Travelday

You should get used to me talking quite a bit about a very small town called Paziols (paz-YOL), in Southwestern France.

Last summer, my French tutor from middle school moved four of her brightest bilingual (French-English) students from New York City to this little town in the garrigue for three months. She and her brother Serge had bought an old vigneron’s house in the town, and she had decided to turn it into a language camp, where American students could come, not only to learn French, but also to learn something about French life. Anne-Marie, her nephew Alex, her daughter Lalé, the four kids and I spoke only French, made French meals, did research on attractions in the area, and basically experimented for three months, trying to discover what we would be able to do with a much younger, much less bilingual group the next year.

I don’t know what this year’s group is going to be like, but the seven of us will be back to do the same things we did last year: tennis on the town tennis courts, dances and barbecues in the town square, exploring the ancient garrigue with both its cultivated fields of wine grapes and its savage flora of wild plum bushes, almond trees and raspberries and blackberries by the bucketful. We’ll find new places to swim, although I think I’ll always have a soft spot for the waterfall that lies within the woods and the little creek that runs past the clearing of picnic tables where we spent time last year. I look forward to new things, but some things should stay the same.

Like the peaches. One of my favorite days in Paziols was the morning that Anne-Marie and I got up early to meet the peach lady who sold peaches, apricots and homemade jam in the town square every week. They announced her arrival over the town loudspeaker, like the also announced the pizza truck and the butcher-on-wheels, but if you waited for the announcement, you were too late: those in the know were already assembled to buy some of the most luscious, delicious peaches you’ve ever tasted.

Part of being in Paziols isn’t just learning about France: for these displaced New Yorkers, Paziols also became a window to a slower time, a more peaceful place than the bustling city where we were raised. At the risk of sounding cliché, I love the way that the locals take time to find out about who you are, where you’re from and why you’re here. I love that people are content to spend their day slowly, sieste in the afternoon, or a swim if its especially warm. I don’t know how I would do living in Paziols all the time, but it’s nice to know that I have that house to go back to every summer, where we can spend our evenings watching old French movies on the big projection screen in the living room, talking together and eating ice cream, and know that everyone else in town is probably doing the same thing.