Celine's house is wonderful. I fall in love with the house's architecture, painting, furnishings, and gadgets. The bright colors on the solid stone walls sets the tone of vibrancy and also mimics the healthy lifestyle I've felt so far. The colors of the food in the kitchen are a rainbow themselves... and change with the season. When possible, the fruits and veges come from the local outdoor market 5 minutes away by bike. The market sells veges, fruits, fresh bread, meat (whole animals..), and seafood(whole seafood..). It is open every day but Mondays. I feel a closer connection to the food,knowing that most of it was grown locally and that the freshest food is at my fingertips.
Celine's house is fun. I soon discover several toys :-). Mix together the fact that Celine's dad is an electrical engineer, that Angouleme is a city built on a hill, and that biking is a comon mode of transportation, and you get noneother than an electric bike! What a fun thing to ride! This is the first time I've seen such a thing, and I immediately want to try it out. I get the chance when we go to the market. You get on it like a regular bike, you pedal it like a regular bike, but the difference comes in a nice little boost after the first pedal. I had so much fun the first time I rode it. I was giggling in the wind all the way down the street. The sensation was like a kid getting a huge push on the swing, and feeling the wind on your face and the boost of acceleration. I'm think I should bring the trend to America.
The five passenger smart car is also fun. Small, but fast. Celine's dad utilizes the Mercedes engine to the max when he finds open road:) Both the car and the bike are evidence of an environmentally conscious culture. In the kitchen, I also find a compost bin next to the trash and recycling. Since almost all meals are freshly prepared with fruits and veges, this thing gets fed a lot. The washer in the laundry room is smaller than the tank of a washer we have at my house. Its capacity is at best half of the ones I'm used to in the States. It would hold maybe five plush towels. And there is no dryer machine. That comes in the form of sunshine, a clothes line, and a drying rack. There is no central air conditioning in the house. The weather is mild enough to get by with opening widows, closing shutters, and using blankets.
Food and drink are obviously a big part of the French lifestyle. When I look at the days activities, I see a trip to the market in the morning, slicing and dicing of veges for lunch preparations, cooking lamb sausages over an open flame on the grill, homemade walnut and white cherry wines ( both of which have come from the walnut and white cherry trees in the back yard, picking fresh plums from a friend's plum tree, and siting around the kitchen table late into the night sipping on warm herbal tea and preparing the plums for preserves(basically, cutting the seeds out of the middle).
The weather yesterday cleared up in the afternoon(the air has been a bit more chilly than I expected and than is normal for this time of year). This allowed us to dine outside on the patio and have a wonderful dinner of eggplant , zucchini, and tomato casserole over fetichinni. I liked the white cherry wine better than the walnut. Although white cherries taste a bit sour themselves(?) , the wine is very sweet. At 11 pm (when it is sufficiently dark), we enjoy the fireworks show on the Charente River. July 14th is the French National holiday. After, we walk around downtown a bit and see several historic sites. No new construction goes on within the downtown area. Renovations of older buildings and facade washes provide facelifts to the old buildings.
Other subtle differences that interest me about the French lifestyle include the way the toilet flushes, the barometer on the wall by the back door, having to plug in the water hose to the pump, the working and actually used shutters, the typical fence and gate around the yard, and the lightswitches. And, of course, the kissing on the cheeks when greeting someone.. even for the first time.
Angouleme Pictures: https://picasaweb.google.com/103328083938812409241/AngoulemeFrance?authuser=0&feat=directlink
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