Ok so I'm a newly-wed, what can I say? This morning when I wake my wonderful husband is already on his way to the boarding gate at Perth International Airport ready to travel halfway around the world to join me in beautiful Paris for our much-anticipated and somewhat delayed honeymoon :-)
He'll be in transit for over 30 hours before he walks through the arrivals gate in Paris, so I'm glad to have school to keep my mind occupied today and to help the day go by quickly!
The sun is out again this morning and it's a little less icy than previous days, but with such low temperatures a couple of degrees makes little difference - minus 3, minus 1, zero, all feel much of a muchness!
The last couple of mornings I've given a few coins to a man who is in the same place on Boulevard Poissonnière each day. I assume he's homeless and he always smiles and says "Merci". It's still an unresolved issue for me in terms of what response to the beggar dilemma is the most appropriate, and since I've been in Paris I've tried a few options, none of which have felt right. This also feels like a completely feeble effort but the brief interaction with this man has somehow resolved me, at least for now, to make it a daily event, until school ends anyway. This morning he smiles as he sees me approaching and says "Bonjour". I reply "Bonjour, ça va?" and he nods and replies "Ça va" which seems ludicrous under the circumstances but what else is he going to say? I wish I was confident enough with the language to ask him a little bit about himself - maybe next week :-/
School is fun today, we have a full class and we learn how to change the form of an adjective to fit the gender of the noun - la semaine dernière, le mois dernier, une pomme ronde, un melon rond, etc. There are helpful rules and patterns for this, but it all rests on the gender of the noun, and there are NO helpful patterns or rules or even logic to assist here - whoever decided that "beard" should be feminine, I ask you??? - the bottom line is that you just have to learn them, and the most useful advice I've received is to learn the noun together with its article from the outset. Hmm, I guess I'd better make a start on the thousands of nouns currently in use............. :-!
To finish off the week we have a game of "Celebrity Heads" which results in much hilarity but gives us all a good opportunity to practise using adjectives correctly, asking questions independently and refining our pronunciation :-)
There's nobody to Skype this afternoon (yes, my big brother, after our recent conversation I can just see you rolling your eyes and saying "harden up!") ;-) so I decide to walk home a different way and take my time, and as a result I find myself in a lovely street called Rue des Petits Carreaux, which is more or less a mall with almost no traffic.
It's a bit like the street I enjoyed in the Latin Quarter, with lots of restaurants and fresh food vendors. The day is sunny and I enjoy strolling. Further down is the Les Halles area in the 1ème arrondissement, which houses an underground shopping precinct - another area to explore more fully with my lovely husband :-)
Walking on down Rue Saint-Denis I pass Café Oz, the Australian Bar, complete with crocodile on the front, and I just have to take a photo, it's so classy ;-)
A little further and I come to the Seine, and turn east towards home. The wind is icy coming off the river and gusting along Quai de Gesvres and Quai de l'Hôtel-de-Ville.
I take a detour along Rue Mornay and find myself back at Boulevard de la Bastille alongside the lovely canal again. I decide to go a little further east to explore the 12ème, my home turf. They say you often don't know what's right there under your nose in your own backyard, and today I have another serendipitous discovery not 10 minutes from home. I come upon the Marche d'Aligre, a lovely little undercover fresh food market that reminds me of Il Mercato in the San Lorenzo markets in Florence (but on a smaller scale). It's a great discovery because it's so close to home, is open every day, and has just about everything - boulangerie, patisserie, charcuterie, fromagerie, poissonnerie, boucherie, triperie (that's tripe and offal, for the uninitiated - eeuuwww!) as well as flowers, fresh fruit and vegetables and a range of cafés and bars. I'll definitely be back! Heading home from the opposite direction, I realize that this area is worth exploring further!
Around 8pm I get a Viber message from Dubai airport - my lovely man has arrived safely and now has a 10 hour wait but luckily gets a complimentary hotel room for the night. I cook Boeuf Bourguignon to add to last night's creations - all this so that we can gaze into each other's eyes all weekend and talk about how much we've missed each other and not have to worry about cooking (this information is especially for your edification, my lovely brother!!!!!) ;-) I'm so excited I think I'll have trouble sleeping tonight!
I do plan to continue blogging throughout the next 5 weeks but anticipate that it may not be a daily event from now on - it is my honeymoon after all!!!!! :-)
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