I am usually an avid walker when in Toulouse and wander around the city quite a bit. My Garmin tells me my average step count is around 14k steps per day.

With the race coming up on Sunday, I have tried to reduce my walking and take it a little easier. I am not doing my daily two wanders around the city but I still have to live life normally and do the regular activities.

I walked to the open air vegetable market on the Boulevard de Strasbourg as I needed fruit for both breakfast and lunches. Unfortunately, they did not have the cheap raspberries but they had reasonable priced strawberries. I was definitely getting tired of cantaloupe for every breakfast. I, also, bought some Clementines from Portugal that look like they had just been picked off the tree. They still have stems and some green leaves on them.

From the open air market, I walked over to the Marché Victor Hugo and bought a chicken breast for dinner. They have two rankings of chicken, the regular and Label Rouge. From reading about Label Rouge, it is a higher quality, longer raising period, better feed, and better living conditions. The meat is supposedly leaner, firmer, richer in taste than standard chicken. I am not sure I can really tell the difference but the chicken was a good. I, also, needed a baguette so added that to my list.

This walk was shorter than I would normally do which was the point. I spent the most of the rest of the day at home having lunch – cheese, charcuterie, olives, cherry tomatoes and fruit along with the baguette. I read most of the afternoon.

I got tired of being at home so I went out for an Aperol Spritz at Maison Soclo, the hotel where Emily and Barbara had stayed. It is a short walk from my apartment. The staff had been super friendly so I thought it would be a nice relaxing place to have the spritz and just read and relax. It was a great experience. Elodie remembered me and even remembered I was running the half marathon and wished me luck. The manager came over and welcomed me. He asked about Emily and Barbara and I said they were headed back to the U.S. today after a nice time in Paris. Gabon was surprised but happy that I remembered he was waiting to hear about an apartment which he got. It is fun to build more community here in Toulouse even if it was with service works of the places I frequent.

The good thing is that all the conversations were in French. For some reason, I am feeling more confident in my speaking French. I have even begun to think in French now. When I think about things I am doing and what I want to do, it comes in French now. It is something that is fairly new but I am liking it. I want to speak French more. Even with Elliot who is fluent in English, I want to try speaking more French. I still have limited vocabulary and need to find some words but the basics are coming better.

I made Nigella Lawton’s rosemary chicken for dinner – or at least as close as I could with the ingredients I had – lemon, oil and dried rosemary. The recipe calls for fresh rosemary but I did not have that so used the dried I had. I, also, did not have red onion but felt that was minor flavor to the rest. The Label Rouge chicken tasted great and the whole dinner was good.

There is one thing that I have become quite good at is improvisation. Most of my life here in Toulouse requires some improvisation – language and communication, cooking, doing laundry, traveling and just living. It is good for the brain to be nimble and adaptable.