrr...." is "gla-gla-gla." It's an utterance I've never adopted -- would you want to say "gla-gla-gla" if you were freezing, as we are right now in Aveyron?

I was just wondering how other non-native French speakers feel about "gla-gla-gla." For me it somehow doesn't cut it.

Brrrrr...I do like snow, but there is something ominous about this cold snap and its fine flakes that are already starting to form drifts. As I write, half of our deck is totally visible; the other half has accumulated all of the snow. There's a chilly wind factor going on here -- a definite sign that this is not your typical peaceful snowfall.

Last night the snow stopped around midnight and it wasn't snowing in the morning, but the sky had that dull grey look to it that cold (that was a typo, but it is so Freudian, I'm keeping it!) me there was more to come. I was right. We will see what tomorrow brings!

Alerte orange

Will my village look like this tomorrow morning...

...or like this?

With an "alerte orange" announced for a whole lot of French départements, I'm expecting plenty of snowy blogs this weekend. According to Météo France, the orange part of France below needs to be "very vigilant" about snow and black ice for at least the next 24 hours:


That's an awful lot of France, despite the tiny picture that I don't feel like resizing.

Say no more, say no more! If I'm lucky, I can blog about the snow all weekend!

What was I thinking?

Six days into NaBloPoMo, and I almost forgot to post this evening.

What was I thinking when I signed up?

Being in the dead of winter, with my energy level at a corresponding low, this was no time to undertake unreasonably ambitious projects.

But I will hang in there, if only for her...and her...my partners in NaBloPoMo crime.

Wordless Wednesday 76

Sidebar statement

You know you're doing NaBloPoMo when you're reduced to writing a post about your blog sidebar. But I do have a few things to say on the matter, and that is what's going to get said this evening.

As part of whipping this blog back into shape, I have undertaken a major sidebar clean-up. Every blog that lay to the right of my posts got checked out, was deleted or kept, and sometimes recategorized. My main reason for deleting blogs was that they appeared to be inactive or, of course, shut down entirely. Some blogs fell into this category, but not as many as I thought.

Now I plan to start transferring links from my two defunct blogs, And So Forth and Cuisine Quotidienne. That may take some time, and in fact may well wait until February, when the NaBloPoMo marathon ends.

Oh yes, and the point of all this? It's that I'm never going back here again.

The lights come down in Rodez -- mais pas chez moi!

(Christmas lights on the Avenue Victor Hugo, Rodez)

This evening my eldest daughter announced to me, quite morosely, that the Christmas lights in Rodez were being taken down.

Mais bien sûr! The French are pretty quick about removing their holiday decorations, although perhaps not as swift as Americans or the British who, from what I've been reading, seem to feel that "everything must go" no later than January the 2nd.

The situation is different in our house. We have made a conscious decision to keep the Christmas tree and other holiday decorations up until...late January.

Of course this means having an artificial tree -- something that, as a Pacific Northwesterner, I was originally loath to do. But the desire to keep Christmas cheer in our home after la rentrée de janvier won out a few years back.

Since the whole family loves Christmas lighting, I think we were right in our choice. This year, I was struck by all the Facebook updates and tweets from friends who were sad, even "depressed," about taking down their Christmas decorations.

At least we have found our solution to that problem. By the time we finally pack ours away, we are actually pretty sick of them!

A different vision of La France Profonde

(Photo courtesy of Nick Terrett)

For years, I have subscribed to a Google alert, in English, for the term France Profonde. Often references have popped up that I have meant to blog about, but time goes by and I don't get to them.

But when I read here that the Wellesley, Massachusetts library was hosting a photo exhibit called La France Profonde, I decided I would definitely do a post. I even contacted the exhibitor, Nick Terrett, who sent me a few photos and links to his work.

Nick focuses on the Limousin region, which includes the departments of Corrèze, Creuse and the Haute Vienne. I know Corrèze well, and it has always seemed a little less profonde to me, France-wise, than Aveyron.

