New Country means New Friends

As we are now in our new beloved country of France we've been very blessed to be making many new friends. As you know by now we met a wonderful American family that we are now fast friends with, Lisa (the Mom), Rick (the Dad) and Irie (the best friend). It is so nice to know them and we help each other out as best we can, be it either picking up each other's girls when there are appointments that must be kept, going out to dinner, sharing a car and possible cooking lessons for yours truly!!

Lisa is a wonderful, reserved and intellectual lady who is a psychiatrist back home in a private practice. She is very creative and artistic, athletic with an even and calm spirit about her. Her husband Rick is very lively, outgoing, full of life and laughter and he is a history teacher for troubled teens in Oregon. He is constantly taking bike rides that go for miles and miles, he has done kite surfing lessons while here and is very adventuresome.

Finally there is Irie, Abigail's best friend here in France who is a wonderful mixture of both her parents with a smidgen of her own sense of style and attitude. She is very studious and will spend hours doing her homework making sure everything is just so. Together Irie and Abigail make a great team, or a dangerous duo depending on your point of view.

The great thing too is that they live right by the school so only 3 streets down and we get to see them often.

Then there are my French friends....truly a blessing. I've so often heard people say that the French are rude or mean....even this from my own French family! But my experience here has been one million percent different, they are incredibly warm, generous, thoughtful people who love to share their country and language with you. Here are two dear friends Nathalie (in the blue) and Helen (in the white) who I've met at Frejus Vous Accueille...basically my town's welcome center. I take several courses there with these lovely ladies. Mondays I take a scrap booking, decoupage type arts class, Thursdays I teach English as a Second Language and Nathalie joins us and then Friday all three of us take a Hula lesson from Lisa, our American friend.

Nathalie is a warm, funny lady who has gone completely out of her way so many times for Lisa and I that I can't even begin to keep count! She is one of the nicest people you will ever meet.

Helen is a feisty, spunky and hilarious lady who I call my favorite "little" friend. She has a spirit of waiting to get into trouble at any moment.

As I get the chance I will try and take more and more pictures of our friends, both mine and Abigail and share a little on each person, so if we talk about them, you will have a better sense of who they are in our new lives.