Winter Sports

Surprisingly, we’ve found January the perfect time of the year here to practice our favorite sports. Josh finally got in touch with the city’s ultimate frisbee team, and today he’s wearing a t-shirt and shorts and playing in an ultimate frisbee tournament on the beach in St. Tropez. He called about an hour ago to say that he could see the Alps from the beach. His comment about the tournament: What else is the French Riviera for?

I’ve had similar luck with my favorite sport: shopping. January is one of two “soldes,” sale months, here. Basically stores save up all their clearance merchandise, and put it back out starting January 7th. January 7th was also the first day of “The Big Chill,” as the newspapers were calling it. We were hit with six inches of snow, which closed the highways for at least a day and cancelled school for three. It snows so infrequently here that there are no snow plows. There were, however, some very happy children (and children at heart) who built snowmen in the squares, had snowball fights in the streets, and skied to the grocery store.

Six inches of snow is nothing for a girl from Central PA, so on Wednesday afternoon, I ate a good lunch, strapped on my boots and headed out to rock the soldes. Now I’m lounging in my amazing new yoga pants that gather in bows at the ankles and would make Princess Jasmine jealous, just starting to study for the exam I was supposed to have on Thursday. La vie est belle!

On another note: we finally understand why everyone in Central PA runs out to buy bread and milk when the forecasters call for snow. Delivery trucks couldn’t make it into town, and on Friday our supermarket was almost empty of all the everyday staples. Paté, anyone?