Day 16: Hungover Pregnant Cows

We went up to Brock today, but on the way I did make an attempt at a joke. One of the previous WWOOFers had carved a face into a stump, and it was prominently displayed along the wall of the property. As we left, I told Jean-Louis that he had a "Gueule de bois", which literally translated means "face made of wood", but is also the french word for hangover. He did actually chuckle, and went on to explain that it was a portrait of Betty.

We cleaned up one of the green houses so that we can plant potatoes soon. I think we did a bang up job.

It was warm today, warm enough for the bees to be flying about. Claire thinks they are cute, Jean Louis and I keep our distance.

For lunch we had pizza. It was just as excellent as last time. I want more.

Over lunch we talked about how I needed to go run errands in town, and that Claire and I were going to a movie later. Joelle said she'd like to come along, and we were delighted to have her. We dwelled on the subject of errands for a while, as apparently there is no French word for errands. "Courses" works, but that usually refers to shopping more specifically. I guess French people don't really run errands?

We talked about how helpful language immersion is for learning, and how detrimental it is for Claire and I to both be native english speakers. I jokingly said we should set up a jar that we have to put coins in every time we speak english, but Joelle and Jean Louis seemed to like the idea a lot.

After we had finished eating, Joelle continued offering us food. We said no we've eaten plenty, and Claire said "Je suis plein". Literally translated, this means "I am full", but it doesn't have that connotation in french. "Le mer est plein de poisson" means "the ocean is full of fish", but when a living object is plein, that means it's pregnant. Usually this refers to livestock, not humans, so it is sort of a derogatory way of saying someone is pregnant. I then made another attempt at a joke, because the last farm Claire was at was a dairy farm so she was surrounded by pregnant cows. I need a little more practice at this. Joelle said the word for full, but she said it's archaic and no one uses it, so I promptly forgot it.

We decided to watch Django at 5:30 in english with french subtitles. Claire and I went down early, and Joelle met us at the theater around then.

As I was running errands, I met with Daphnee (the proprietor), and had a nice conversation. Everything went smoothly, I slipped very easily into french, but at one point she mentioned that where I live there is a lot of wine. I wasn't sure if she said "wine" or "wind" (the words sound very similar, and there is both a lot of wine and a lot of wind where I live), so I paused and asked her to repeat it. She said "vin...Wine?" and then proceeded to ask if I knew what that was and if I drank it. I said of course I knew what it was and of course I drank it. So much for speaking like a local.

Django was a good movie, just very Quentin Tarantino-ey. It was fun talking to Joelle and Claire about it, Joelle thought it was a little over the top (which it was).

Big day au Brock demain. Bonne nuit.