Just one of our many screen-less windows...
Il fait très chaud!
It’s very hot. That’s one of the first phrases I learned in French class. However, my classes began in January, and, at that time, plagued by snow and ice and temps dipping well below freezing, I couldn’t fathom actually ever using the phrase in France.
How times have changed.
Yesterday, it was Miserable. Actually, the thermostat only read 81 degrees (that’s Fahrenheit. Everyone who isn’t from the U.S.A. will just have to deal with it). That’s not really all that warm for someone who has lived in Phoenix, Arizona, for the past few years of her life. In fact, I think that’s what we call “Winter” in Arizona. But we don’t have this humidity thing, which makes all the difference in the world.
By 10 a.m. yesterday, I was sweating like crazy. I couldn’t even be bothered to dry and style my hair in the morning. By 3 p.m., I came out of the grocery store and thought I had stepped into some lower-level of hell. By 5 p.m. I had bought a fan. By 7 p.m. I had decided jeans are no longer a possibility and was wearing a skirt and flip-flops.
My husband thinks I’m just whining, but seriously, this was terrible. If this is what France will be like for much of the summer (and my French sources tell me it is) I’m not in for a treat. Or, more likely, I’ll be heading back to the good ol’ US of A (i hate that phrase) for the end of July and August.
Not that it doesn’t get hot in Wisconsin, where my parents live, of course. But we have three things that seem to be unheard of in France.
1. Air-conditioning that actually manages to cool down a building.
2. Automobiles that somehow manage to go up an incline WHILE the air-conditioning is running.
3. Windows with these crazy metallic grates over them, which I will refer to as “screens,” so that we can let cool, night-time air in without having to worry about also letting in mosquitoes, bees, birds and the “gypsies” everyone keeps telling us have floated up the Seine and are now lurking on our streets waiting to steal all our things (yes, we have been warned about this by several people. I learned that the term “gypsy” wasn’t considered proper back in my Women’s Studies 103 class at UW-Madison, but they use it here).
Since my life is, at most, unpleasant without #2, and close to unbearable without the # 1 and #3, I’m not sure I’m going to last the summer.
(Come on, France, even developing nations have managed to get #3, the screen-thing on the windows, accomplished, and some even have managed to complete a lot of # 1, too, so why can’t you?)
Fortunately for us, a huge storm hit last night and cooled everything off. The weather is now gloomy and cool which I’m sure will irk a bunch of people, but I love it.
The Edge of the Forest 