Good French Wine

Started typing this post multiple times and kept getting cut off. Here we go again!

Sorry I've been out of action for about a week, but we (thought we) didn't have internet access for a while there. Turns out that Freebox (the company they use for internet access) should stick to internet access and let people set up their own networks: wireless and this weird USB connexion Pascale uses to connect her computer weren't working, but as soon as I connected my laptop by USB, everything ran smoothly.

Anyway, here's what you missed...

Kelly s'en Va
Kelly was supposed to leave on Wednesday, but finally received an email from her host on Tuesday saying that he wouldn't be there and that she'd have to come Thursday. Fortunately, Christian took her to Le Buisson to change her ticket and (I don't think) they charged her anything for the exchange because she made it before the scheduled departure.

Of course we'd already planned a goodbye dinner, so Noriko prepared a Japanese dish and Jacques came by to say farewell to Kelly. Oh, and by "a Japanese dish" I meant curry prepared using a Japanese curry mix and (perhaps) cooking style.

Thursday morning Christian, Noriko, and I accompanied Kelly to the train station, where a bus picked her up. Hey, don't look at me--comprennez-vous les français?

Les Vélos Sont Dur
Apparently an uncle of Christian's is quite ill, so Friday evening Pascale and he went to Bordeaux (I believe) for the weekend, leaving Noriko and I to fend for ourselves in this strange land.

With the parents gone for the weekend, of course we had to have a party. By have a party, of course I mean plant strawberry plants in the garden like they'd asked us to, check on the animals, and take the bicycles for a spin.

About two o'clock we broke out the bikes, only to discover that the tires were flat on one and the seat too high on the other. Luckily, I'm a genius, so I solved those problems right away, and we were on our way.

The trip started out pretty well, being downhill and all that, but about a half kilometer into the ride we discovered that--lo and behold--France has hills, and fairly large ones at that, considering they have these things called valleys and whatnot. Also noteworthy at this point was the fact that we had to go another 9.5 km to get to Le Bugue.

The next two kilometers were uphill, followed by a short downhill stint, and a bit more uphill. After that it was pretty much downhill to the Bugue. I'm not gonna lie, rolling downhill for that long a period is pretty fantastic, especially in scenic Dordogne, not that I'm shamelessly plugging for the tourist bureau or anything.

Arriving at Le Bugue, we headed toward Intermarché, a run-of-the-mill super market, because Christian'd told us that we could find a wine-tasting-and-sales-type place there. We wandered around looking out of place for a while, trying to comprehend the massive variety of alcohol in the world, until one of the reps asked us if he could help. We tried five or six different wines from the region and got to practice our French. Half-an-hour (or some equally arbitrary amount of time less than two hours) later, we headed out with three bottles of wine and some little tin of some duck product that Noriko got for Christian and Pascale (I think). She bought one of the bottles of wine.

For those of you who're good at math, you've realised by now that I bought two bottles of wine, obviously with the best of intentions--no, seriously, one's a gift for Christian and Pascale, and I'm pretty sure I'm not allowed to bring wine back to the States, so the other's for us to drink before I leave.

Those of you who're good at math and logic and can hang onto a thought for more than 10 seconds have realised something else: six kilometres downhill heading to the Bugue means six going UP on the way back. Ouch. And I mean that--my rear still hurts because of that accursed seat.

On the cool side of things, though, we found the opening to a small cave along the roadside, and I wandered in to explore a little, though I'd left my flashlight at the house, so I couldn't go too far. As a keepsake from this cool little moment, I've got a few photos and a couple of exemplary stones from the cave. w007 ^^

Ils Reviennent et Je Suis Malade
Last night, for no apparent reason, I started to feel ill, possibly because the pigeonnier is colder than I'd like and I road a bike 20 km or so. Or something like that.

Anyway, today I was feeling kinda under the weather, which is saying something since it rained most of the day again today, but I'm doing fine and will probably be ready to continue working tomorrow. Yet again I was unable to make it to Mass this week, but I have a feeling that He'll understand if I didn't want to hop on that bike for another 20km trip today.

This evening Pascale and Christian returned as I was asleep on one of the beds they use like sofas here. We had a nice dinner, and I came upstairs to write this. Should be writing again tomorrow, hopefully with some retrospective stuff about the first (more than) half of my trip and more character descriptions (if I can think of anything interesting to say). Time to watch Doctor Who...

Have a good one ^^