merci céline (not you, Celine Dion)

i flew from Nice to paris Sunday evening, but it was such an incredibly beautiful day (maybe 14°, bright sun, no clouds) that i spent the morning wandering around the Vieux Ville and the Marché des Fleurs (not sure if that should be a des or what, articles continue to be a problem for me). The market is great because it's not just flowers but also a farmers market and there are cheeses and olives and spices and teas and olive oils and tapenades etc etc. I wandered around (with my backpack home strapped to my back) for a while, bought some bread with tomatoes and gorgonzola, as well as a basket of the reddest shiniest spanish strawberries to eat for lunch.

When i got hungry i headed to the beach and sat there for a while watching the crazy old men swimming in the water (there's like a whole bunch of them; they swim around and then get out and do pushups on the pebbly beach...they're not together but they all just seem to do the exact same thing) and the dozens and dozens of sailboats out on the water for sailing school.

after a while i decided that i haven't done any drawing in a ,onth and it's time i started again so i did a drawing of the boats and the water and the waves and started painting it in with watercolours. i was almost finished when i noticed someone walking up to me; i looked over and there was this little blonde french girl looking at my sketchbook.
- Bonjour! i said
- Bonjour....
- Comment ca va?
- Ca va bien... je [unintelligible french] acheter [more unintelligible french] votre dessin?
Whaaaa? She wants to buy my drawing? This is completely inexplicable since i just draw for fun and rarely show anything to anyone, but yes, after a little more discussion and gesturing it was established that she wanted a drawing. i was completely blown away and told her she could have this one if she liked it and she seemed pretty happy about that arrangement. We managed to have a little more conversation while i cut the page out (i think she was confused by my accent and occasionally weird sentence structure but it was fun, i found out that her name is Celine and she is seven and a half and someone, i didn't understand who, is thirty-nine) AND i got to say 'Voila!' as i handed it to her! You don't know how long i have been wanting to use 'Voila!'. Also 'Ooh la la' but it didn't seem to fit.
Finally as she got up i offered her a strawberry which i think made her happier than the drawing did and she ran back to her dad.
A couple minutes later she was back with a long stemmed pink rose from the bouquet they had purchased at the market. It was so nice.

A little later as I was getting up to leave the beach her father came over to thank me and to chat; i had told her i was from Canada so we just talked about that and the fact that i was travelling etc. He told me my french was very good (ooh la la!) which is not quite true, i think that right now i'm at the point where my french is charmingly broken. I would have liked to stay and talk to them some more (they were both so cute!) but i had to go.

Anyway, after speaking only French with them, and the super friendly cab driver from Friday night and the museum guard who tried to pick me up i'm feeling a lot more confident in my ability to navigate paris in french only. We shall see....