Les Exposés Finnissent

Dear Friends,

Friday was a red-letter day.  Jane gave her exposé, and it was great.  She talked about the party for the 50^th wedding anniversary of her sister, but included a lot of information about her family. The focus was the fact that for important (and sometimes not so important occasions) a new song is written using a familiar tune.  The other students were fascinated with the idea that Jane made up a song (with much help from another sister) just for the party and that her brother had written many songs for occasions and that many of them are now archived.  After our two exposés, I think that they believe that we have the most musical family in the world.  It was great to get it done since now she does not have to worry about it over the weekend.

We would have posted this good news last night but the internet was down.  It started raining on Thursday night and has been raining non-stop since, and when I say non-stop, I mean literally non-stop.  The driest possible is damp.  The rain caused a rock slide closing the road for awhile on Friday morning and I am quite sure that it is impacting the internet.  In fact the internet was out all of last night and has stopped and started a few times since we got back to our flat from an excursion (to be described below) about 1.5 hours ago.  As I write this post, there is no internet, but I have faith that it will return.

While Jane’s exposé is the most important thing, we have had several other experiences that we should mention.  As we indicated in the last post, the school arranged a dinner at a local restaurant for the advanced students and the Intermediate 4s (our group) for Thursday night.  Most of the students went.  It was really fun.  It was a very nice restaurant.  We sat with some advanced students and some Intermediate 4s.  It was a complete Franglais night.  

The group of students is very diverse in many ways - age, nationality and ethnicity.  But the school is also self-selecting so all want to be at the school to learn another language and hence about another culture.  I am not sure there is a country in the world that has not been visited by at least one of the students.  We are, of course, also a very privileged group of people.  I was very touched by one young man whose family was from India but who was born and raised in Australia.  He comes from a wealthy family and is an only child.  He is brilliant, very funny and very nice.  He described his career path.  It leads to working to help the poor in India.  He has had many incredible opportunities and has taken full advantage of them, and the poor of India will benefit.

Unfortunately the dinner went on until almost midnight.  We walked up the hill from the sea to our flat in the rain and did not get to bed until 12:30.  The students, including us, were not at their best for the first few of hours in the morning.  But by the time of our practical french lesson that comes after lunch, everybody seemed fine which was good because the lesson was about the cheeses of France.  There are about 600 types of cheeses in France but only 7 families of cheese.  Of course when you are in France you cannot have a lesson about cheeses without tasting them and you cannot properly taste cheeses without having bread and wine.  So it was a very fun and interesting session and great preparation for Jane's exposé which immediately followed it.

Today the school arranged an excursion to visit St. Paul de Vence, Vence and Tourrettes sur Loup.  We started at the Maeght Foundation museum in St. Paul de Vence.  We love it and have visited it several times before but we never tire of it.  It was of course raining today when we visited and very foggy.  Since many of the objets d’arts are outside, the fog gave them all (even the familiar ones) a wonderfully new feeling.  They had a new fountain with about 7 green men in it.  We loved it.  They have water coming out of every possible orifice and then some.  Here is a photo.

We did not particularly like the special exhibit that they had, but we love the permanent collection and all things Miro of which there are always many.

We then had time to walk around the medieval town of St. Paul de Vence.  It has tons of touristy shops but is still very beautiful.  We had lunch at the same restaurant we had lunch at a few years ago when we visited.  It was a great lunch.

We then visited the Matisse Chapel.  We have been there several times before, but you cannot help but being impressed and touched by its beauty.  The last stop on the excursion was another medieval town, Tourrette sur loup.  It is even more beautiful than St. Paul de Vence and far less touristy. 

Today was also sort of a break through.  One of the people at our table at lunch is from Switzerland, his first language is German, and he is much better in French than in English.  Consequently we spoke almost exclusively in French, and we seemed to be able to have a very fun and interesting discussion.  Normally by the time we have lunch at school my brain is so fried that I need the time to just zone out but today both of us felt good about our conversation.  We even continued to speak in French after lunch and on the bus ride home.  That was in part because the instructor who was with us sat near us.

Tomorrow, we are going to organize our class notes, do our homework and try to absorb what we have learned.  Since it is suppose to rain all day tomorrow as well, we will not be missing an opportunity to go on an adventure walk. 

More later,
Jane and the Unabashed Liberal