But Creuse is likely a better example of "deep France" than my area. Ranked 99th out of 100 in department population -- only Lozère, which neighbors Aveyron, has fewer residents -- it is indeed a pretty isolated place, and about as profonde as France gets:

(Photo courtesy of Nick Terrett)

Actually, the above shot appears to be in Corrèze, but you get the idea!

The article about Nick's exhibit states that "No region more clearly exemplifies La France Profonde than the Limousin.... Perhaps so, perhaps not. However, my purpose here is not to try to establish just where is the deepest, darkest corner of France, but simply to share Nick's photos and give his exhibit a little publicity.

Nick's photos of La France Profonde will be on display at the Wellesley Free Library, 530 Washington Street, Wellesley (MA) from Monday January 4th 2010 until Sunday January 31st 2010 during normal library hours.

Since you may not be making the trip, you can of course view Nick's photo album entitled La France Profonde online.

Four Years of La France Profonde

With all of the activity of Christmas and our trip to Amsterdam squeezed in between Christmas and New Year's, I didn't even think of taking the time to recognize a milestone: the 4th anniversary of the creation of La France Profonde.

Those were heady times. Sure, some of the contacts I made in that first year had already been blogging for a while. I remember being so impressed that SHE had been showering the blogosphere with her genius since 2004 (!) But many of you, I think, had started around the same time or were to start during 2006.

My initial objective for this blog was simply to write about Aveyron. I imagined a near-journalistic, factual approach to the subject, and at one time even started doing some historical research about the area. I saw blogging as a ""publish and be read" activity, and didn't even know that comments would be left, contacts would be made, and friendships would be built as a result of this space.

Along the line, I created two other blogs, Cuisine Quotidienne and And So Forth. The former enjoyed mild success, but I have lost my cooking drive for the moment, and think if I do get it back, I will post about cooking here.

If truth be told, time for my two other blogs likely got funneled into Facebook and Twitter, which have been rich additions to my online life.

Over the past few months, I have lacked inspiration for keeping up even this blog, but have decided it is an important part of my life -- thus the injection of some NaBloPoMo mojo for January 2010!

And yes, expect a few ramblings about blogging and the future direction of La France Profonde during my marathon of 31 posts...any suggestions are welcome!

The traditional Happy New Year post

First, let me wish you (any readers I have left) a grand 2010, full of good things in whatever size packages they come in!

Second, without making any huge proclamations about blogging New Year's Resolutions, I have taken the plunge of participating, for the second time, in NaBloPoMo (National Blog Posting Month.) Traditionally, NaBloPoMo is in November, but it is possible to sign up for any month.

What does one sign up for exactly? The commitment to posting once a day for the entire month.

Perhaps it was in the stars, but one of my best blogging buddies, who has also been a bit lacking in the blogging inspiration department, has signed up too.

Wish us luck!

Wordless Wednesday 75

Happy Holidays to one and all

Despite a desire to get back into the swing of blogging, Christmas activities are calling.

I'm just leaving this short post to wish you all a wonderful holiday season!

A Missed Opportunity

This salmon being smoked at the Hanover Christmas market reminded me of my Pacific Northwest Heritage -- and she felt the same way.

Christina, of Mausi, and I have a lot in common. We're both from the PNW, she from Vancouver, B.C. and me from Olympia, WA. We've both lived in Europe, married to Europeans, since 1990. And we're both involved in ESL teaching.

I've followed her blog off and on, and she mine. But when I went to Hanover in early December for a conference followed by a weekend "just for me," I neglected to write anything about it on this blog. And after a very short post about the Hanover trip, I got this comment from Christina:

As in Hanover, Germany?? Dang, we could have had coffee!

And the worst thing is, we really could have, because I had all Saturday to myself!

Regrets, regrets...but maybe a message to myself to get back into the blogosphere somehow.

In the meantime, I'll refer you to this wonderful post by Christina about the Hanover Christmas market, or Weihnachtsmarkt, and the general festive atmosphere in Germany at this time of year...because who knows if I'll have time to do a big post about my trip!

