The smurffs and other film characters

Yesterday, was the day the French Television was going to tape my art class' outing to the famous Ste. Victoire mountain.

The TV crew was a couple of hours late arriving at Monique's studio.   It didn't bother me since I had a chance to talk to the other students and practice my French a little bit.

I met an American young man from the San Diego area.  He is a highly successful engineer, who had founded a music file company for the internet.  He has since sold that company to Yahoo and is re-charging his creative batteries with a year in Provence. He is here with his wife and 5 year old daughter.

There was another engineer, a young lady from Taiwan, who quit her job designing LCD screens to spend 3 months in France.  There were also two French ladies who have been taking classes for a while.  Also part of the entourage were Monique and her husband. Monique's mother also stopped by while we were waiting.

I had started to suspect the TV crew was never going to show when here come 2 young men with tons of equipment.   They are doing a special series on the delights of Provence (Echappees Belles) that will air in September.

We loaded all our painting stuff and we took off for the country.  One of the crew members spoke a little English and Spanish.  The English he learned from his parents (who were originally from Martinique but had spent time in New York).  The Spanish he learned from a senorita espanola.

Ste. Victoire mountain has been immortalized by famous impressionists like Cezanne.  The day had perfect weather and and the view was magnificent.  We felt so inspired and ready to capture the beauty all around us.  Well that was the theory.  The reality felt a little short for me as I wrestled with the oil painting medium.  Monique's rendering was great and some of the other students did well as well. 

At one point, when I was trying to release my painting from the easel the wind blew the canvas right into my face.  This is NOT watercolor or acrylic and I had a perfect imprint of the blue sky I had just painted all over my face.  While the class struggled to name what my visage reminded them- all the while attempting not to laugh at me- It finally dawned on me what they thought I looked like. Soon after that they kept saying "les schtroumpfs" to peels of laughter. The Smurfs of course!  The only thing that kept this experience from being totally humiliating is that the crew had put away their equipment.

Overall, it was a great day, and even the good nature ribbing I received helped me feel more integrated to the French life and culture.