Oh the tedium, the tedium...

Kippy and Jerome thought it wise that I arrive a few days early to get acclimated before my 10 students arrive on Wednesday. So what am I to do with my time? I've been organizing the studio, preparing for the first day's demonstration, sipping red wine, tasting new cheeses, planting a few flowers in their incredible garden. Tomorrow we go to a brocante (be still my heart), a flea market. But a huge flea market. In France. Where you're most likely to run into French things, like French art, sculpture, ceramics. I'm almost giddy thinking of it. Every year I've come to France I've picked up a souvenir from a brocante, a charming piece of art.

This evening before dinner Jerome pulled out the map to show where we would be going during the latter part of the two weeks: we'll be catching a train to Provence, where we'll stay in gites, wander the villages, paint in the evenings if we want to. I saw Avignon on the map and said, 'if we go there, I want to go to the pont. I want to be able to say I stood sur le pont d'avignon." He warned me that I'd be disappointed, but they'd take us there anyway. The pont is only a ruin now ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pont_Saint-Bénézet).

Alice, one of the students expected Wednesday who has taken my class here at La Bonne Etoile twice before, and who I spent a week or so driving around France with before a workshop a couple of years ago, insists we go to Saint-Remy, where Van Gogh lived and painted. Ok, maybe her idea is better.

You'll hear all the tedious details. I'm off to bed. Have to rise early to get to the brocante. Oh. And tomorrow Kippy and I go to see La Traviata at the Paris Opera House.

The tedium, the tedium.