La belle vue de leur maison.
Their "indoor" swimming pool...
Karen was lovely. She has two sons around our age and clearly adored having 3 girls knocking about the house with her. She lazed with us on the beach, showed us the local market, and stayed up until the early hours with us, chatting away after dinner.
Rémy was a funny French man, who was only able to speak English in the present tense. At face value, he was grizzly and his French accent had an aggressive edge. I was nervous around him, finding it rather daunting being seated opposite him at the dinner table... but I learnt he was really a softie at heart, with a twinkle in his eye, and a wink every time he threw a challenging French sentence in my direction.
As I said; Karen clearly welcomed our company and our ability to free the house from it's usual testosterone-filled air. Despite her being part of Becca's family, we found ourselves telling her all sorts of home-truths that we would never divulge to our parents... University sports club initiations, dalliances over the past weeks with toned french men, and our penchant for alcohol (including that night when we managed to drink 19 shots of tequila).
As a result, she opened up to us. As a result, it got me thinking.
She told us how, when she was at university, she slipped into the habit of forgetting to eat. It wasn't a conscious thing, but it lead to her being unable to get out of bed which, in turn, lead to anorexia. And with anorexia came the attention from friends and parents, who were suddenly concerned with her well-being after she'd felt that they didn't care for most of her life.
I'm not saying that I'm anywhere near anorexia (nor am I saying that I'm over-weight), but it did make me think about my own eating habits. And not only my own, but those of my friends. I hope Becca took what her aunt was saying as seriously as I did (if not more than).
This year I've lost weight, and loved it. I went through a phase in my first 2yrs of university where I had most definitely put on weight and it didn't suit me. After Steve and I got together it started dropping off me... Because I did more exercise? Less drinking? Less eating? More stressing? I don't know why. But what I do know is, I now have to be a bit smarter about my eating and make sure I remember to eat properly. Because looking healthy on the outside does not necessarily mean I'm healthy on the inside! And I can be an awful attention seeker sometimes, I just need to make sure I get my thrills somewhere else.
