The Human Race

Sorry for the lack of posts last week. Peter was even more busy than usual preparing his first oral presentation which, if you will pardon me for bragging, he killed! French students even emailed to ask him for a copy! So that is his valid excuse. My excuse is less impressive........1 part lack of material, 1 part my new baking obsession, 2 parts good ol' fashioned laziness.

While I am definitely not as busy as I am accustomed to being, I am slowly but surely finding ways to occupy my time here. In addition to taking a couple of french classes, and helping out at our new church, I am also making new friends through swimming and running. I am training with a few ladies from my church for the Barcelona marathon in March, and a couple of us decided to run in the Nike Human Race Saturday morning.

It was my first running event in France and it was so much fun. It wasn't technically a race, but a group run that Nike organized to get more people involved in the sport. It was supposed to be a 10k, but after several missed turns and loop-backs, I'm pretty sure we ran some other distance. I was so happy to learn though, that the running community is just as warm, welcoming, and fun in Europe as in the U.S. Here are a few pics from the morning:

My friend Heidi ran with me and we had a great time sporting our new Nike running shirts:


Waiting for the start which, following French custom, was 20 minutes late:


Around 50 runners or so participated, including a couple of children and a wheel-chair participant.


Unfortunately, a few hours after the race, I started coming down with a cold and spent the rest of the afternoon watching episodes of "How I met your Mother" online. I never knew about this show, but our French friends love it so I've been catching up. Peter found it amusing to harass me by taking pics like this one:



Notice the tissue on the desk......A cold is definitely a worthy excuse for wasting a Saturday afternoon with American TV, right?