Toulouse

Toulouse became my home for one year as a part of our expat experience in the Midi-Pyrénées, the largest region in France, which is located between the Atlantic and the Mediterranean and is made up of 8 departments : Ariège, Aveyron, Gers, Haute-Garonne, Hautes-Pyrénées, Lot, Tarn and Tarn-et-Garonne. Except the Hautes-Pyrénées department all are named after the river that crosses them. Toulouse is the capital of the Midi-Pyrénées region and also of the Haute-Garonne department.

 

 

The emblem of Toulouse are violets. They were grown by market gardeners to the north of the city from the 19th Century. "La Violette de Toulouse" is a registered trademark and comes in many forms - sweets, perfume, liquor…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

from Wikipedia: 

" Toulouse lies on the banks of the River Garonne, 150 km (93 miles) from the Mediterranean Sea and 230 km (143 miles) from the Atlantic Ocean, and 580 km (360 miles) away from Paris. With 1,202,889 inhabitants as of 1 January 2008, the Toulouse metropolitan area is the fourth-largest in France.
Toulouse is the centre of the European aerospace industry, with the headquarters of Airbus, Galileo Positioning System, the SPOT Satellite System, the Aerospace Valley...
Toulouse was the capital of the former province of Languedoc (provinces were abolished during the French Revolution), the former Visigothic Kingdom and was the capital of the historical region of Occitania (Southern France).
A city with a typical architecture of Southern France, Toulouse has two historic sites added to the UNESCO World Heritage Site, the Canal Du Midi (shared with other cities), since 1996, and the Basilica of St. Sernin under the description: World Heritage Sites of the Routes of Santiago de Compostela in France since 1998.
Culturally, Toulouse is home to the Galerie du Château d'eau, one of the oldest places dedicated to photography in the world, the Académie des Jeux floraux, the oldest literary society of the Western World and, according to many historians, was one of the places where capitalism was invented."

 

 

 

 

 

Canal Du Midi



The Garonne river

 

Basilica of St. Sernin

 

 

 

We relocated to France from Germany because of my husband's job offer. As always relocating isn't easy, and for many reasons it was rather stressful period for my husband and I at that time, but in general we loved living in France, especially that part of the country.

 

You can see on the map, we were one and a half hours from the beach in Narbonne /Gruissan ...the Mediterranean (C) which became our popular summer destination, of course. We are also hiking enthusiasts, so being about the same distance from The Pyrénées National Park (B), located along the border of France and Spain, made this location just perfect.

We travelled and explored quite a lot when living in France. I will write more about it later.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I wasn't allowed to work so I concentrated on learning the language and exploring the way of life in France. I was attending French full-time at Alliance Française  right in the city centre at La place du Capitole, can you believe it? What a location for a school!

Regarding the language it was a lot of work and struggle at the beginning, but I love the French language. Unfortunately I haven't spoken French for a very long time. I hope I won't forget it all. I guess I need to move back to France ;-) Who knows, maybe one day....

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sugar Love

The Holiday Season is approaching and we will indulge even more in our traditional treats, many of them loaded with sugar. Did you know...

Americans spent $32 billion on Candy in 2011. The consumption per capita was 25 pounds (11 kilos).

(Candy is North American expression for what is in the UK, Ireland, South Africa and other commonwealth countries called confectionery)

The word candy comes from qandi - Arabic for a sugar confection.

Another sugary treat is a Cupcake. Americans ate over 770 million cupcakes in 2012.

National Cupcake Day is December 15.

The largest cupcake shop chain in the US is Crumbs Bake Shop.

Cupcake (also British English - fairy cake, Australian English - patty cake or cup cake) is a small cake designed to serve one person, which can be baked in a small thin paper or aluminum cup. Icing and other cake decorations can be applied.
The first mention of the cupcake can be traced as far back as 1796, when a recipe notation of "a cake to be baked in small cups" was written in American Cookery by Amelia Simmons. The earliest documentation of the term cupcake was in "Seventy-five Receipts for Pastry, Cakes, and Sweetmeats" in 1828 in Eliza Leslie's Receipts cookbook. - Wiki

Cupcakes popularity spread in 2000 when  Sex and the City's Carrie Bradshaw nibbled on them.



popular TV sit-com "Sex and the City"

JFK Anniversary

Today it is a 50-year anniversary of the assassination of the 35th U.S. President John F. Kennedy, commonly known as JFK, serving from January 1961 until November 1963.

Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963, in Dallas, Texas.

Today thousands are honoring Kennedy's memory with a ceremony in Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas, through which the president's motorcade passed when he was shot.

NAF NAF

I mentioned it  before, I am not a -fast food- person, but when I need to eat on the go or just eat out I love to go to NAF NAF GRILL.

 

 

This place actually started in Naperville, where I lived before, when it opened the first building on Ogden Avenue.
Today there are other locations, but I usually go to the  Fox Valley.

4430 Fox Valley Center Dr., Suite 101
Aurora, IL 60504
Phone: 630-499-1700

I love the fact that everything is chopped, fired, roasted, blended and baked FRESH throughout the day!
It is a middle eastern restaurant, so if  Shawarma, Falafel, Baba Ghanoush, Tabule, Kabab, Hummus, Tahini, Pita... speaks to you, it is a place to visit.

My favourite is a Pita filled with chicken breast kabab, a spread of hummus, Israeli salad, and topped with tahini sauce. It tastes so good!! When I am really hungry I also add their to die for homemade fries which come in sliced version. Believe me this food is tasty.

Warmer mug

So, I was writing about "knitting" last time, and it actually reminded me how much I used to love to knit.

Unfortunately, my life has been for many years more about packing and relocating or studying new vocabulary, recently also gardening, but now when I am not about to move any time soon (at least I don't know about anything!) the winter is almost here, so the gardening is over for now, I was thinking that I could get back to that activity. I somehow had  a strong urge to check what is new 'in the yarn world' , and discovered really interesting one - something I haven't used before. I purchased one to try how it would look like.

 

I have an idea what I want to do with it, but would like to work on the design a bit more.

 

As a sample, I made this mug warmer. The yarn actually looks much nicer in reality. ( I couldn't get a better picture for some reason)

 

 



Knitting and driving...?!

Seriously?! Yep. I was sitting in a car with my husband last week (he was driving) and as we are approaching an intersection and stopping at red light, there is a car in the next lane. The driver was a lady in her late fifties and what is she doing? She is winding  a yarn ball by hand - from an old sweater or something. I was just staring at her and at that particular moment just couldn't stop laughing. I had never seen this one before.

Unfortunately, she kept doing that while driving as well. It is definitely not funny.

 

Have we gone completely mad, people?!  OK, so we eat and drive, call and drive, text (sms) and drive, smoke and drive, read and drive etc. , and now we need to do the knitting as well! This is crazy, and it was a "mature" women!

From my experience, the Americans are very sensitive to their -right to freedom-, simply said sometimes I have a feeling that  they would  like to do whatever they want, but in my eyes, certain things should be simply banned.

According to Wikipedia there were over 32 thousand traffic fatalities in the US in 2011. I am sure many of them because of 'knitting....people'.

 

 

"Hors de Prix"

"Hors de Prix" was translated as "Priceless" and I wanted to blog about this French movie, starring Audrey Tautou and Gad Elmaleh, a long time ago, but kept forgetting. Finally, I remembered today.

 

I had lots of fun watching this movie!