I am, however, going to make an effort to get back to blogging on FP. I miss it and I miss you all.

A timid return for a Word-light Wednesday (74)

Cool lights, big city. Hanover charmed me and I want to go back...

The walls come tumbling down

(Flickr image courtesy of Courosa)

My mind is elsewhere these days. Any readers of my blog (formerly blogs) have certainly noticed a slowdown, and may be wondering if it will all come to a screeching halt soon. I used to write three blogs: one is on hold indefinitely, another has been put to pasture for good, and this one is, well, limping along.

If I used to comment on your blogs, well, that isn't happening so much anymore either. Yet I'm online at least as much as I used to be -- it's just that my Internet time is increasingly being spent on activities related to teaching.

Teaching. That's what I've always done for a living, by the way. And it's something that has been carefully kept out of my blogging life. You have only to look at my Blogger profile: "I've been living, working, cooking and raising a family in France for 19 years."

I've covered the "living" part on this blog for nearly 4 years, with a little bit about my family thrown in now and then. I covered the cooking part for almost as long on Cuisine Quotidienne.

But working? I made the conscious decision to keep that out of blogging.

I think that is going to change soon. (Fear not -- if I start a teaching blog, it will be on a different site!)

Of course I would never write one of those "this is what's going on at my job" blogs, the type that gets one fired. But since getting involved in Twitter, I have plunged into the world of teaching philosophy, methods for teaching English as a foreign language, and have discovered fabulous websites and blogs by teachers who are not counting their work hours.

I want to be part of all that -- again. I realize that while teaching here in France, I have built very French-style walls around my work life and home life. And it's been for the best of all possible causes: being available for my daughters. But they are increasingly doing their own thing, and with that void, my passion for teaching has returned big-time.

It was never really lost, it was just left at work when I went out the door in the evening.

Now it's with me all the time, the way it used to be in my pre-family days when I was teaching in an American high school.

My mind is elsewere these days -- and it feels great.

Wordless Wednesday 73

Betty and Loulou's adventures, Part 3

A new, cozy and colorful salon de thé called "La Toile Cirée"

(2014 Post-script: La Toile Cirée is now closed)

Until the day before she came, I was ever so excited about Loulou's visit to Rodez, planned for the 10th and 11th of November.

Then Rodez went weather-crazy, as it is known to do.

I had to go into town on Monday the 9th: the wind was whipping, it was pouring sheets of rain, and it was just oh-so-barely over freezing. I also found out that Chez Marie, the cheese merchant/restaurant that Loulou really wanted to try out, was going to be closed for those two days.

"This is a terrible idea," I started to think. "She's going to hate Rodez" -- who doesn't when the weather gets so dreadful? "She's going to freeze to death."

Well, she did freeze, although not to death, but my other dire predictions did not come true.

The weather was downright chilly, true, but we were able to warm up over hot chocolate at a new salon de thé that I had never been to. And Loulou liked Rodez, calling it "sophisticated" (!) and well kept-up.

(Shadows in the Rodez cathedral; photo courtesy of Loulou)

Rodez does have its dark, gloomy side, as we discovered in the shadows of Notre Dame de Rodez. And I learned that it is mossy. Being from the Pacific Northwest, I had never noticed the moss, but Loulou pointed it out to me. Yep, it's there.

She even claims that cattle she had seen as she was driving up had moss growing on them, but my husband and I are still waiting for photographic proof on that one!

Speaking of photos, I suffered two camera malfunctions, one on each day, so I don't have much to show for her visit -- but take a look at her blog for a lovely shot of Le Trou de Bozouls, which is ten minutes from where we live.

Loulou, thanks for braving the elements and making the your way to Aveyron!

Just another Wordless Wednesday (72)

Wordless Wednesday 71

(Photo courtesy of DAPHNE Jouanneteau)

Use of a Flickr photo for online guide -- what do you think?

My "selected" photo of Fort Worden State Park

The funny thing is, I'm not that crazy about this photo anyway: I certainly could have done without all of the cars in the foreground!

