For the Birds: March 2009

Saturday, March 28, 2009

Drunken Pictionary, Robin and a Midwest Accent

Tonight, we played Pictionary after finishing a 5 litre bottle of wine.

Robin is about 200 km from Tours. Last night, the police tried to frame him with murdering someone with a butter knife, and he's out of spare tubes.

I have a tendency to talk in the accents of those around me (I think it's a desire to make others feel more comfortable.) I find myself speaking with a subtle Midwest accent in order to avoid picking up the English accents of those in the house - I think my English accent is as bad as every other American's.

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Tonight

I played Up Shit Creek Without a Paddle (a card game I had never heard of.)

Robin called to tell me that he should be able to catch the ferry to Dieppe tomorrow night. Weather permitting, he should be here by the end of next week. (Yay!)

I had a delicious prawn curry.

I've decided that I can no longer call myself a writer - a little inconvenient since my main email address is write.rachel.write@gmail.com.

Sunday, March 22, 2009

Three Things

1) I merged the I Make Things blog with this one.

2) I spent last night drinking nettle beer and cider in a yurt.

3) I've bought a clarinet.

Friday, March 20, 2009

My First Week and Cabin(?) Plans

My first week doing Help Exchange has come to an end. It's been an amazing experience, and I am so incredibly happy that we decided to do it. Some of the things I've done this week:

- Learned a lot about gardening and have started the plans for the garden we will use to feed ourselves
- Mortared a wall
- Plastered a wall
- Built a stone wall
- Had stinging nettle ravioli
- Learned to play the accordion
- Worked on Robin's birthday present (which I can't tell you about until he sees it!)

Also, I have decided that we will use rammed earth for our cabin, which means that I no longer feel comfortable calling it a cabin (cottage? bungalow?)

Monday, March 16, 2009

My Blister

This morning, I looked out my window to see a tiny village in a lush valley of the Pyrenees mountains. I quickly dressed and went downstairs for my first day of work.*

Breakfast was coffee and cereal (plain cereal - flakes, no sugar.) Star and I were each given our jobs for the day. Since she is too young for the harder work, she was to trim hedges, pull weeds and clean out the chicken coop. The first part of my day was spent scraping the excess mortar from stone walls (they are in the process of repointing here.) After lime in the eyes and a decent amount of skin scraped from my hands, we broke for coffee. The second half of the day consisted of mixing a new mortar and then beginning the repointing of the next wall. At 14:00, the work day was done. Lunch was soup, bread, fresh goat cheese and a beer.

After Star's schoolwork, we were left with the rest of the day to do whatever we wanted. We were still tired from our overnight train ride from Paris, so we didn't go hiking like we had planned. Instead, we sat and talked, played with the dogs and tried to get the neighbor's donkey to come to the fence. I washed the mortar from my hair and sat outside, drinking tea and marveling over my new blister.

This blister is marvelously huge! A small sample of the work to come, but it really excited me. It's a reminder of what I'm doing here, sitting on the side of a mountain in the south of France, drinking tea and looking forward to another day of work.

* I've signed on to work on farms, and the like, to learn skills we will need to build and maintain our cabin.

What I've Learned About France So Far

1.) Parisians are the worst drivers I have ever seen in my life.

2.) Contrary to what I've been told by people who have visited in the past, most people in France (that includes Parisians) do not speak a significant amount of English. Star and I got lost walking through Paris, and ended up getting directions from someone via body language. As a result, our French has improved a great deal in just a few days.

3.) The food really is better here! And prices at the grocer's are cheaper than any American grocery store I've seen.

4.) The south of France is my favorite so far. I mean, this is what is out of my bedroom window for the next few weeks -