More new things

1. Peanut butter is not a thing here.  Nutella is.

2. I already knew this from living in Italy, but roundabouts are great.  A little confusing if you don't know where you're going, but so much more efficient than lights.

3. Nobody drives pickup trucks.  We saw three the other day and were surprised.

4. Saw what I thought was stinging nettle, and confirmed it a few days later on my arm.  It's everywhere here and I've begun an extermination campaign in my spare time.

A

French language

The French language seems like a huge mountain that we're standing at the base of, looking up.  I can't see the other side, but many people who have been there tell me it's great and the mountain is totally climbable.  From here though, it looks like a hard climb with plenty of opportunity to fall to my death.

This is crazy.

But...

Spending a year in flight school gave me personal experience with climbing a mountain that seems daunting at first.  Over the course of a year, I memorized four chapters of flight manuals (Chapters 5 and 9 of the TH-67 and UH-60 manual), countless mnemonic devices to remember things like the five functions of the stabilator (SCALP) and more IFR navigation rules than I ever dreamed of.

This makes sense.

So I'm pretty sure J and I can do it.

A

New things

It's been interesting for me (A) to notice the environmental differences between this region of France and Tennessee. A few thoughts:

1. It gets light at 6:10am and dark at 10:15pm.  (Civil twilight) 

That's over 16 hours of light per day.  On June 21st, the longest day of the year, it's 17 and a half hours.  We're all the way up at 48.1° latitude here, which is a little strange, since that's even further north than Seattle and the most northern part of Maine.

The bummer is that we have to deal with horribly short days in the winter.  We can look forward to only 9 and a half hours of light on December 21st. How do I insert a crying face emoji?

2. Bugs are different. 

There was this funny spider that tried to hide from us by flattening itself against the wood of the playset. I tried googling "flat spider France" but didn't come up with anything.

Flaticus Spidericus

3. Plants respond differently to the cooler environment. 

Hydrangeas are just now blooming. Eggplant still have to be covered with plastic to grow at all. Lettuce hasn't bolted yet, and I suspect it may not ever. Not when the average high is only 76° and it rarely gets above 86°. 

Unfortunately we arrived well into the planting season, so putting things in the ground may not result in much happening.  I'll ask the gardener.

New experiences this week:

- Ate turkey gizzard. It wasn't bad.
- Saw a quince tree with fruit on it.

(A)