zeee bread & butter

Bonjour là! Since it has, infact, been lightyears since I last posted I am actually so excited to get to share some recent adventures!!! I am going to post random pictures so y'all can see and then most likely come back to explain all the different little adventures they are from, another time!

                                       


Right now I am sitting in my comfy, quite spacious thing of a room, in a little, quiet town outside Lyon, France.  My large window is open, the panes stretched wide, like a little baby waiting to give a big hug. The light air of the Beaujolais country is wafting in, out, about and around me as birds sing their little melodies. I can hear the leaves of surrounding trees, l'arbres, ruffle quitely, calmly waiting for the weather to cool. The savory, satisfying taste of lunch is still on the tip of my tongue.

ahhhh la France. Encore..oui, c'est vrais! Yepp, it's true! I am back in France again, this time for study abroad. This little biddie just couldn't get enough the first time and had to come back for seconds ;)

Anyways, like I mentioned, I am in Lyon, France in the South-Eastern region de la France. (On a minor tangent, I never know if you capitalize directional words such as North, West, South, East, South-East ...but well, I think they look quite nice like that...alas they will stay capitalized.) (Goodness gracious, I can't even understand grammer in English...good thing I have La Grammaire Française every Tuesday at 14h00-15h30... yeah, GREAT thing.)

Anyways, today I have a day off from my little studies. But today I am writing to you, chèr ami! 

Usually, each fresh little morning, I pull myself out of bed and into my salle de bain to wash my sleepie face off and get me a fresh one. After I get dressed and try to make myself look somewhat acceptable i.e. as chic as all the other young ladies in this country, I go downstairs to the biddie wooden table in the kitchen. I put three scoops of dark, fragrant coffee grinds into the filter and cut myself of a iece of baguette while the thick Malongo coffee brews, bubbles and makes other assorted strange noises. I sincerely hope those sounds are normal, by the way. I may have already broken this family's microwave (oh, what a morning that was) and I do not need to add anything else to my petit track record. But, alas, back to baguettes and black coffee.

  


If you think baguettes, butter, cheese, wine, and striped shirts are a complete cliché of the french culture, than you are right. The way it is portrayed in North American culture, at least, is very silly and inaccurate! The family does not wear berets whilst pracing around on cobblestone streets eating croissants. However! There is a bit of truth to some clichés. Par example...every morning there is fresh bread sitting pretty in its little paper slip, on the kitchen table. There does indeed sit a little tray of creamy, pale, (delectable) butter right next to that long, crunchy-on-the-outside, airy-soft-on-the-inside baguette, every morning. Rosé, or sometimes red wine, is often casually served alongside Ratatouille for dinner. Cheese or yogurt always follow the main dinner course. And ladies, french women do wear stripes. Lots of stripes.

There are lot's of beautiful things about France, and one of them is that there still remains a sense of simplicity about things. Bread is fresh and good, plain and simple. Butter is creamy, delicious and used in small amounts. Laundry is dried on little racks outside instead of in a machine. Legs are used to walk to other places, dinner is in a room without a TV and conversation about anything and everything accompanies eachmeal, and here at least, there is always a bit of controversy over qui a raison, who is right. This little biddie can't say she loves everything about the french culture...there are somethings that I think I will always be more accustomed to and comfortable doing how I have been raised to do them. And it is not easy living life in a different language! Slowly but steadily I will become fluent, I keep telling myself. SLOWLY, but steadily.

With the support, laughs, love, and understanding of other friends, people, communtiy, students, I am inspired to pray and trust that God will bring me where I need to be going. At all times. Getting to a place of fluency is definitely one place I want to go, but also just getting off at the right bus stop would be nice. hehe.  

so yeah, I'm thinking my little (or not so little) feet are looking swollen in this picture. I promise I have not been eating too too many baguettes or bittie pieces of dark chocolate. I think they are a bit plump on account of walking heheh. Then again, I did just eat 3 (possibly 4) french butter cookies. hehehe little bittie better get to some walkin' again.


à plus mes amis!