Today is a super lazy day. After the night's festivities, we all slept in, and I spent this morning drinking tea and creating an English exercise for Alex. Today we will learn how to ask basic questions. Where is the library? What is it? Why are you a pineapple today?
It's gloomy and rainy today, which I happen to like, but I have a few pictures from the other day. On Thursday, Alex took me bike riding to a lake where there were tons of what I'm assuming are swans floating about. To my delight, Alex pulled out a couple of baguettes, and we fed the birds.
Know what's great about baguettes in France? They're 80 cents, and they're flipping delicious. Not soggy like grocery store baguettes, not dense and difficult to tear like "gourmet" baguettes from Trader Joes. They are light, crusty, perfectly fluffy and just a little moist on the inside, and when you tear them they make the most intoxicating crackling noise. I'll be honest and tell you that the birds only got like 3/4 of the baguette.
But moving on, the other day we went for a walk around town and stopped to look at this vibrantly painted airplane on sticks.
Marignane is the town in which the Marseilles airport is actually located, so they're pretty big on airplanes here. Julien, my host dad, actually works building helicopters.
Also, the Repettos have a dog, and her name is Lady.
Here she is sort of cowering behind a rack of drying clothes during the storm yesterday. She's ridiculously sweet and thinks she's a lap dog. If you sit on the floor or on one of the low chairs, she climbs on your lap and sits there, blocking your view of the television or whatever have you, but it's hard to be irritated because she's just so cute.
In other news, yesterday was a record-breaking writing day. 3000 words! I'm overly proud of it, but considering that a great writing day for me is about 1000, a little victory dance was in order. Every writer has their own style, and in the past I've always written chronologically, from start to finish. Of course, I've read at least a dozen books that said, "You don't have to write this way!" and I always said in reply, "Stop your nonsense." But yesterday I decided to just write a scene I really loved from the middle of the story and wound up writing a ton. Muddling through the beginning is always slow and painful, and I use scenes I'm excited about later in the plot to motivate me to keep writing. What inevitably happens is I get stuck and never make it to those scenes I really love, often abandoning the story when too many problems arise early on. For now though, things are looking good for this story. Hopefully yesterday was just one of many successful days of writing.
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