An hour and a half?!

That's what we said when we got back from a very pleasant visit to the apartment-home of a couple (Max and Elodie) who lives on the fifth story of our apartment building: "Did we really just have a conversation in French for an hour and a half?!"

Adam met Max a few weeks back when he held the door for Max (who was carrying a big load of stuff into the building). Max was really friendly and invited us over to visit sometime. Tonight, we went over to their apartment and had such a good time.

Elodie had made some delicious tea, as well as an amazing tarte aux mirabelles (mirabelles are small, yellow plums). John sat contentedly on my lap the whole time, as long as I was giving him small bites of the tarte. He absolutely loved it. Finally, he was so full that he could not eat another bite, but could only make a couple small burps.

This is not the actual tarte from tonight (I forgot to bring a camera), but it's one just like it so you can see what a "tarte aux mirabelles" looks like.

We sat at a low table in the living room area, drinking tea, eating pieces of tarte, and just talking about our lives and interests. Max studied geography and Elodie studied philosophy, and they both enjoy reading a lot. So it was fun to talk with them. Although our French is still quite elementary, it was encouraging just to be able to hold a conversation.

Oh, one more fun little cultural thing that happened: we brought some cookies (our favorie standby, Mrs. Wagner's amazing melt-in-your-mouth cookies), and I guess maybe they just don't have plain cookies like that here (at least not very often), because they politely asked us, "Oh, so how do you eat these? With jam? Or with chocolate?"

Ah, cultural dessert differences...