VELO

I cheated in the subject above. There is supposed to be an accent on the 'e', but if you write in all caps you don't need to use accents. Thank you, "A Year in the Merde"!

Today was a bit surreal. I was wandering through the old part of Aix thinking, "This is grungy..." But it's been awhile since I've been in Europe and have been in areas more than, oh, 110 years old. It's actually not grungy, and the city is littered with fountains. Anyone who has travelled with me understands that I greatly appreciate a fountain.

The biggest one is in the middle of a large roundabout, so you can't actually walk up to it, nor are you supposed to.

I was going to go to a market to buy food but chose to sleep through the first half of the day. I slept about 12.5 hours, and had the most ridiculous dreams. I saw the market at about 1:30, and there was crap EVERYWHERE. Leftover food littering the square, vehicles in every available inch (people loading up their crop), cops trying to direct traffic. Intense!

The first hour was a bit intimidating. People everywhere. Speaking French. Oh la la.

When speaking to the man at the tourist office (thought I would have to go outside the city to buy a bike, and was concerned that the highways were the only way home) he said I had good French. Someone else said that too. Here's the tricky thing: I *can* speak decent, comprehensible French, which is misleading, as when you respond, I will have no idea what you are saying. I listen for very key words: oui, non, toilette, gauche, droit, etc. Sentences should be simple: subject, verb, preposition, noun. Adverbs and adjectives are useful for directions or instructions. Otherwise, if they are to make your story more amazing, I am not interested.

Now I shall play on VELO RUE ROUGE. (And here I thought I would be getting the French equivalent of the SuperCycle. Pas mal.)