Mais oui!

My darling son and daughter-in-law gave me tickets to a concert in Perpignan for Christmas. Perpignan is about an hour and a half from me across the border in France. The concert was by an English singer named Charlie Winston who lives in southern France. I’d never heard of him, and it probably wasn’t anything I would have chosen myself. But, I gotta say, it was really fun. I talked my new American friend into accompanying me. She and I arrived at the AirBnb, which was a part of the gift. The owner did not speak English, so it was a great test of my French to arrange meeting at the location.

The concert was in a small venue. It was standing only, no seats. At the risk of sounding like I’m 100 years old, is that what the young folks do now? Anyway, once we got into the swing of things, the music carried us away, and a seat would’ve seemed superfluous. Charlie spoke in French throughout the concert. He was adorable and I was excited to understand some of his discourses in between songs. At one point, I became completely emotionally overwhelmed. It happens from time to time when I am struck by how lucky I am and what joy it brings me to be here living in another culture and communicating in other languages. I had one of those moments during the concert.

If you’re interested, this is a song of his I really like:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOgQBdSWB84

One of the British ex-pats I’ve met invited me to an event in her town called an Arrossada, which involves cooking a humongous paella pan of rice and other things over an open fire. There were two such huge pans to serve about 100 people. The price tag was 12 euros for a plate (and a second helping for those not full after a heaping plate of meat and rice), a roll, a giant sausage, a piece of cake, and a bottle each of wine, water, and champagne per table. What fun!

I made an American cheeseburger for my neighbor recently and I wanted to put pickle slices on it, but, there were no dills at any of the stores. I looked in the gourmet section at Corte Inglés, but they didn’t have any either. I bought some that were labelled “sour,” but they didn’t taste quite right. I decided to look at the Taste of America’s online store. Look at this weird stuff. It’s kernels (??) of pickles to put on pop corn? Does that seem right to any one?

The wind picked up here. It was blowing at around 30 mph, which isn’t that bad, except when it’s coming off of the sea and cold and CONSTANT. It does not stop for days on end. I guess that’s just the price we pay to live in this gorgeous place. I haven’t been able to take my recycling out all week because the bin would have blown away. But the wind brings crisp, clear skies and views of the mountains. This one is at sunrise so the snow caps look pink! It’s a little blurry because I zoomed in a bit, but you get the idea.