two hundred ten

We are one step closer to getting to France and having money to survive. Tonight, Joe submitted his completed application for the French government teaching assistantship. We've been talking and thinking a lot about how the time there will impact our writing--style, material, motivation. I'm trying to see what came before me in the expatriate France-adventure writing. So far, I'm making sure I read these to. These are the two I'm most excited about so far.


The obvious choice. I'm planning on taking Mastering the Art of French Cooking with us and learning what I can from it.

I'm becoming a surprisingly large fan of Hemingway. I couldn't have a conversation with him; we would not get on well. But his writing is lovely, so this will be a really interesting twist on "memoir" or personal nonfiction.

I'm looking forward to finding more titles, but looking more forward to finding out where I stand in all of this and what about the experience becomes important to me. Food? Based on the titles I've found so far, it will be a large part. The table's the center of the family, and with a new family and a new "table" (and no family to share it with), our dinners will be a key building block in our new marriage--our time to sit together with another American, another person obsessed with words, the other part of ourselves.