La vie en rose

The day after tomorrow I will be leaving Belgium and we (that is, my parents, my sister, my brother-in-law, my nieces and me) will be heading for France. That's it, la douce France. I hope we'll finally see some sunshine, because in Belgium - and the Netherlands as well, for that matter - one would be asking oneself whether something such as a sun still exists. 

However, let's not complain about the weather for a change. Instead of that, let's think about what we will be doing in France for the next two weeks. We certainly won't be blogging, because I won't be taking my laptop with me. So you folks will have a rather long blog pause :) We won't be studying either, for all my books and articles will be staying at my parents' house. So there'll be plenty of time to swim, walk, enjoy the sun and read. As for the latter, I'm taking a couple of books with me, all of them in English: C.S. Lewis's Narnja, Orwell's 1984 - which I'm already reading at the moment - and 4 books by Paulo Coelho, chosen out of my Paulo Coelho collection. I hope that will do.

So it'll be a real summer break all right. Because that's what holidays mean to me: sunshine and books. That's the divine combination in my humble opinion. Oh yes, and hearing a foreign language all day, preferably one that I understand and speak. Still, I have to admit that my French has known better days. Because of the influence of my Spanish and (Brazilian) Portuguese, my French has deteriorated a lot; that is, I still understand what the people are telling me, but when I want to answer them, I can only think of Spanish or Portuguese words. That's the bad thing that comes along with speaking foreign languages...

For those of you who want to know, we're going to the Provence, near a city called Aubignan. We'll have to drive some 900 kilometres in order to reach our goal, and my parents haven't gone further than that ever before. I have, for I was in Spain - Barcelona - last year, but still, it's a large distance when you go by car. The domain where we'll be staying is called Les demeures du Ventoux. Yes, we'll be close to mount Ventoux, but as I'm rather a runner and not really a biker, you won't see me climbing mount Ventoux by bike. Instead, I'll be chilling at the pool with one of my precious books. Maybe I'll go to the gym when I'm tired of being in the swimming pool, or go for a run if I have enough energy and provided it's not too hot. The weather forecast is very promising: some 30 degrees on our day of arrival. That's about two times as hot as at the beginning of this week here in Belgium :)

Hopefully the weather will keep us going for the next two weeks, because Dutch/Belgian summer hasn't offered us anything up till now. It'll certainly be unpleasant to come back if the weather hasn't changed a bit. But I agreed not to complain about the weather, right :D We'll probably live "la vie en rose", although I can't really imagine what we'll be doing during our stay in France. But as time flies, those two weeks will soon be over. 

So, people, I'm off now, almost on my way to France. I'll be back in two week's time!