Rocher de la Garde

Third hike of the month. I am blogging from a peak (a small one about 700m) in the Chartreuse.

Walnut bread and cheese for lunch. La vie est belle.

Fall melancholy

I am truly enjoying my life in Grenoble this fall. The courses at CUEF are going great, flamenco, Japanese school, agility, it feels to me that they are at the perfect ripeness. Another thing nice and mature is myself, and a middle aged person had better know moderation in order to avoid falling ill.

Last Saturday, our doggie friends took us to Annecy where we spent a nice afternoon visiting the castle and historic sites. It has been almost exactly a year since we first visited there, and the charm is still in its effect! We will have to miss the fall festival this year, and this thought made me rather upset...

Most likely we will not be in France this time next year :(.

Despite the filthiness of this country, I am truly at home here in France. The next destination had better be an awesome place, as it is pretty hard to beat this one.

Ohana

"Ohana means family. And family means no one gets left behind."

Chana is having some intestinal problems but we still went for a hike in Chartreuse near the Grande Chartreuse Monastery. We thought she needed some rest so Nathan back packed her for 5 minutes.

We drove a smart car for the first time and we enjoyed the semi-automatic transmission!

C'est la rentrée!

It is the back-to-school season in France, and we hear more and more odd screams and roars outside these days. You can do anything when you are young.

Being ambitious, I am back to school to learn some more French. I decided to take a semester course instead of monthly intensive courses. The course consists of 10 hours of language courses (FLE, test taking strategy, and vocabulary) and 4.5 hours of general cultural courses. I am doing this among the youngsters as most of my classmates are university exchange students from the USA. So the battle is on :).

I am also back to teach at the Japanese complementary school on Wednesdays. Instead of the 4th grade I teach the 2nd grade this term, and the first class (today) went really well. I cannot say this out loud, but I use the same technique to teach the kids that I use on Chana. It works! In October, I will start teaching Japanese as a foreign language to the adults, but I am not so keen on it at this point. I guess it will be a good experience teaching in French.

For extra-curricular activities, I will be doing Flamenco again, and of course agility with Chana. Nathan is doing more bouldering now, and I hope to take salsa classes with him. Yoga classes have to wait until January, although I already miss my Yoga teacher.