We’ve had a couple more arrivals at the house. Matthieu, a cousin of Louise, and Marine and her boyfriend, Cyril, arrived in the last two days. Cyril & Marine drove ten hours straight from Belgium. Yesterday morning we biked to a large market in Sarlat and spent around an hour wandering the narrow streets and sniffing various cheeses. I bought a bag of spicy olives, and Regine bought two massive hunks of cheese. I greatly enjoyed watching Louie plow through the better part of one of the cheeses later in the evening.
We got back to the house and ate sausages, rice, and bread. I brought some chocolate from the US as a small thank you to the hosts, and we happily munched it down for dessert.
The kids hopped in Cyrils car and we drove to the river nearby the house for an afternoon lounging in the grass. The water was crisp and the river filled with flat rocks for skipping. Louise and I also spent some time going through a travel book for India in french. On the way back home we stopped for Ice Cream and Marine chose rose flavor. The taste was like biting into a fragrant rose.
I recently crossed the threshold of being sick of being the guy in the room who can’t follow the conversation in the slightest. At the moment, I pick up around 30% of what is said in French. What is most frustrating is that I had finally gotten comfortable with Spanish as I was leaving Spain in May. I spent the better part of nine months putting in the time to learn Spanish and now I’m back to square one with French. However, I made my bed and now I’ve got to lay in it. I will learn.
This morning we woke up at 7 to search for mushrooms in the forest nearby the house. The Girolle mushrooms we hunted were trumpet-like in shape, and burned orange in color. I managed to find 0 mushrooms myself, but our collective effort yielded a dozen mushrooms for a quiche later in the week.
Today we went to another market in a nearby town and the only thing we bought was…. bread. The town itself was quaint and we came back for lunch around 1 o’clock. This afternoon we ventured to another part of the river and played both Petanque and molky, two games similar to lawn bowling. I drank a Chouffe, a delicious Belgian beer brought down by Cyril, and fell into deep sleep in the hammock.
Observations:
In general, when someone wants to drink something, they pour a very small amount of the liquid. Doesn’t matter if it’s wine, beer, or water. The typical wine pour here is around 1/3 of the typical American pour.
Dessert is plentiful, and we’ve had something sweet after every Lunch and Dinner thus far.
People stop eating when they are satisfied regardless of what remains on the table. Half a sausage left on the table? No pressure to get rid of it. A half inch of wine left in the bottle? We’ll save it for the next meal.
There are massive fields of sunflowers all over. I asked Louise’s grandmother why they’re here but didn’t understand the answer. Regardless, acres of sunflowers is a happy sight.
The family cooks for one meal, not for leftovers. This relates to enjoyment of the food (and cooking itself) as opposed to efficiency, I suppose.
Recent Comments