I am going to a concert on Friday night at the Halle aux grain Friday night and needed to figure out how long it takes to walk from the apartment from the apartment to the concert hall. I looked the concert hall on Google maps and it gave the directions but I do not have total faith in the times given for walking so I decided to make a trail run at walking. Can you tell I have a certain amount of OCD?

On the walk, which I am glad I took as there was construction and some detours to get where I wanted. Toulouse has a great deal of construction as they building a new metro line in the city. On the route, I found some of the construction and was amazed as reading the signs showed that they were moving a major monument to make room for the metro station. It seemed like an amazing project.

I was close to the Grand Rond and it is a nice place to read so I stopped and read my book for about an hour in the gazebo in the park.

I had lunch at one of my regular destinations, the Petit Quai. Had another great lunch. I had the Sausicon Toulouse which is the local sausage. I think it was the first time that I had tried the sausage.

Since it was Thursday, it was running group night. As usual, the course was a variation on the course. As I have stated before, we never run the exact same route. I am going to be very disappointed when we do a repeat of a course I have already run.

Elliot and I had decided that I needed to start speaking French so tonight was the first night for my trying. We did fairly well. It is definitely more English than French but we are going to keep working on it. The goal is to get to 50/50 French-English by the time I return to DC in June. I really appreciate that Elliot is so accommodating. Elliot does want to practice his English as he would like to get a job in the UK. He has applied for one in Bristol and I hope he gets it. Below is me after the run. One of my friends referred to the selfie as “proof of life” and I had not been kidnapped.

As in Britain and here in France, there were many deaths during World War I and there are many monuments commemorating the deaths in cities and villages. There is a very dramatic and meaningful one here in Toulouse. The white plaques have the names of those who died.