Day 15: That explains a lot

It rained all weekend, so there wasn't much to do except go to the grocery store for supplies, and then build a fire and hunker down.

Today, however, we got right back to work. We spent the morning sorting potatoes, and then we went into another adjacent storage room and Jean Louis pointed at a large closet-like piece of furniture. I thought he said "destroy that", but I paused and looked at him to make sure. He then handed me a pickaxe which was a pretty good clue that I had heard him correctly.

That was the second most fun job I have had so far, following closely behind tractor surfing.

We actually got the room quite clean, there was enough room to fit the mystery machine in there. The mystery machine was some huge green metal box with a rotating cylinder inside, that was quite heavy. Once it was situated comfortably in the storage room and everyone was exhausted, I asked what the machine was for. Turns out it was an olive sorter.

Also in the storage room, was a piece of art that Jean Louis said he had made. I'll get a picture later, but it was abstract and colorful. It turns out that it was a method that he invented when he found a box of soggy old projector slides. The colors run when they get wet, so you can take a slide of any photograph, and then essentially real-life photoshop it into abstraction.

We also found an old fishing rod, a cow bell, an old tasseled leather jacket, and a bunch of Leffe glasses that could be put to good use back at the caravan.

As we went up to lunch, Jean Louis bounded over to show us the first egg his special chicken had made. It's a dark red egg, apparently very flavorful.

Over lunch, I got to experience a wonderful moment of discovery.

We were talking about accents, and eventually different dialects. It was at this point that Jean Luis and Joelle looked over at me and said "you know how sometimes we talk and you don't understand us?". I said yes often when you are talking amongst yourselves I don't follow the conversation. They said that this was probably because they shift into a different language when they talk to each other, called Argot. It's structured pretty much like french, but they replace most of the verbs and nouns with nonsense, or other words that have a completely different meaning.

Some examples: the verb "planter" (to plant) in argot means to joke or kid someone. A bird (oiseaux) is called a piaf. Water (eau) is called a flotte (a fleet).

This was great. It had seemed that there was some kind of switch that people were turning on that made them incomprehensible, and it turns out that I wasn't imagining it. They are actually switching to gibberish language. I knew that there was a certain degree of slang that permeates all languages, but I didn't know that I was in the French version of East London.

Throughout the afternoon, Claire practiced guitar and I made a woodcarving of my name (with hammer and chisel, aren't I old fashioned).

For dinner we had some vegetarian medley, including Claire's go-to grain which is quinoa. She seasoned with mustard and honey, and I think olive oil. It also had corn, peas, and chick peas. Twas quite excellent. I have however, regularly started to crave a 36 oz. steak, and quinoa and chick peas doesn't exactly cut it.

We found a spider crawling in the tea leaves. I was ignorant enough to point and say "look at the size of that thing" which prompted Claire to literally scream and run in to the other room yelling "that needs to go outside". Apparently she is afraid of spiders, as she later informed me that she was going to have spider themed nightmares tonight. I tried to change the subject, so she got a lesson on the rules of american football.

Today began with a quick online check of last night's ravens game, and I couldn't be more proud. Go Rayvens. Finished with the chowder, on to the gumbo.

Photo-dump below: Cello sculpture and blockhead museum.