But nevertheless, this photo somehow got noticed by an online map/guide system called Schmap. And a few weeks ago, I got an email notification that one of my Flickr photos had been chosen as a finalist for inclusion in "the newly released ninth edition of our Schmap Seattle Guide."

The email clearly asked for my permission to eventually use the photo in the guide; the terms were clearly explained. Without much thought, and fully knowing that Schmap was a professional venture, I answered positively.

Well, today I found out that my photo "has been selected for inclusion" in the guide, and it is visible here online, and I can even see here what it looks like on Schmap's iPhone version.

And now I must admit I feel a little funny about the whole thing.

Don't get me wrong: Schmap was totally up-front and did everything right. Despite the slightly inflated language, they never presented their venture as some sort of veiled contest; everything was explicitly laid out in due form, and I did indeed give them permission to use my photo.

But should I have?

The question is not "my photo" as such. My thought is not that "maybe they should have paid me for it" -- I'm far from a professional photographer. But I am wondering if maybe they should have paid someone else for it -- or for something better.

What do you think? With so many photos floating around on Flickr, is this just the wave of the future and no big deal? Or by surrendering my rights to this modest photo, did I somehow contribute to undermining the work of professional photographers?

General update, sans photo

I don't have much inspiration for a photo-related post this weekend, so I thought I would just do a quick update on some of my news.

1. My globe-trotting daughter got in, at the last minute, on a one-week school exchange trip to Ireland. French schools are big on orgnizing trips to other European countries, and my girls have taken a total of five so far: Scotland, England, Ireland, Spain and Germany. She had a great time but today is homework catch-up day, which is the downside of going on a trip where the whole class is not involved.

2. I was in Paris for work on Tuesday and Wednesday and since I had the rare occasion to spend the night, I took the chance to finally meet up with Leesa from News from France! We were definitely not in blogging mode as we took no pictures of food or each other -- I didn't even have my camera with me as it meant extra weight to drag around in Paris. But we had a great evening together and I thank Leesa and Alex for their hospitality.

3. I may be blogging here less, but I am as active as ever online. Spurred on by some summer reading, I am doing a lot more work on my English classes and discovering all sorts of new materials and even a whole new way to teach that I am experimenting with, at least partially.

4. This year I finally signed up as a student at the Rodez Ecole de Musique, and I am taking harpsichord lessons. It is a fun new challenge but is also keeping me busy, busy, busy.

5. Finally, I don't want to go into any medical detail on this, but my dear father has been very ill and hospitalized and/or in acute care since about the beginning of September -- shortly after we left the USA. We have hopes he can come home in a few weeks. The general upshot is progress, but very slow progress. Please give him a thought.

So you can see, readers, that life is very full at the moment. I know I haven't been faithfully commenting on a lot of your blogs, but I very much appreciate those of you who take the time to comment here.

Bon dimanche à tous!

A new angle on Rodez

Rodez se réveille

Even though I drove my eldest daughter to her high school on the outskirts of Rodez every morning for two years, and I've driven myself to my job in Rodez's new business district for many more, I've never really gotten a feel for downtown Rodez in the early morning.

I love how the few open shops stand out as the sun rises

Now that my eldest daughter has an apartment in the hyper-centre, and my youngest goes to a high school that is also right in town, I'm led at times to come into town quite early, around 7:15 or so.

It's a different Rodez, one with many free parking spaces, subtile shades of light -- and residents! Living outside of town, I usually thought of downtown more as a place to shop and not so much a place to live.

Sure, I saw that above every shop were apartments, but the notion of people living up there was abstract -- after all, when I was in town these town center inhabitants always mixed in with the crowd.

Now I see them scurrying about: employees rushing to catch the shuttle bus to go to work in Bourran, where I work, and schoolkids hulking their huge backpacks through the pedestrian district. On Mondays and Fridays, when the internes (boarders) arrive and leave, a number of students are also dragging suitcases.

Looking up from where I park on early-morning apartment runs

This year is a different life, and Rodez has become a different world to me.

