September 5-Notre premier jour

None of us slept well last night. The six hour time difference, combined with no real sleep on the plane the night before, has really gotten our time clocks in a tither! We’re each up at odd hours (despite Simply Sleep) and Sarah has developed a little night cough which usually starts up after 1am. The walls in our house are paper thin so she, and we, are up as soon as it starts. Hope she is not getting sick….

But here we are, in our petite maison franciase! Have to pinch ourselves......it's a beautiful warm blue sky day and we are ready for our first adventure. After a cup of coffee and a bit of juice, the three of us left in our Passat station wagon to navigate our way to the hypermarche/store called Carrefour. The simplest way to describe Carrefour is something like a cross between Harrods and a super Wal-Mart. What a combo!! This place sells nearly everything you could ever want/need. One hitch for we foreigners though is if you can’t find it on your own, you must know what an item you’re looking for is called in French first in order to ask for help! Trying to ask for things like men’s deodorant, alarm clocks, clothes hangers (you would have loved watching me try to describe these items) is a bit beyond my level right now!

We really went to Carrefour as it was suggested by Sarah’s school, IBS, as THE place to go to get all her back to school or “rentrer’ supplies. We had an extremely long list of things to get which, even with the English definitions, were mostly foreign to us…A4 paper? Never heard of it! Fortunately for us, Nick found a non-English speaking but extremely helpful woman store manager. By combining my French, Nick’s hand motions and Sarah’s list, she managed to pull all the items from the shelves in record time. There was a sea of other families getting their supplies and I think we completed our search in record time thanks to her. This would be a good time to mention that everyone here so far has been very kind and helpful to us. It does seem essential that one of us speaks some French and as that is me, I’ll say that the people have been very patient and appreciative of my efforts to speak their language and also forgiving of my mistakes. There are those who also speak some English so we are getting by nicely.

In addition to school supplies, Carrefour also has an amazing food emporium. They sell excellent fresh and gourmet foods-including lovely produce, fresh fish and shellfish, a zillion different kinds of cheese, meats, pates and Provencal specialties and a large wine department. We enjoyed just LOOKING at everything. Lots of things we don’t have in the states and then things we have but packaged, shaped, sized and of course spelled differently. We had fun choosing many different French wines to sample, especially the roses. At home roses are generally to be avoided, but French roses as we learned when we were in Provence 5 years ago, are a completely different kettle of fish! These wines, chilled and rosy colored are quite nice, very drinkable and are perfect in this warm climate. We even found a Cuvee Shirley to try!

After about two hours, we were armed with a car full of food and school supplies and headed home. We made the 10 minute return trip without getting lost. We put everything put away and were all hot and ready for a plunge in the little pool. We swam, paddled about really, relaxed by the pool for a while and then we prepared our dinner. the small kitchen is very simply outfitted. It has an electric, ancient stove top, oven with 20 page manual in french, a microwave, a dishwasher, whose instructions say its cycle lasts 2-3 hours! (Don’t think we’ll use that much), a coffee maker and a toaster. Not a lot of gourmet cooking happening here. Unfortunately, due to the heavy risk of fire at this time of the year, we can’t grill outside until October 1st. Tant pis! For our first meal, we had a Carrefour roasted chicken(poulet roti), a simple mixed salad of the freshest tomatoes and lettuces dressed with fruity local olive oil and a fresh baguette. Everything was yummy! Also, the Cote de Provence Rose went down nicely as well as some chocolate cookies Sarah picked out for our dessert!
The sun was still up near 8 o’clock and it was still in the low 80’s outdoors. Merveilleux premier jour!