These are a few of my favourite things

Wow. Time has really been flying by here in the south of France. I feel a little like I am already in mourning for Provence. I find myself noticing (and talking about, almost obsessively) all the little things about life here that I am really going to miss. Things like:

- The mournful yet peaceful sound of the bells chiming the hour and the half hour, all day long … and vespers and Sunday services, and many other things I can’t seem to fathom. What is it, for example, about Saturday morning at 8am that calls for a kajillion (sp?) bells to be rung? Whoopsie, this was supposed to be a list of the things I love. And I do love the bells. Really, I do. But this morning I was managing to sleep in until the almost unprecedented time of 8am. We were out late last night, so for once Maddox was sleeping in, allowing me to sleep in. And I was loving it. But really, I suppose of all the ways to be woken up at 8am on a Saturday morning, provençal village bells are a pretty good way to go.

Okay, back to the list.

- Eating almost all of our meals outside in the shade of our lovely garden.

- Having a post-school swim in the pool with the kids.

- The sounds of Maddox playing soccer with neighbouring kids on the 6 foot-wide “street” we live on.

- Taking a 10 minute walk in almost any direction from town and finding myself in a remote, quiet spot.

- The extraordinarily loud frog-song after the sun goes down.

- The bird song, all day and all night. I kid you not. The first few times I heard birdsong in the middle of the night I was very confused thinking it was dawn. Nope. Just French birds who seem to like to party all damn night.

- Walking the kids to school, and having that only take 2 minutes.

- Having almost every stranger you encounter saying a friendly, “Bonjour!” or the like.

- I suppose it is almost redundant to mention the weekly Cotignac market. I have already mentioned before how this is my favorite day of the week, and an activity I hate miss.

- Going out to dinner with the kids on the main cours. Mark and I get to sit under the gorgeous plane trees and drink our pichet de rosé, while the kids run around mostly unattended, running into their friends, climbing on the fountains, or finding other entertainments.

- The quiet.

- The quality of the light and the reds, golds and yellows of the buildings.

- The cheeses, the incredible produce, the bread, the pastries, the... OK, wait a minute. I can tell sitting here, that I actually have a lot to say about food. I am going to have to dedicate a blog soon to the food culture here. You’ll just have to wait for bated breath for the one.