A Year in Provence-June

In Mayle's descriptions of their adventures in June there were two issues that caught my eye:

Firstly, the story about the little French boy who needed blood donors to keep him alive before his operation in America. The story went on to show how kind-hearted the people from Provence are if someone cries for help as masses of them went to donate blood.

The underlying reason I brought this up is that I feel that this heart-felt unselfish readiness to help is increasingly vanishing in today's world. Of course, one cannot generalize, but many people seem to keep their eyes shut when they are confronted with the plight of others. Maybe the money is to blame for this, or maybe the fact that most people nowadays just care about their families and have hardly any or no contact even with their immediate neighbours. How sad...

Secondly, Mayle's portrayal of the French social graces conserning kissing. I exploded with laughter while reading about the fact that traffic comes to a halt when two French people see each other in the street so that they can greet properly.

But what the Mayles' needed some getting used to was the kissing on the cheeks, as even the men do it. The 1 million euros question is-How many times? I've found a blog entry on this by an English woman who has been living in Paris for ten years:

http://www.petiteanglaise.com/archives/2004/12/14/french-kissing/

What Mayle tried to achieve by writing about this , apart from our belly hurting from laughing, is to sensitise people, who are planning to become expats, to social graces. You simply have to, when living in another country, respect this country's culture and act accordingly. Only by doing that you don't run the danger to make a blunder.

The vocabulary guiz:

1.blunder
a) mistake
b)lie
c)truth

2. convalesce
a)morn
b)rest
c)be quiet

3.wistful
a)clever
b)stingy
c)sad

4. addle
a)confuse
b)be lazy
c)jot down