Saturday mornings are one of the best things about living in Lyon, because I get to go to my market. There are a lot of different markets in Lyon, and they happen almost every day except Monday, but my favorite is the Marché de la Parc Tête D'or, a fifteen minute walk from my house. It's big enough that I can find almost anything I want, but not so big that it takes ages to see everything. Best of all, it stays open until 1:30p, so I can go even if I don't manage to make it out of the apartment until noon.

It's open year-round and I've gone most weeks since getting here, but this time of year is so lovely - everything is ripe and beautiful and delicious, and as soon as you get close you can smell strawberries. Today it was just such a perfect place, and so full of the good things in life, that I couldn't keep a smile off my face as I did my shopping.

As if all that weren't enough, it's cherry season now! Cherries are one of the very best things about summer. I could eat them all day, and I would buy them at almost any price. Fortunately I didn't have to follow through on that, as things are not expensive at my market. :)

Here is a picture of my new favorite booth. Why yes, man behind the counter, the way to make me a loyal customer is in fact to feed me free cherries while I wait in line. :D

Seriously, how could you resist this?

Everything looked so delicious that I may have gone a bit overboard today, but I still didn't spend much more than 20€. Here is my bounty:

There were a lot more cherries when I first bought them, but I couldn't resist eating them while I walked home. They were perfect.

The purplish pods between the peas and the green beans are my experimental food for the week. They were labeled as "coco rouges" and I was instructed to shell them, but not to eat them raw. We'll see what I come up with.

It's been a good week. Almost everyone I've seen over the past few days has made a special point of telling me what an improvement they've noticed in my French since the beginning of the year, which although I still have a long way to go, is still very nice to hear. Last night I went out to dinner with two of my teachers from School 2, one of whom is Scottish (but has been in France for decades) and the other of whom is French. Conversation was in French, and I was able to not only follow what was being said but actively participate, with only a few instances of asking the Scottish teacher for a word or phrase. At one point, she complimented me on my accent by saying that I've done a better job of getting rid of my American accent in French than she has with her Scottish one, which I'm not sure I believe, but it was awesome to hear. (That's not to say that I pronounce everything correctly in French; just that when I mispronounce things, I'm at least doing it with sounds that exist in the French language, rather than sounds from American English.) I also got a compliment about it today from one of my coffee guys, and to top it all off, I just took a placement test for a French class I'm hoping to take in June and got the highest level they give. Of course, that's from a written (largely multiple choice) test and does not reflect the difficulty I still have thinking on my feet when trying to speak, but still, a huge confidence-booster.

(The one person who does not seem happy to see my linguistic progress is my old nemesis the concierge, who seems to resent the fact that I can now communicate my demands that he do his job and fix things, preventing him from simply staring at me like I am a crazy foreign lady and waiting for me to go away. I think he is frustrated that he has to make up real excuses now. But seriously though it would be nice to have a single working light in the corridor on my floor. And a light in my kitchen. And a working freezer compartment in the refrigerator. And a working back burner. FIX MY THINGS DAMMIT.)

Okay, I'm off. It's a beautiful day, and I'm heading out to a Brazilian music festival with Ana, then to Michael's for raclette and Eurovision and fun and friends. More anon.