Quick Study

The last regular day of class is over, all that's left is exams.  This semester went by faster than the others, despite our somewhat ornery and plodding grammar professor.  Maybe it was the perpetual visa uncertainty, or maybe it was the actual acceleration of our thoughts and words -- the buffering rate of our brains now allows for more free-flowing information, life at full speed.

My ability to do things in French now includes:

-reviewing inheritance laws with the notary 

-requesting medical co-pay reimbursements 

-understanding most of a movie without subtitles

-reliably saying numbers using their ridiculous formulas like "60 + 17" for 77, or "four score and twelve" for 92

Things that continue to stymie me:

-when someone asks where I'm from => somehow always phrased in a way I don't expect 

-the various ways to refer to "these" and "those" => object? person? masculine? feminine? singular? plural? relatively nearby or far away?  There's a different word for every possibility!

-the pettiness of bureaucracy => part of a thick dossier of documents, we filled out three separate forms all with the same information in slightly varied order, just to identify witnesses for our wedding in July 

leaving the university for the last evening

the last tiny butternut was still hanging on at the beginning of November 

Post-Hiking Hammam

One of my most wistful travel regrets is not having time to soak at the old Turkish baths in Budapest.  Just from the exterior architecture it's clear that the sublime lies within.  A few years later in Istanbul, I took my first plunge.  Kindly women mimed to get naked, led me around by the hand to various steamy rooms and hot pools, scrubbed me as though they wanted to reach bone, and likewise massaged with the strength of bodybuilders.  It was wonderful.

A hammam is not just a spa: the communal aspect of the baths, the grand slabs of marble and geometric tiling simultaneously timeless and evocative of the distant past, the sense of being cloistered from the rest of the world -- it's special.  Happily, there is such a place not far away, at the Mosquée de Paris, the oldest mosque in France.  And one of my best friends lives just down the street.

We spent the morning catching up (in hushed tones, to preserve the calm), increasingly sedated by the eucalyptus vapor wafting by, wrapped in towels with sugary mint tea, in the half-light filtered through stained glass windows, beside a little burbling fountain.  In case you're not perfectly sated after all that, you can get some baklava at the counter on the way out.

No photos inside the hammam, but the week before was spent walking in the foothills of the Luberon, north of Marseille (mostly in the rain).  This is part of a tiny village in a gorge that has been transformed into a restaurant and small hotel.

Walking through quaint villages, talking about Provençal dungeons and poetry, looking forward to changing out of wet socks.

You can almost see the Marquis de Sade's house from here!

A cozy library with left behind books where I scored a mildewed copy of Happy Potter in French