I’m sitting here in the port of Marseille, and figured I’d click on my laptop to see if maybe there was a stray internet connection.. and sure enough there is. Strange, considering there isn’t much around here and wifi radio connections aren’t really designed to travel a long way. Maybe the fish have a transmitter? emoticon

Anyway, I spent the day wondering around Marseille and just generally having a good time. Cara would say I was "shuffling", which I suppose is a rather Corsican way of walking around when you have no particular reason to do so or place to go. I did lots of people watching, which was fun because there are a lot of interesting people here. I happened to be in a main public square at about 12:00pm, and that was when lunch "started".  The square (and the many surrounding outside eating places quickly filled up with the local worker-bees who seem to relish the minutes. Lunch at most places for most people consisted of either a pasta dish or meat. Always two courses (an "appetizer" and then main course), and then a dessert. For drinking, the most common was red wine, then white wine, and then beer.  Few people drank water, although "perrier" was the choice when water was delivered.

Lunch lasted about 1.5 hours for most people.  Quite a long time, especially to someone like me who (when I worked in the corporate world) rarely took a lunch break at all — preferring to eat at my desk so I could leave that much earlier.  Here, I get the feeling that "work" is a lot different then back in North America. It appears people who work together are actually "friends" of a sort. They work together, have lunch together, and from what I understand from our cousins, many of them get together "socially" after work, too. 

One thing I did find a bit funny yesterday was when I was in the shipping place’s office. I was there when "Elodie" arrived, and the first thing she did was "make the rounds" and give a "kiss kiss" greeting to every person in the office (7 of them, including the boss who had his own glass cage office). Now I don’t know about you, but that would really drive me nutty if I had to do that every work day. Not to mention that in Canada or the US you’d quickly get slapped with a T & A lawsuit if you even *thought* about approaching a girl in the office for a "kiss kiss" good-morning.

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Anyway, I’m sitting in the van right now and preparing to have a bit of a snack. My aunt gave my some "Terrine de Chevreuil aux Airelles", which I think is some kind of goat patte.  Not sure, but I bought a baggette (bread) and Cara packed a knife for me.. so that will be my nice snack and perhaps dinner if I like it.

I arrive in Bastia at 7:00am tomorrow, so hopefully I’ll get a good night sleep tonight. Wish me luck finding a plug!