No Church Again

...and this time I didn't even listen to the readings or read up on Islam or do anything spiritual to make up for it; I'll have to take some meditative-focus-type time during the week. (It's not so bad, but I am mildly superstitious that I have a bad week when I don't go to Mass.)

La Japonaise Arrive
Yesterday was fairly laid back, being a Sunday. I just managed to haul myself upstairs by noon, so we could go pick up our new arrival, Noriko, at Le Buisson. Considering the fact that I'm travelling to Japan soon and there's a tri-cultural mix about to occur, I was a little uneasy as to what would happen: would we all understand each other and get along well? would I be expected to speak Japanese at some point? would something cultural make the ride awkward for all of us?

Turns out I do take after my mother somewhat, because my worrying was entirely unfounded. Noriko arrived and everyone exchanged bisous--the traditional French cheek-kissing gesture you (probably) all know about--and introductions went briefly and well. An uneventful car-ride later, we'd had a brief chat and discovered that, in fact, Noriko has already been in France for eleven months babysitting in Paris.

Rien à Dire
Which is to say, that I have nothing to say, really. Kelly, Noriko, and I had a nice conversation yesterday after lunch and, all in all, we're getting along pretty well. I feel like I'm speaking enough French now and all that jazz, too, though there'd been a brief slump about a week after my arrival (maybe the end of that "honeymoon phase" Daniel wrote about in his journal).

Japanese accents are a little more interesting in French, and Noriko's keeps throwing me off--I either anticipate Japanese because of the sound quality or I just don't understand at first. This normally happens with short phrases that come out of the blue, fortunately, and not all the time, though I occasionally do a mental double-take when listening to her. The mélange, though, is feeding my linguistic curiosity, which I'd count as good (wouldn't you?).

Today was rainy so we didn't do too much work, though we de-mossed the well and did a little weeding. Kelly and Noriko painted some (new) chairs, and I did some research for Christian and Pascale regarding how they can improve their web-presence. Other than that, we basked in the sunlight during a pleasant conversation this afternoon and enjoyed a great lunch together, too.

Les Personnages - Christian
Christian's nearly sixty, but looks like he's closer to my dad's age. He grew up in Paris, learning to cook there--not only did he work at a few restaurants for his first jobs, but he actually attended a professional cooking school there, too. Sometime in that mispent youth of the late sixties--he and his friend Jacques talked to us about the classic free love generation outlook on youth--he took up photography and he seems to be pretty good at it. Friday his photo club met here at his house in the morning for coffee to plan an exhibition in Sainte-Alvère in August. You might've noticed that I mention him fairly frequently; he's usually our task-master around here, telling us what to do during the day and randomly taking us to the market or to nearby sights.

***

I'll try to post with a little more style later this week, but the main thing today was just to get some thoughts down and work on habit-forming (y'know, the good kind?).

A Bientot!

Four Day Gap -- Time Management Works!

Even on vacation I can't manage my (minimal) schedule; clearly I'm still trying to do too much.

Today we helped coat the garden in leaves so as to block out weeds and allow only the garden plants light. I don't know how well this'll work out, though, because of the presence of weeds throughout the leaves themselves--will they actually die out or will this just protect them and make them near impossible to destroy later?

We also painted those chairs again. The first time there were some grains of sand and so forth stuck to them by the end, so we (oddly enough) sanded them down a bit to repaint them. They'll get some finishing touches later this week, after which we await Christian's completion of a couple of nice outdoor tables (and some warmer evening weather) so we can eat outside ^^

Not too much else on the agenda today; I didn't end up going for a bike ride, but at least the tires are now inflated, so we can use them when we want. I'd tried to repair the pump, and succeeded with my twine-and-tape repairs, but the thing still wasn't sturdy enough to inflate the tires all that quickly. They were inflated by Kenny, the love (fiancé?) of Élodie (sp?) [who is in turn the daughter of Christian], when the two visited this weekend.

Also this weekend, we had twelve Canadians staying here. They're accents are nasally, and even my hosts had trouble understanding their French. That's pretty much all I've got to say about the Canadians.

Wasn't able to make it to church yesterday, so it rained. Alright, maybe the relationship between the two facts isn't causal, but it did in fact rain all day yesterday. All day. No lie. Chez Jacques, one of Christian's friends (whom he's known for 40 years or so?), the road was washed out and his tools (he's also doing some serious renovations) were drenched and caught in the torrential flood. Further evidence for the law that torrents will be the end of it all. (Don't get it? Ask someone under 25. Still don't get it? Google's easy, you lazy bum.)

I'm not sure I've anything else much to write about just now. Maybe the next post will even have those character descriptions.

TTFN!

Oh, PS, there're fresh photos uploaded to Google Web Albums as of this morning or yesterday or some otherwise recent time.