Member-only story
LIVING ABROAD
My First Six Months In France
Captured in journal entries & letters home
Trying to sort through old e-mails today, I came across some I’d written when I first arrived in France, now close to eleven years ago. I suppose you can hardly expect to go through life in a state of wide-eyed wonder — at least not every day — but I was struck by the tone of those early jottings. Things that today would be scarcely worth noting, even irritating, were adventures and discoveries to be remarked upon.
It’s heating up here, even inside the apartment. Temperatures are supposed to be in the 90’s this week with thunderstorms. The heat takes a long while to penetrate the thick stone walls, but once it does, it heats up the narrow street outside. You can feel the temperature drop as you leave the village and head out into the vineyards.
Women sweep the street outside their doors with whisk brooms, throw pails of water across the fronts of their houses. After midday, all the shutters are closed until later in the evening. I did discover an interesting way to keep flies from coming through the open windows. You fill a plastic baggy with water, drop in a few pennies and hang it on the door. Amazing, but it’s keeping the flies out. Julie said she’d seen it in Haiti.
