A Good Year

The other day with some friends I watched the movie, A Good Year. It takes place in a French Vineyard and involved love and passion and money and French scenery. Needless to say I loved it. In the movie the protagonist, Max, is a British stock broker he is ridiculously rich. His uncle dies and leaves him his vineyard in Provence. He rediscovers his love for wine, France, himself, and a life less hurried. Life here does seem to be less hurried. There are two weeks in October, three weeks for Christmas, two weeks in February, two weeks in April and five weeks in the summer for holiday. Of course not everyone takes all that time off but in general you get the idea. In the states for people with jobs there are uumm two three day weekends half a week for Thanksgiving, and a week for Christmas...if you're lucky. It's very different. Better...who knows I think I am still too blissfully young to care :)
Everyone always asks me how my French is coming along so I might as well tell you it's horrible. Not as horrible as when I came but not noticeably better. I know shake your heads and point your fingers. I never ever have a chance to practice. Really I swear. The family speaks English with me or Greek amongst themselves mostly. All of my friends here are international so we all speak English together. I am friends with ONE actual French person. We get along very well and love to get coffee together, she doesn't indulge in my sinful partaking of pastries...do the French ever? She however is more determined to improve her English then I am to improve me French, once again shake heads and point fingers. Also, she generally just gets annoyed with my atrocious French and switches to English after she hears my very successful attempt at butchering her beautiful language...her words not mine. She tells me that foreigners shouldn't be allowed to learn French and I tell her English is more useful, like I said we get along swimmingly! So in short I need to try harder but as of yet it's still "like to death to my ears"