Officially French!

I am now officially French. Why? Because I am now in possession of a bike! I got it last Friday and proceeded to get a flat tire that night while showing it to my friends here in the foyer. Luckily enough one of my neighbors volunteered to fix it for me so the bike was up and running by Sunday when Tessa and I went for a ride around Laval. We realized that there were lots of parts of town that we hadn't seen and that the bikes would allow us to cover more area than we could on foot. We rode around town using our schools (we each have three that we teach in) as points of interest. Laval is really hilly (I scale what I call a petite montagne to walk to one of my schools) and that's partially why I hadn't been more proactive about getting a bike before now. We rode around for a couple of hours and saw so much of the town, it was really cool. Afterwards we rewarded ourselves with pastries from the bakery.

Really happy with our new hobby, Tessa suggested we ride bikes again today. I wasn't sore from riding yesterday - or so I thought - but when I sat on my bike to ride over to meet Tessa at her school, it was really painful! We just sucked it up and went riding for an hour. We went in a direction I had never been before and we were no farther than 5 minutes out of Laval when we started seeing farm animals! We rode along the river and it was really pretty. There's a little forest just outside of town where you can camp and ride horses - two things I've never been inclined to do before - and I started thinking it might not be such a bad idea to try them.

I really don't like riding in the streets with cars and stuff, it's just kind of scary. When we ride around town we usually just stay on the sidewalks (this was perfectly feasible yesterday when it was Sunday and there were maybe 2 other people on the main street in town) but apparently that's not legal! If I ever get stopped though, I'm just going to play the "stupid foreigner" card.

For the moment I'm loving my bike and walking is so passé but I know it won't last. In the meantime, I'm going to look into getting a little basket for my bike so that I can put a baguette in it!