At 2:30pm I met up with Susan (sister of my high school physics teacher, the woman who invited me to lunch at her house and to the apple festival) and her mother in the c-v. Her mother has been visiting for the last two weeks and will be here for another week. We went to a cute little patisserie-cafe for tea and hot chocolate and a treat. Susan ordered tea, her mother and I both ordered chocolat viennois (hot chocolate with whipped cream). All three of us had the macaron (macaroon) of the day, chestnut. Chestnut does not happen to be my favorite flavor, but I absolutely love macaroons. Before coming to France this time I'm not positive I had tried them before, if I had, it wasn't memorable. But I think I was offered one early on and now I'm hooked. For those of you who aren't familiar, this is what macarons look like (not my pics, I nicked these from Google Images):
Usually they're sold in the size pictured above, slightly larger than the size of a dollar coin. The most common flavors are vanilla, chocolate, strawberry, coffee and pistachio, but I've seen some really wild ones (cassis, pineapple, elderberry). The blue/black one in the picture above is probably cassis.
At 4pm I had to dash off to meet Janice (former assistant I met with when I first got here, she got married to a Besançon resident and has been living here for the past 7-8 years). I had promised to babysit her two little kids so she could run some errands and finish packing. Her whole family is leaving for a three-week excursion to the U.S. this morning (actually they left at 5am, they should be on their way). Let me tell you, babysitting is the best birth control! Her son just turned three and her daughter is one and wow they are both a handful. The experience demonstrated to me how many factors you have to take into account if you want to have a family (does your apartment building have an elevator -- if not, living on the 4th floor with two small children will be extremely difficult / does your husband have a 2-hour commute and therefore get back at 7:30pm every night when he would otherwise get back earlier). Also, I was flabbergasted by how slowly we had to move with the kids. It just takes forever! I'm so used to getting things accomplished as quickly as possible... It was definitely eye-opening. There are moments when they're so cute though. We read lots and lots of books -- it was an easy way to keep them entertained -- including "Blueberries for Sal," one of my childhood favorites. Janet wanted me to speak English with them as much as possible -- even though they're very young the little that they do speak is in both English and French -- so when we read their one or two books in French I sight-translated the words. It was tougher than I would have expected! Janice said that her son is starting to recognize letters, so she's going to have to stop sight-translating for fear of confusing him.
After babysitting I met up with Janice, Laurie, Kirstie, Nicola (all primary school assistants), Kati
(J and L's roommate), and Justine (their neighboor on the floor below) for dinner at a Moroccan restaurant called Chez Achour. Steph and Charly recommended this place to me and it was delicious! It was only a 10-minute walk from my house too.
Time to get ready for school! Bonne journée! (have a great day!)
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