I could see all the mountains this morning.
As we prepared to go up to Broc, Jean-Louis chatted with us about the WWOOFer schedules. It gets pretty complex juggling that many people's schedules. In summary, Claire (The Canadian) and I (he American) are here now, Julia (the Italian) gets here on Monday, then I leave for a week on Tuesday, and when I get back Claire and Julia will be gone, but then a Japanese Girl will show up a week later, and then leave after two weeks, after which Claire (canadian) and Kelly (?) will show up again.
The conversation centered around how international relations tend to correlate pretty closely with inter-WWOOFer relations. For example, there were Russian and Iranian girls living here at the same time, and they didn't get along at all. Something about the caspian sea conflict was clearly the root of their relationship's failure to blossom. Apparently it was quite bad, they never saw eye to eye on anything (that's a joke, because the russian girl was allegedly enormous and the Iranian girl was travel sized). Anyway, Jean-Louis and Joelle were worried that the Japanese girl might be mad at me about Nagasaki and Hiroshima. I said I was kind of hoping that didn't come up, I'm perfectly happy to leave it as water under the bridge. Then they asked me if I spoke japanese, because they're not sure if she speaks french or english. I said my brother took a semester of japanese so I'm pretty sure I could say "hi" to her but that might be it. They said that was wonderful and that settles everything.
I hope she speaks some french, because I think I could carry about a 3 second conversation in Japanese before my vocabulary is depleted.
Joelle then told me about her Japanese friends that live in VilleFranche-sur-mer. She said they were atypical, as they are two women living together but the larger one is transgender. I said maybe we should have them over once the japanese WWOOFer gets here, they can help us communicate.
On the way to Broc, we saw a car driving by that had a lady carrying a box full of puppies in the passenger seat. It was the cutest thing I've seen since Betty the pig, and I started making the incomprehensible baby-babble noises that so many people make when they see something cute (Claire joined me). Jean-Louis on the other hand, asked us if we were hungry. We paused and looked at him for a second, processing.
He was in fact making a joke about eating the puppies. I allowed it, but only because he was a vegetarian.
At Le Broc, we essentially broke down trellises all morning. This was the best job yet, because the scraps could be used as firewood. We were running low, and it had rained recently so desperation was setting in. With tea we had some of Jean Louis' home-made brioche. Now, given the track record of Jean-Louis' cooking, and my love for brioche, you would think that I am about to spend an entire paragraph trying to describe the slice of heaven I got to experience this morning.
Not so.
The brioche was flavored with a hint of lemon. Lemon breads are on a short list of foods that I will almost never enjoy. Here's the list:
1. Lemon flavored breads
2. Cheesecake
3. Raw Radishes
Attentive readers will note that I have experienced 2 of the above items since my arrival here.
Lunch was pasta and a quiche. This was heaven.
I checked my e-mail, and found some bad news. I had ordered a phone (that costs 2 euros a month for unlimited texting and 2 hours of calls!!!!!) and the e-mail said "we could not deliver it to your address, so we dropped it at the nearest relay station". Oh good! I'll just head down to the friendly neighborhood relay station 4.8 km away. I walked and walked, spending about 2% of my journey on the sidewalk and the rest on winding roads. I got close, and then got completely lost and started wandering around. I think an elderly lady ran away from me (okay, walked briskly), but that may have been my fault because I was a little muddy and needed to use the restroom so I may have looked like an angry homeless person.
I eventually found the place, no thanks to google maps which was of next to no use. The proprietor reminded me of the food critic from ratatouille. We spoke in french no problems, and I walked home with my phone.
On the way I saw one of these guys. It looks like a really beefed up segway more than a car. I kind of want one.
I made latkes properly for dinner, I was quite pleased with them. Claire is a hippy, and has me listening to flower-child music all day. It's not bad, but I don't have very developed musical taste. Claire is also somewhat horrified at the amount of milk I drink. She pretty much only drinks it in coffee, but I have at least a glass every day. I think it is a step above whole milk (not quite cream but knocking on the door). It's great.
I have misplaced the cable to upload my pictures, so we will have a photo-dump when I find it.
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