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marvelous mikl sent us my camera that i left in san francisco before we left for france (d'oh!) so i've been taking more photos than writing words lately. i managed to put a bunch up for your viewing pleasure.

a little backstory for some of the categories:

SF: i had to go back to san francisco last week to pick up my long stay visa. i hadn't given myself enough time for france to process the visa application before we had to leave, so beaurocracy being what it is i had to go all the way back to get it. worse, what we thought was a confirmed flight back somehow only ended up being a reservation, so when i got to the marseille airport at 4:30am i found out i didn't have a flight and had to buy it then and there, almost doubling the price. drat. still not sure what went wrong with that. anyway, i got the same flights i'd reserved before and it all worked out ok eventually.

it was weird to be back. i didn't want to get re-sullied with my US thoughts so i tried to lay low and off the radar, with limited success. i'm almost back into the french swing of things.

aix: all the flights to and from the US were at awful hours and required staying a night close to the marseille airport either the night before i left or the night i came back since trains and shuttles didn't run early enough. so miss and i took the opportunity to take a little trip to aix-en-provence, a little town about half an hour away. it's not as ancient as avignon, but it's very pretty.

cezanne did a lot of later work there, and we got to walk through his old studio. a little walk out of town and up a big hill overlooking the town is a small two-story building he had built. it used to be the only building on the hill back in the day, and it still has a great view. the same view of Mt. St. Victoire he used as a study over and over again. neat!

the second floor of the building was his studio. a huge sparse room painted in medium grey, with immense warehouse-style windows on the north wall for maximum light. there was a special tall skinny door to the outside that he could move the large canvases out when they were finished. the place still vibrated with the guy's spirit. i felt instantly calm and productive there and really wanted to stay. he knew a good work environment, and it's rotting fruit on the tables and pictures of naked women on the walls.

holidays: avignon is all wrapped up in bows and twinkly lights. maybe it's partly the progressive portland influence, but i really appreciate the benefits of high taxes spent well by the state. between this, the opera, and the library i feel like the normal citizen is getting a lot better value for money than say emptying the budget into halliburton's pockets. why do i pay taxes again?

missy's sister april is visiting right now. she and miss took a trip to paris while i was in SF, and we're trying to show her the sights of avignon. (there's only like five!) there's a little ice skating rink set up in front of the main market we're going to go to later on. and maybe even go to a mass tonight, for old time's sake. i still get sentimental and soft on christmas eve, and they have churches here like you wouldn't believe.

well, joyeuse fêtes, as they say!