*the swell
As part of continuing learning French, I'm reading an instructional book about surfing. It's aimed at adolescents, so not overly academic or literary, and I actually enjoy the experience as I can understand without having to look up words. Jean-François and I also try to speak French together most of the time, and so my "news" of the day quickly reinforces a rather nautically-themed vocabulary.
I'm also learning, somewhat more reluctantly, auto insurance and tax domicile-related terminology, as we just bought a new (used) car. I shouldn't be surprised at this point, but it turns out there's nearly as much paperwork for me here as for my visa. Maybe France produced so many prominent Existentialists because its floridly absurd bureaucracy scars the populace with its incomprehensibility...
In other news, our garden is doing its best despite the soil being 100% sand. We pulled out the fifty of so shallots, which are delicious but quite small, like garlic cloves. Five beets, the size of clementines, were also tasty. What were labeled as zucchini appear to be cucumber, but that's fine either way. The pumpkin blossoms look great but don't seem interested in becoming pumpkins. This fall we'll add a ton of compost and manure, and really be ready to grow.
