From the middle of nowhere
I can’t believe my four weeks in Paris went by so fast. But they did, and now we’re holed up in a house 8.5 hours south of Paris, listening to a magnificent thunderstorm outside.
First things first. My time at Sensio was very nice. My primary takeaway would have to be shaking hands with everyone at the start of every day. I haven’t experienced this in the states: I saw a lot of people around the city shaking hands at the start of the day. It’s very human. Much better than just opening the laptop and diving right back in.
Our last evening in Paris featured a dinner brought to you by Rue de Moines, the street we were staying on. I walked with my 2 year old son strapped to my back and picked up a cooked chicken and potatoes from the butcher, some lettuce from the produce stand, some cheese from the cheese shop, and of course some wine from the wine store. The food was all delicious in its own right, but I enjoyed it even more knowing I purchased it all from so many different stores, so close by.
Our drive south the next day was one of traffic, singing and puking. Guess which one was the most fun? Getting out of Paris was a nightmare. It took us about an hour just to get through the traffic we hit coming out of the airport. Our GPS device, which we’ve nicknamed “M” on account if her lovely British accent, was dead-on in estimating our trip at 8.5 hours. We drove through some lively countryside during that time, and some very windy, hilly roads. Unfortunately, neither of my children’s stomachs were up for it. I think I counted three outright puke-fests and a few rounds of dry heaving. Our nanny called it the pukiest car ride she’d ever been on. I couldn’t help but compare it to the Team America puke scene…
We did indeed make it to our destination whole hearty and, for the most part, healthy. Our place is about 9km from the mideval village of Najac, which we visited today (I’ll post some pictures soon). The countryside is breathtaking. There’s a small creek bordering the property that we played in with the kids for awhile yesterday. I built a little dam and had a fleeting fantasy about violating some 500 year old water rights treaty.
In other news, wifi is scarce, so I’m just posting to the blog here over the cellular network ($.02/kb, ugh) and responding to the occasional email. I’ve created local Subversion repositories for the projects in working on, which I’ll be manually syncing with their respective motherships from time to time. Vacation continues, but so does work. C’est la vie!
