French retirement

So Wednesdays in France are a little different "hump day" in France than in the States. All elementary schools are closed and high school students spend their Wednesday afternoons in art and film classes or club sports. Thus, Wednesdays for Patrick and I take on a feeling of a Saturday, since he doesn't work.

Yesterday we slept in, ate a late breakfast, went to feed the ducks, and buy food for dinner. On our way to feed the ducks, there are lots of little ducklings around our area that play in the canals that cut through Valence, we found a boules club. Boules is like bocce ball from Italy, as far as I know, and is usually played by old men. They seem to be very intense games of great skill. These men seem to know just how to throw the heavy metal ball to score a point or block an opponent's balls from getting a point.

One of the men playing boules noticed we were feeding the ducks and decided to tell us a very interesting story about his friend who fell off his bike into the canal. He swallowed some of the canal water and had to go to the hospital. It turns out that his friend died because the water was full of poison and rat pee. Well after such an interesting story and I developed a slight fear of dying from accidental canal water consumption, we decided to watch this group of people play boules. We sat for a while on a bench under a newly leafed tree watching a group of about 7 men and 1 woman, all over the age of 60, play. We were easily the youngest people there except for a few children playing near the boules game area. We were joined on the bench by an elderly couple who came to watch too. I guess this is what you do when you are retired in France, you play or watch boules during the nice April afternoon.

Perhaps Patrick and I will try to play this summer with the elderly people of Valence. Here's to spending a brief moment as a French retiree. All it needed was a glass of Ricard and we would have been set!

Only in France would feeding ducks lead to a random conversation about death and a game of boules.

Here's to France!
Molly