BACK TO SCHOOL

The first day of school has always been stressful, hasn't it?  It doesn't get mush easier as you age.  It just happens that I'm the only student this week---which is good because I will have one on one instruction, but bad because there will be no one else to give me a break from being always on.

My instructor today was an excellent teacher named Giovanni---yes, an Italian teaching me French, who was born in London so he's British, who has spent enough time in Ireland to also be an Irish national and who now lives in France.  And he has an immense knowledge of language not just to speak it but to understand the "why" of the words and the construction.  For example, there is a little accent mark in
French, called a circumflex, which has never seemed to me to have any purpose at all.  It is only used above "o's", has no impact on pronunciation and just seemed to sit there meaninglessly.  But Giovanni explained it all.  Every time you see an "o circumflex", you know there was once an "s" that followed that letter, but is no longer there.  For example, the french word hopital (imagine the little house top circumflex above the o) means hospital, and was spelled that way at one time.  This sorta makes me a linguistic nerd, I guess, but I think that is tres cool.

Normally the students all go to the home of the school  director, Susan Bento, for lunch, but with only me as the student body, Susan and I had a wonderful lunch at the local Hotel (used to be spelled hostel) Saint Hubert---greens with a perfect viniagrette, a tiny glass of gazpacho, slices of melon from Cavaillon, une petite portion de chevre, olive tapenade, aubergine tapenade and wonderful crusty bread.  Every taste was fresh, balanced, the essence of that food, and just enough of each to give one the pleasure of the thing without overwhelming.  Later this afternoon she took me on a walking tour of the town---from the 11th century chateau, church and city walls, past the moulin (grain mill) used in the 16th century, through the garrigue (scrubby vegetation) on the hill above town with its marvelous and absolutely unique herbal smell and by the medieval village houses still in use for 21st century residences.

Tomorrow I'll get another benefit of being the only student, I get to skip class and take a hike.  I had asked Susan months ago about hiking and she told me of her friend who has a weekly group.  Tomorrow we are joining the group to hike toward the town of Buoux to a chevre farm for lunch.  So I'm playing hooky with the principal, but she told me I could make up the class later.

I have another hiking experience booked for Sunday with the Association de Randonnee Pedestre Saturninoise, the hiking club.  I had discovered this group on the St. Saturnin official web site that listed all the local clubs.  Walking around town on Saturday, I saw a flyer posted for an open house on Sunday of all the Associations.  I went by there and "talked" to their president (somehow in 2 languages we made ourselves understood).  This is a super organized group with planned hikes for every other Sunday through the year.  Next Sunday, I'm meeting them at 8:30 in the parking lot behind the pharmacy to drive to the trailhead at Simiane la Rotonde.  From my conversation, I wasn't sure if this hike was six kilometres or seize (6 or 16), but I was sent a hike map for seize km., (environ 6 heures de marche), a cumulative altitude change of 640 m, with some rocky descents.  Hope hiking in the San Juans has me prepared for this.

Sorry no pictures today, bit I'll try to do better.