“Allez! Bon courage!” fell from above, mingling with the cold rain pelting my face. It was encouragement from a gentleman perched on his dry balcony in the middle of La Grande Motte during a half marathon run. My third in France. The wettest one yet.

Édition No. 3

But there were warmer moments, like when I shared a meal of polenta at the end of the Milano Cortina Olympics with a gentleman who happened to be the tech director for the Games. He shared how there was a Napoleonic hospital underneath the Verona Arena, which made putting on the event a bit more complicated. Things multiple times older than your own country tend to do that.

Yet people find a way. Sometimes it's modern tech as Dr. Jennifer Feltman explained. She, the only American involved with Notre Dame's restoration, shared about the use of LiDAR and Unreal engine coupled with medieval masonry and woodworking techniques, to bring the cathedral back to life. What is old is new again.

Sometimes new means a word like wesh, which means, well, maybe the question is what doesn't it mean? Or it could come in the form of a croissant, masquerading as a muffin, that has crème brûlée because, why not? It's like singing a song when you don't even know the lyrics in a foreign language, like Roy Eldridge did, which I found while putting together a montage with footage from years ago.

I had a very different relationship with the language during that time, as though watching from high above, on a balcony. Seven years later I found myself standing in front of Notre Dame thinking back on a day where I joked with a saleswoman, commiserated with a chocolatier, and managed to stay in the language for the most part. It's felt like a long run. But as I've picked up along the way, petit à petit, little by little, you'll eventually get somewhere. Even if it's coming back to the same place.