My students inevitably all ask the same question: when did you become fluent in French?
It’s one that can’t be answered, as you don’t cross fluency like a finish line, don’t pass a test of Knowing All Of The French. You just realize little by little that it is easier and easier to be understood. You recognize milestones accomplished in the other language, from navigating official paperwork, to building friendships, to standing your ground in whatever irritating French situation you are in that can only be resolved through vicious rhetoric. I feel like I walked through these milestones the year I lived and worked in Paris, but that isn’t to say that I haven’t seen my French improve since then.
Because studying a language is a blissfully endless process of learning new words, words you didn’t know you needed to know until you need to use them right then. I have all the words I usually need to use on a daily basis, but every now and then I find myself going back to the dictionary to find a word that needs to attach itself to a new thing, a new feeling, a new place.
Words like oursin – sea urchin. When we walked through the village of Sète last week, we stared into crystal waters and saw jelly-fish (méduse) drifting their diaphanous disks above multitudes of sea-urchins. I taught them the word for jellyfish, but I laughed about the urchins and admitted that I didn’t know the word because I had never needed to know it. Several hours later, when I was limping out of the perfect aqua colored water at the beach, I wished I knew the word. If I had known it, I could have hobbled over to the hard-core beach goer with scuba gear and asked if I should be actually concerned about the urchin spines lodged in my foot making it swell up and burn, or if my student was overreacting when she suggested it might need amputation. After some frantic Googling and a round of gelato for all, we headed back to Montpellier with the certainty that I would live, and with a new vocabulary word- oursin.
Words like salins – salt flats and flamant rose – flamingo. If I had known them, I could have better described the sight that stretched before us as we stood on top the ramparts of Aigues-Mortes, gazing out at pink marshes and spotting pink birds dotting the swamps. The man driving our little bus offered the words up, pinning thme in our brains to both fields and birds of pink.
And when we rode horseback down the beach, watching the sun glisten off the impossible blue water and spread across the untouched white sand dunes, I feel like I was missing more words than I had. Equestrian words like hooves and bit and post, the last of which our guide yelled back at one point, but in her southern French accent so strong that I have no clue what she said. The words mixed in with the cries she would yell at our horses, and sounded like a strange sort of music or chant, fitting to the beautifully desolate dunes and marshes of Camargue.
And when we wandered around the old market at Uzès, there were so many vegetables I had never seen before, so many fish whose names escape me. So many words that I want to know and use and eat.
But I feel like I need other words too, and I’m not even sure in what language I want them. I just find myself coming up short in describing how rich this past week was in all its sights, smells, tastes, and sounds. It’s like I told my students as we stood in front of paintings that we didn’t understand earlier in the week: sometimes you just have to feel it first, and for a while, before you know how to talk about it.
I guess I’ll just have to keep finding new words.
There is a constant dilemma plaguing 
Luckily, my amazing sister-in-law Laura recently opened a
All her stuff is adorable, but I especially love her animal watercolors. 
The result? A perfect tea party with personal touches for which I did very little work. Yes please. I mean, just look at those cute bunnies hoping all over the table. The only thing better would be REAL BABY BUNNIES EVERYWHERE.. but Etsy maybe hasn’t evolved that far. Yet. We can dream.
Check out 
I do not come from Sports People. I come from book people, from museum people, from long discourses on archeology and trampolines-are-dangerous people. I was raised with an innate fear of any situation in which my legs would be over my head (cartwheels, upside-down roller coasters, back-flips into swimming pools), and I somehow believe that this fear plays into the inherent quality of my family not being Sports People. 
This is not to say that we didn’t get dirty, didn’t exhaust ourselves, didn’t play and run. We were hiking people, you-aren’t-allowed-to-come-inside-all-day people, people who explored and adventured and had not an inside voice among them. The first pure white article of clothing I owned was probably my wedding dress, because we lived life in a wild, exciting, and dirty way. But we were not organized Sports People. We ran cross country, because that merely involves perseverance, the continual planting of one foot in front of the other. No one throws anything at you in cross country, no one makes you catch or hit. You just run, just hike at a more rapid pace in tiny shorts and jersey. 
I love it. I love the sound of games on in the background while I take my Sunday nap. I love summer outings to the ballpark and the community that comes with crowding into a dive bar to watch a game, even if I am still shaky on 
I totally failed on that last part, as I love hotdogs and crowd activities way too much to hide it, but I managed to not call down a baseball curse.
Though not everyone would consider bunting an important thing to keep on hand, I have found that whipping out yards of homemade bunting at a moments notice can only ever improve the situation. Bless that husband of mine, who has nobly climbed up on many a ladder to hang and rehang bunting over the course of our relationship. 
The Art in Life 