Cooking Blues

Mini fondants au chocolat cooked in my blue ramequins

No, this is not another half-whine, half-mourn about how sick of cooking I am. This is actually a response to a tag. Well, let's say a tag I invited myself into because I've been such a lame blogger that the tagger, my dear friend Loulou thought of tagging me but figured I'd be too uninspired to carry through!

Now there's a challenge that would revive any blogger...

The original tag from Croque-Camille was "find seven blue objects in your house and do a little show and tell." Loulou took this one step beyond in her lovely post and showed all sorts of blues in and around her village.

If I lived where she does, I might do that too. But here in Aveyron, things are a little greyer, or pinker, or just plain colorless. However, blue is my favorite color and I figured I could find seven objects just from my kitchen...and revive some food photos at the same time.

My, there are four blue objects in this photo alone:

1. A mug from who knows where, containing a type of individually-served Mexican rice salad from the days when I was doing imaginative cooking
2. A plate from a set that my husband picked up at the local Leclerc supermarket
3. A napkin that goes with a tablecloth set I bought in Avignon -- these are generally reserved for company, so maybe I brought them out to offset:
4. The unmatched utensils, including a blue teaspoon that goes back many years!
   

I've got at least two blue things here, maybe even three if you count that my shirt as reflected in my blue stove looks blue. I picked up the colander at a supermarket too -- one can find a lot of nice kitchen objects in French hypermarchés.

I could go on and on, as about half of the things in my kitchen are blue.

What about you? Where do you have "the blues?" Feel free to play...

Adieu, Cuisine Quotidienne

R.I.P.

There are two activities I am really sick of right now: cooking and laundry.

Now I never ran a blog about laundry, so that poses no online-life issues. But I did write a cooking blog for nearly four years -- and over the summer, I realized I just had to let it go.

My terse, virtually commentless farewell post on the site itself bears witness to how out of steam I am on the subject. But what I didn't say there is that the problem isn't really blogging -- although I am going through a dry spot there too -- the problem is cooking.

I will have been living in France for twenty years come next April, and as another expat friend with a similar background said to me a few months back: "Let's face it -- we've done one heck of a lot of cooking."

I've mastered the basics of French cuisine; I've thrown dinner parties that took me a day of planning and shopping followed by another day of cooking; I've prepared meal plans and shopping lists to correspond to particular recipes; I've worried too much about what my husband and family would all like to have on their plates.

Been there and done that now.

I don't know about my friend, but cooking-wise, I'm burnt out.

Wordless Wednesday 70

All I want is a room with a view

(Not the best light, but I couldn't wait to post this picture...)

And now we have one. Okay, my eldest daughter has one -- and more than a room. She is gradually moving into a darling, old, one-bedroom apartment right in the center of Rodez.

A year ago, we weren't expecting her to end up in Rodez for university. But various factors led to that decision, and we all couldn't be more pleased. Eldest daughter is thrilled to be going to a small university, because she has heard plenty of horror stories about Toulouse Le Mirail, which is the closest university besides Rodez that offered her chosen major.

The apartment is a bonus, in a way, but when faced with buying third car, having her do a 34 km commute every day, and her having nowhere to go during her big breaks in her schedule, the downtown living quarters appeared as an obvious choice. Besides, maybe it's my American background, but I like the idea of students gaining some independence.

My youngest daughter, back from the USA, has of course bought into the concept heart and soul. Her high school is less than a five-minute walk from the place, so she will stay there a few nights a week when transport, or the notoriously late French school days, pose a problem for us.

(Downtown Rodez abounds in funky, hidden courtyards. We get to look out on this one.)

And another great thing: Mom has unlimited access to the place! So now I finally get to use a little pied-à-terre in town. I won't be there constantly or anything, but at times it is going to be very practical.

A new chapter is opening up in our lives, and it's coming at a good time. I feel like I need a little change of routine -- and it's so fun to be a part of Rodez's inner sanctums.

Wordless Wednesday 69

Wordless Wednesday 68