BBQ and Petanque

A few days before I left for Paris Kim and I were invited over to some friends of hers for a lovely BBQ. I ate pate for the first time, had some Peche (peach) apertif that I have been craving ever since, sausage, a spicy mustard that I'm going to have to find in the states, and ate so much I was nearly sick and couldn't even eat dinner that night! I honestly had never seen so many courses. (This is their dog "Rock" as in "and Roll", fabulous.)

I also got to play a popular French game called Petanque (I don't know how, nor do I care enough to look up how, but there should be accents on most of these French words. So, sorry.) for the first time. You have

teams and each round the two members of the teams each try to throw metal balls (you each get two) as close as possible to a small wooden ball. Whoever at the end of the game (which seemed to be whenever you felt like stopping) gets the most balls over all the rounds the closest to the small wooden ball wins!

The team with the ten-year-old clinched it at the end and won, he was amazing and for whatever reason he loved to say my name over and over again, but because it's kind-of hard to pronounce for him he kept saying, "Webekah, Wabekah, Webekah!" and whenever anyone else said it he would correct them, "Webekah! Wabekah!" I loved it and I'm already trying to scheme how I can somehow raise our children to have French accents...

Wordless Wednesday (a little late): A lunch out in Brantome.

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...

Et plus...

I'm going to start doing my posts more frequently because it's already hard to remember what I did five days ago! In my defense I wasn't "back to normal" (whatever that means) with sleep until yesterday I think.

On Saturday I got le grand tour of the house and shop, although to be fair

I don't think it was until last night that I actually saw all of the house, I swear Kim has revealed a new room or wing of the house and shop each day! It's so beautiful here. The house is very long with a cellar and attic as well as full workshop with loft, the boutique, unrenovated wing with extra bathroom, storage, living room and bedroom as well as a garage with loft! There's also a huge garden with well, old

outhouse, outdoor sink where people used to do laundry, an area to dry clothes and lots of flowers.

Last Saturday I mostly caught up (or attempted at least) on my sleep and had the big adventure of walking into town to the atm and boulangerie all by myself!

Sunday was so much fun, we went to the Viet Garnier (which is like a nicer flea market) where I bought some treasures to bring back for Mignonne. We went out to lunch, I had French fries (in France!) and a tartine which is a piece of toast with (what I chose) atrichoke, bell pepper and chicken on it. My host thought it was a little too soy saucy, but I don't think my taste buds had woken up yet either! We finished with ice cream and a nice canoe ride! It had been raining off

and on all day, but we had some nice breaks in the weather.

I started the windows on Monday, slept twelve hours and started to actually feel human again. On Tuesday, I drove to the Super Marche all by myself and it went pretty well, there was a slight misunderstanding when I tried to leave the store with the store's basket, oops! That night we went out to Indian food, it was amazing, and I even ordered dinner almost by myself!

Wednesday we went to this store that is similar to Goodwill or Salvation Army (Emmouse) and I bought Alex a vintage Tin Tin and a few more items for Mignonne. I also accidentally left a

bag there with some other things for Mignonne and some really cute vintage mismatched glasses that I'm praying they won't have re-distributed by the time we can get a hold of them. Oh! We also got the most parfait black vintage vello (bike) there too, we bought another one but someone else accidentally took it (that's still up in the air) and to make it up to us they pulled out this other one they were saving for a sale and gave it to us instead! I love this one so much more and it's just tres parfait for my fantasy French adventure, pictures soon to come!

Today I finished the windows and I'm going to do a seperate post for them. Kim made another amazing feast out of an impressive four

ingredients and I saw one of the largest spiders of my life, some bugs are surprinsingly large here! A bientot!