Market day in the village!

Today was the market day in Brantome (my "home" village), it's very much like a Farmer's Market in the US but it also has clothes and other wares, every kind of food you could imagine, flowers, sausage, everything! I bought a bag of nectarines and this beautiful little item from the Patisserie or Boulangerie, I always mix them up. One is for pastries and one for bread but this one has both, so it's a patisserie and boulangerie?

After the market I walked over to the riverfront and wrote in my journal for a bit, cheesy I know, but it was quite lovely! I'm finding myself stuck between this thinking of "being in the moment" and "enjoying the moment", just reading and relaxing and taking everything in, and then the feeling

that I should be documenting all of this. Will I forget the weird white, big as my arm, sausage that I saw at the market?

Or the black spandex, liquid leggings I saw on a woman today who was at least 60? I don't want to forget these little details and yet I also don't want to be spending so much time writing, or on the computer that I miss these things in the first place.

When I stopped philosophyzing and headed back to the house Kim and her friend made Brochette (like shish kabobs) and sausage with fresh vegetables and meat from the market over the barbecue. It was amazing, but then again every meal that Kim makes is incredible (I swear she made soup out of a box one night, that was better than I would have done from scratch!) and vastly

improved from what I had been eating for the majority back home. Perhaps if mon amour starts working mornings (fingers crossed!) then I'll start cooking for us all more...that and not working three jobs in one day so I'm actually home at dinner time, that would help as well!

We were invited to a BBQ at a friends house on Monday (when the shop is closed) and we may possibly be going swimming

at a lake too! I can try out my new bathing suit and, sigh, have to confess, my romper *cringes apologetically* for the first time. Very excited!

I have been thinking that I want to start doing a fun French (ugh, not only am I not able to speak French, but I kid you not, I have actually started forgetting English words! And I fear my spelling (which, honestly I just spelled wrong) are suffering greatly as well!) fact each entry! Today: I learned that it is not proper, or thought of as appropriate, for a woman to drink from a bottle in public. Mostly, I was told, this is from the perspective of older people. And a straw is more polite if you were going to a park or something.

Another thing that I found amusing, which is not actually French, was an RV that was driving by (English I presume) that had a bone china teacup and saucer on its little table through the window! Very different from the view I feel you would see inside an RV in the US, but maybe I'm wrong? There are actually a lot of RV's in town now because it's tourist season and they have a campground right next to the park, it's so beautiful! French and English mostly, but German and Dutch commonly as well.

I also got to see the French garbage truck and collectors this morning, cleaner and more attractive than in the US, both the truck and the men...