Driver's licenses, lawyers' skulls, and blessed horses

Bonjour! We’ve been lax about posting to the blog, and suddenly I realized that it’s July already and we’d been keeping you in the dark since the beginning of April! That will never do. I’m sure you’ve been so on edge it’s kept you from sleeping.

Bringing you up to date

1) in early April we spent nearly two weeks in Belgium, visiting Brussels, Bruges, Ghent, and Ypres. Bob took a lot of pictures! It was a great trip.

2) the day after we got back from Brussels, I took my written/theoretical driving test and I passed! Yippee! I haven’t been that nervous over an exam in decades, and it really took me back. You have to get 88% right to pass, and I squeaked by with a score of 90%. Whew! (or Ouf! as they say here)

3) in mid-April Bob spent a week in Sweden, meeting up with his good friend John from Berkeley in Umeå , and examining architecture in Stockholm at close range.

4) I took several driving lessons in preparation for the practical driving test and found out that all these years I’ve been driving the wrong way! Seriously – shifting gears, signaling, looking in the rearview mirrors, I’d been doing everything wrong. This was great for my humility.

5) we witnessed the French presidential elections in late April/early May, including the televised debates (refreshingly unscripted and spontaneous). We were even interviewed by the local paper on our views, as foreigners, on the elections.

We also went to the town hall and observed the counting of the votes, which is done by ordinary citizens – low-tech but efficient and open to all eyes (and no hanging chads to worry about).

6) on May 4 I took the practical driving test and passed. Yippee! In the end, the license cost us around $600 in fees and lessons, but it was well worth it for the wealth of French driving vocabulary I learned...I guess.

7) on May 20 we went to the “pardon” (600-year-old festival) of St. Yves in Tréguier not far from here, where a glass box containing the skull of the saint is paraded through the streets of the town on the shoulders of lawyers.

8) the chorus I sing in gave a concert at the local auditorium at the end of May, and I designed the posters and the program.

9) in early June we went to another “pardon” on an island off the Breton coast where there’s a blessing of the horses.
10) we took a 10-day trip to the U.S. to visit friends in Atlanta, renew Bob’s Georgia driver’s license (Bob being unwilling to even think about the ordeal I went through for a French license), and visit my mother in Ohio:

My mom’s doing surprisingly well considering her health problems and her losses due to stroke, but she seemed less sturdy this time than she did six months ago when we last saw her.

Meanwhile, Bob is seeing the light at the end of the tunnel with his project of cataloging the library at our friend’s chateau. He’s now working on the various stashes of books and pamphlets on the upper floor, and envisions completing the catalog in the not-too-distant future.

Since we got back from the U.S. about three weeks ago, we’ve been taking it pretty easy because Bob’s recovering from a sprained ankle he got on the trip, I’ve been recovering from a some kind of respiratory bug, and the weather here has been relentlessly cold, rainy, and gray. Also, as the school year here has drawn to a close, all our regular activities have ended and won’t resume until after school starts back in early September.

There – now you’re fully informed!

So what are we going to do next?

We’ve planned at least two trips for the summer vacation period: we’re going to Holland the last 10 days of July to visit Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and Utrecht, and in August we’re going to spend some time in Germany visiting Cologne, Aachen, and the town where my grandfather came from, Alzey near Mainz.

We’re also thinking of making some short trips: one to Normandy to see some architecture and witness Camembert being made and another to La Rochelle on the Atlantic coast, near the Ile de Ré where gourmet sea salt comes from.

In between all this travel, my sister Ellen is planning to come for a visit. So our summer won’t lack for interesting activities even though many of our French friends are off boating, taking care of their children or grandchildren, or visiting foreign lands.

And when are we coming back to the U.S., you ask?

As I think we’ve told most people, we’ve made firm plans to return to the U.S. in January of 2008. We want to finish out the calendar year here (and give me a chance to sing in the Christmas concerts given by the chorus I sing in) and experience another fall season of activities with our French friends.

Our first stop when we return will be Atlanta, see friends, get routine medical checkups, etc. Then we’ll be planning our next step, which will be to identify the city where we want to settle.

And where are we going to settle when we get there?

We love our Atlanta friends, but we would like to live somewhere that’s less car-dependent, more walkable, and which has better architecture (something that’s very important to Bob). It will be a largish city, since we’re both urban creatures and have discovered that even a charming and animated town like Lannion, at 20,000 inhabitants, is too small.

We’re also looking for affordable real estate prices, good medical services (because we’re not getting any younger, in fact quite the opposite!), decent cultural amenities and a lively civic life. We’ve already done a little research, but we’ll be doing more as the year progresses, taking full advantage of our high-speed internet connection.

After having spent 22 years in Atlanta, I’ve developed a number of close relationships with friends, and I’m going to miss the people I’ve gotten close to. However, our time France has shown me that it’s easier than ever to stay in touch using email, instant messaging, and the phone. If I put in the effort to stay connected, there’s no reason to lose touch. This reassures me that I can still maintain close ties to people even though I won’t be in the same city anymore.

Well, I think that covers the high points. Hope you’re having a good summer…I think we will, too, if it ever gets here!