MY FRENCH ADVENTURE, CH.2

We Arrived Safely in France

But my head was still in the States

France was as charming, but I had other things on my mind (all photos by author)

What’s the name of those hardware stores like Home Depot?” Joe asked as we drove through the busy outskirts of Lyon on our way south to what he kept referring to as ‘your new home.’

“Mr. Bricolage,” I replied. “We just passed one.”

“Why didn’t you say something? You could have looked for a printer there.”

I sighed. “Joe, they won’t have printers.” Since I’d never been inside a French hardware store, I had no idea whether that was true, but it seemed unlikely. And I wasn’t in the mood to find out. No one would speak English and jet lag wouldn’t improve my almost non-existent French.

Years earlier we’d seen the big orange Bricolage sign as we raced through France to Switzerland during one of those If It’s Tuesday It Must Be Belgium vacations. Back then, I’d been irritated with Joe for his thing about cramming as many countries as possible into ten days.

Now I was irritated with him for adding three hours to our trip south. He wanted to look up a French student he’d once taught even though they’d lost touch years ago and he was a bit vague about the address.