Fun Stuff:

The train I am sitting in is quite ugly. All the other trains around it are as ugly or uglier. I am in Paris Gare de Austerlitz waiting for my ugly train to take me back to Amboise where I will complete my second week of immersion French lessons. Today is a bank holiday, so the school was closed. I decided to go back to Grenoble for the long weekend to see my sweety. With respect to Paris; I am just passing through.

From Grenoble, I arrived in the Paris Gare de Lyon with a bunch of pretty TGV trains. TGV is the name of the fast train. I think all those trains made fun of all of these ugly ones, and made them go to their own ugly train station. Poor ugly trains.

Anyway I had a nice weekend with my sweety, my pugs, and my friends. There was a party on Saturday where we ate a bunch of great Spanish food and drank a bunch of great Spanish wine. Some friends just returned from a long trip in Spain and decided to share the joy.

We all went to see a boring movie on Sunday, and today Claudia and I had a relaxing breakfast before my departure.

The French class I am in is great. The school boards the students with local families, and you have class 25 hours/week. I am only going to be in school for 8 days total, but I have already learned a lot. I can massacre the French language through a number of simple situations. I expect, by next week, the number of French words I know how to obliterate will double. And “What about my grammar?” you ask. Forget about it! I am the king of French grammar destruction.

Since you stay with a family during the whole experience, the amount you learn increases dramatically. A lot of the other students speak English, but it probably only amounts to two hours per day that I am not speaking French. So the other thirteen or fourteen hours are spent speaking French (If I am speaking that is).

Wine Stuff:

Maybe I will get Claudia to write a little something about her recent wine experience. She, and a bunch of other expats, went to a local wine shop for a wine and chocolate tasting. She said it was a lot of fun.

I have not been drinking a lot of wine during my stay in Amboise. I sometimes have a glass or two at dinner. I drink what I am served, and it is usually pretty decent stuff.

happy drinking,
-PMo