Do You Have A Dog?

It's 27c here in Gimont.  That's 84f.  I left this morning with just two half liter bottles of water and by the time I reached the village of Monferrand-Saves at around 12:30, they were both empty.  I couldn't find a drinking fountain or store that sold water.  With14km further to walk I was very lucky to stumble upon Francine's second grade class having lunch outside in the playground.

I got the teacher's attention and she was beyond nice about filling my two empty water bottles.  We introduced ourselves and when she went inside, the kids started shouting things at me in practically perfect English.  There were like 12 of them and they were asking "what's your name?", I thought to myself wow what nice friendly kids - and they speak excellent English. I said "Je m'apelle Steve", in practically perfect French.  Next they all seemed to want to know if I had a dog.  I told them "no, avez-VOUS un chien?"

Francine the teacher came back with my water and was so damned charming.  I'm pretty sure that they had English class just before lunch.  Her grin told me that.  I had been going head-to-head with an entire class of seven year olds, dueling in foreign language skills at a second grade level.  I wasn't winning but I wasn't losing either.

I'm mad at myself for not taking their picture but the timing seemed wrong.  As I started walking away Francine said something to them and they all yelled "bon chemin" or "bon voyage" and I yelled back "bon apetit!"

I ran into Dominic and Guido just after meeting the kids - they're the guys from the day I was lost twice going into Castres.  Dominic is the one who speaks English and he told me that they had just been talking about how they'd probably never see me again.  I told him that yesterday I walked around Toulouse for four hours or so and then took the train (I LOVE French trains) to the suburbs and walked another hour or so to L'Isle du Jourdain.  The guidebooks all say to do that.  He scoffed at me for taking a train and I kind of laughed in his face (in a nice friendly way of course) and asked him how he liked walking through the burbs.  It turns out he didn't.  He got a ride in a car from friends to pretty much the same place.

Have I mentioned how much I love Toulouse?  It's nice to be back out of the city and past the suburbs.  Tomorrow I'm headed for a small city called Auch.  The route is supposed to be nice rolling hills and in a day or two the path starts heading south towards the Pyrenees.

I downloaded the first couple of episodes of Veep season three so will watch a little of that before hitting the hay.