comprendez-vous?

while in france i also learned...speed limits are suggestions, round-abouts are the rule and not the exception, there are too many cheeses to even remotely begin to sample each one in only two weeks, in foreign language it's just as important to listen to the response as it is to form your questions, textbook language is very different from trying to use it to ride public transportation (ou dois je descend!?), people aren't rushed and spend time in multiple generation dinner conversation, gouter is an important term to know because it signifies an afternoon snack usually involving chocolate, you can fit a four-door sedan into a parking spot at a hotel in aix, there really are nude bathers in the mediterranean, fois gras is a liver-fat-pate-like substance that is a very popular staple food along with gizzards, coffee is for drinking from a teeny tiny espresso cup standing at a counter, the place i bought my likewise teeny tiny silver spoons was a former house of artist paul cezanne, housing and streets and cars and portion sizes are small and it is a good thing, people still smoke alot and that's not necessarily a good thing, that it's an "interesting" experience visiting a worship community where over a thousand people speaking forty-some languages are camping, in some areas of the country people drink from bowls, they like english music and it's not uncommon to hear "hotel california" wafting from an otherwise picturesque bistro, where to find the original site of sylvia beach's book shop shakespeare & co., european hotels don't believe in washcloths, the markets are lush and lovely like i imagine produce to be in heaven, there is more history in one city block than in our whole state (oh that, it's just another castle), how to navigate their toll road system and that it is preceded and followed by said roundabouts...and finally, i learned that kids are still fun and that if you pretend to fall down when they shoot you with a pistol de l'eau (water gun) they think it's universally tres amusant and only confirms that "j'ai trent-huit ans, mais dans mon coeur, j'ai seulement douze ans..." i'll leave that for you to translate.