{"id":32471,"date":"2020-11-10T05:30:47","date_gmt":"2020-11-10T04:30:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/?p=32471"},"modified":"2020-11-10T02:30:41","modified_gmt":"2020-11-10T01:30:41","slug":"french-commerce-glow-in-the-dark","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/french-commerce-glow-in-the-dark\/","title":{"rendered":"French Commerce \u2013 Glow in the dark"},"content":{"rendered":"

Well here we are, almost at the mi-novembre<\/strong> (mid-November<\/em>). In France, tout comme aux \u00c9tats-Unis<\/strong> (just like in the United States<\/em>), we\u2019ve changed the clocks<\/a> and it gets dark earlier. Growing up in the northeastern United States, I\u2019m used to early evenings. But when I went to France for the first time<\/a>, I was hardly ready for just how early evening could come.<\/p>\n

Nuit noir<\/strong> \/ The black of night<\/em><\/p>\n

Paris (and the surrounding area where I lived) is actually much further north on the globe than where I grew up, lying somewhere on a par latitudinally with the city of Qu\u00e9bec<\/a>, some 396 miles north from my hometown.<\/p>\n

The difference in latitude means that, in the winter, le soleil se l\u00e8ve plus tard et se couche plus t\u00f4t<\/strong> (the sun rises later and sets earlier)<\/em> than even I was used to. Le jeudi<\/strong> (On Thursday\u2019s<\/em>), my longest day of school, I would walk to school in the dark in the morning and come home after dark in the evening.<\/p>\n

I might have been 16 years old (and living in a well-lit urban area!), but it might have been nice still, to have a luminou<\/em> for company.<\/p>\n