Visiting in Provence

I'm staying in a little village that's about twenty minutes from Avignon. It's where my friend Janine lives with her family. The weather is quite warm, although it does cool off significantly in the evening. The most interesting architecture in the town is the old city gate, which is crowned with a clock and a wrought iron campanile that's from the 19th century.

I had quite a wild adventure getting to the train this morning. For the first time in all of my time in Paris, my Metro pass stopped working. It appears that somehow it has become demagnitized or something. The attendant could not make it work. I was completely thrown off by it. I was already running late. I'd thought I would get a taxi, but had trouble making that happen... the limits of my ability in French—it was an automated system. So I gave up on the taxi and took the Metro, which wasn't that difficult, except that once my card didn't work, I boarded the wrong Metro... I was rattled, made one mistake after another. Fortunately, in spite of all the mix-up, I made my train and three hours later I arrived in Avignon.

It's a different world from my Paris apartment. Janine (whose British) and her French husband, Hervé, and their two children, Juliette and Loïc live in an old French farmhouse with two cats, Puss Puss and Teddy. Teddy, who's not quite a year old, is always in trouble.

Loïc, who is six, helped me read a simple children's story in French. He's just learning to read and he was sounding the words out and his accent, of course, is French, his pronunciation of the words, crisp and clear. He was helping me say the words, correcting me when I got it wrong, correcting my pronunciation. I'm pretty sure his parents found the whole thing quite comical. Janine said the kids play school a lot, but Juliette, being the older of the two is always the teacher... so now Loïc was getting to play the teacher. It was my favorite of all French lessons and, in fact, I learned a lot from him.

Juliet is nine. She made me several beautiful orgami flowers, very cleverly folded to look like tulips. She had just learned this in school. She also sang The Little Drummer Boy—in English—which she's also learning at school. Janine made a light dinner, a wonderful tasting carrot salad with feta cheese, olives, onion and olive oil. And we ate it with a loaf of excellent country bread. A simple meal, my French Thanksgiving. Absolutely charming; I could not have asked for more. A wonderful day.

And speaking of food, earlier, Janine and I stopped at a chocolate shop—the first such shop I've been in since coming to France. We arrived during the lunch break, when all the shops are closed, so we went around to the back door. The owners of the chocolate shop are friends of Janine's and so they let us in and I got to watch them behind the scenes making chocolate. I also got to try a couple samples...

Tomorrow we're going to Arles, a town about an hour south of here. It's Vincent van Gogh country at the mouth of the Rhone. An old Roman town famous for its bull fighting traditions, its Roman Amphitheatre, and as the home of van Gogh. Apparently Paul Gauguin spent a lot of time in Arles as well, and all the mischief between those men passed here. I don't know the story, but I did read not long before coming to France, that new research suggests that it was Gauguin who cut off van Gogh's ear, not van Gogh.

"… two German art historians, who have spent 10 years reviewing the police investigations, witness accounts and the artists' letters, argue that Gauguin, a fencing ace, most likely sliced off the ear with his sword during a fight, and the two artists agreed to hush up the truth."

Who knows what tomorrow will bring.