November 8th

Last night, Chris cooked a wonderful concoction for dessert. He cooked quince (coing in French), apples, red wine, sugar, and cinnamon all together on the stove. It was delicious! We are becoming addicted to quince...and unfortunately, they are almost out of season.

After lunch (leftover butternut squash soup and thawed macaroons), we went for a walk in the Cours Julien. We went to the Savonerie to buy soap. I bought a bar of lavender, and Chris bought a bar of pastis. We also purchased a ceramic cigale (cicada) for grandma. We went into a few other stores, a second-hand clothing store which was very expensive for the clothing they were selling, a natural store where I finally found some organic shampoo and body lotion, and a comic book store where Chris found a French Cthulhu comic book. The comic books here are hardbound, which is nice. The comic book store is combined with a cafe.

I went over to Fannie's apartment for tea and knitting. I met her boyfriend, Nico, and saw her son again, Gael. Gael just turned 2. He's ADORABLE!!! He knows the difference between English and French, but he prefers French. I couldn't get him to speak English to me. He kept bringing toys over to me and wanting me to look at things. Fannie had to translate so I knew what he was saying.

Nico, Fannie, and I had tea and chatted about American politics, work, and other things. Then Fannie helped me fix a few snags on the two sweaters I'm knitting. She's an amazing knitter! I'm really happy to have met her. She is only about a 5 minute walk from our place.

Chris & I went to the pizza place across the street and ordered a pizza to go for the first time. We had one with bacon (bacon here is not the same as we have in the US. It's more like little strips of ham.), gruyere cheese, chevre (goat cheese), and tomatoes. When you order pizza here, they always put a few olives on top. I'm not a big fan of the olives, but Chris loves them. The pizza was the best we have had so far! Very inexpensive too, and you can't beat the proximity.

Back home now and thinking about what to do the rest of the evening. We are staying home tomorrow so Chris can work. I'm going to work on my knitting, and hopefully our laundry will be dry so I can put it away. I have two racks filled with clothing that is drying here in the apartment. I hung some of it outside, but it didn't dry all the way. It's just so cold outside (50's) and only partially sunny through the day that the laundry doesn't dry quickly. I love having a washing machine, but I do miss American dryers.

Chris is playing with Oreo on the floor. We bought Oreo a fish on a string, and he loves it. He will bring us over to it so we move it around for him.

Oreo is getting more settled in the place. He keeps us up at night...meowing, running through the apartment, and trying to open cabinets.

It's SO COLD in here and we haven't turned on our heaters yet. I wanted to wait until it gets into the 50's, but I may break down before that. We really didn't bring enough warm clothes. He has started sleeping on a chair in the living room, which is not like him. He usually prefers the floor to furniture, but I think the floor is too cold for him since we don't have carpeting.