Our First Social Outing

Last winter, when Soren was in Paris, he was invited to dine at the home of his grandmother's cousin, Annie, & her husband, Claude. They have a daughter, Nathalie who is married to David. They too were at the dinner. At that time, they told Soren to keep in touch and to contact them when we move to Paris. Soren did, and yesterday, David & Nathalie invited us to their home in Creteil which is a suburb 15 minutes outside of Paris. Due to ongoing train track repairs, it was not possible for us to get there without a car so David picked us up at our apartment in his little Renault. David speaks about the same amount of English as Soren does French. This means that communication is choppy, lot's of "ums &uhs" while searching for words, and lots of butchering of verb tenses, all while heavily accented. Lots of chuckles in between the butchering. It's very charming in my opinion. David has a great sense of humor and is very playful and lighthearted so there were no uncomfortable silences. Only when he left the room to get the champagne and tarte de pomme from the kitchen was there a moment where Soren was grasping for something to say in French to Nathalie. Nathalie does not speak a word of English. It was hard to tell if she is shy or if it was purely a language barrier issue. She probably wondered the same about me. She seems perfectly nice and she is pregnant with their first child, a boy, due in September. And did I mention the champagne? At 3:00 in the afternoon. Pretty nice.  They live on a lake and we walked around it. By this time, the day had grown quite humid which, when combined with our jetlag, the tarte de pomme, and the champagne, contributed to our sluggishness. Upon arriving at an amazing park across the lake that had approximately 10 separate play structures, the girls had energy for one spin on the whatchamacallit and then they were done.  Back at David's apartment we had one brief music jam (he is a jazz musician and music teacher) and off we went, chauffered back to our apartment. It was a lovely afternoon. And I said about two and a half things in French today so only onwards and upwards from here.