April 27, 2008
Bonjour from Chateau d’Argy once again! This is Rachel with this week’s update, sitting again in the refectory. It was raining earlier, but the sun has been out much more now, which has made everyone a lot happier. We’ve been having a lot of grass battles, and playing games out on the lawn before and after dinner.
Speaking of work, I guess maybe you’ve been wondering what kind of work they make us do here at le chateâu. I’ll give you just a little peek, but if you want to know the whole kitten caboodle, you’ll have to ask us later. In the past week, we have been throwing mortar at walls (a medieval technique) to even and insulate a room and removing old and incredibly stylish wallpaper and matching icky carpet from a room inside the chateâu (we finished this just a few days ago! What an accomplishment!). We began work on a large mural in the new information office (we used a grid system to get the drawing onto the wall. It was arduous, nitpicky work blowing up a small image and drawing it on a wall, with much precise work going into the grid, but in the end we finally got all the outlines down and we are now in the process of carefully painting the subject’s beefy calves and the intricate fields behind him), and we’ve done much weeding, painting, plastering and, of course, sweeping and cleaning and moving heavy objects from one end of the room to the other and back again (in order to clean some more). I have been asked to add, by the entire group, that the woman who helped us begin the mural, Therese, resembled the character from The Incredibles who makes the costumes for all the superheroes… but much taller. Therese also gave us a lecture on frescoes and murals, entirely in French (naturellement…) that was enthralling to hear, even if most of the information wasn’t very new to most of us. We learned a lot of different vocabulary.
We’ve met a ton of new friends here too! Although they just left today, for the past week we hung around with four French boys named Patrick, Guillaume, Vivien and Florian. They busted their backs working with us, then busted them again playing rugby with our own Jack. Last night they even joined us in a large game of Capture the Flag. I should include the fact that I got the flag for the victory of my team… I must say I am proud of myself. I never was much of an athlete, so I also extend thanks to whoever it was that moved the flag close to the boundary line. All I had to do was walk!
Along with our four French boys, we also met two French girls, Meryam and Julie. They keep us in check and force us to speak French all the time. They’re fans of Bob L’Eponge (Spongebob Squarepants) and Kinder Bueno (a type of extremely delicious chocolate).
How is the group faring? I am proud to say that Rebecca and Claire are the only two people who have not gotten sick!! I am not so proud to say that at the precise moment of typing this, I too am sick, but it’s just a cold. War has been waged between Carly, Colin, Jack and Esme, much to the amusement of the other group members as we hear their reactions when they find various things in their beds and suitcases. Our friend Jo (who, if you didn’t know, was our leader for the first week and a few days into the second) took a small group out to have a “(peacock) poop fight” which became a problem when our new French friends arrived to find a group of tired Americans covered in poo. We have been steadily learning the French dance craze known as “Techtonique” (or however it’s spelled) and that our buddy Guillaume “killed Merrie Emmonds” with his moves. (Sorry Merrie, I was told to…) Colin got two tattoos… sadly we expect them to wash off before the end of the week. For one full night, there was an awfully funky stench in the refectory, and we finally traced it to Jack, who smelled wonderfully of Roblochon cheese after making tartiflette (with me, no less!). This would be embarrassing for Jack if he was alone, but sadly, Carly too was afflicted with the stink of cheese (but hers was Roquefort… which is worse?) We also have encountered many large and terrifying spiders, and Jack was chased around with one by Jo. Jack was quoted as saying, in English, “Jo, I don’t think you understand how much I hate spiders!” Of course Jo didn’t understand… we have stories by the dozen to prove he didn’t speak much English. Yesterday (Saturday the 26th) a bunch of us got an Indiana Jones/Jurassic Park ride in the back of a pick-up truck around the grounds of the chateâu, and all of us got a little wet when our driver rooster-tailed in a huge puddle. Carly and Esme had a life-changing experience in a field of daisies (don’t get any dirty ideas… they jumped in smelly puddles of mud!). We’re all in the process of learning medieval dancing, which seems to be Carly and Annie’s new calling. Jack and Annie did some of our dirty laundry (I mean dirty) with a Moroccan man, a Spanish woman, and a French woman who lived in Switzerland working at the Rolex factory. Jack says it was an “international experience.” We thank him for doing all our laundry. There have been various things said about the showering situation at Argy, seeing as there are 10 girls and 2 showers, and then 6 boys and 2 showers. Colin would like to add he now has clean clothes. You can relax in your chair now.
There was a flower market/huge garage sale going on outside, so we all went into town for an hour to look at all the old trinkets. In the sunshine, it was fantastic. We’re all having a much easier time adjusting to the schedule here, as well as the types of work we are doing. The medieval festival is approaching, which is exciting and extremely scary at the same time, because we have to greet visitors in costume and help in workshops, and give tours, all while speaking French (bien sûr!). We have more free time now, which has greatly improved our demeanor. We’re now seeing how cool this opportunity is. We would never get to throw mortar at walls or scrape off wallpaper in Seattle! Here it’s everyday work. We’ve grown to appreciate toilet paper, as there seems to be a constant shortage of it here. (Hey, with this many people in one building…) Small things, we find, make a bigger difference than we give them credit for here. Even shoveling leaves, or painting a wall, in the long run will really help out. (For instance, removing a pile of pebbles and wet leaves from the gutter will protect the wall and keep it from getting too wet and falling down.)
We only have until this Friday left until we depart for our next destination. I’m sure Emma will willingly tell you all about the medieval fair, and I’ll see you in Paris.
À bientôt!
Rachel
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
What goes down in Argytown...
April 20, 2008
Our move to Argy has been a big change from our wonderful two weeks of homestays in Bordeaux. For one thing, it is cold here and rains a lot. The town of Argy is very small, and all we can see from inside the walls of the château are the roofs of a couple of houses and the sign for a pizza restaurant that is always closed. They’re pretty big walls completed with a pretty big gate.
Adjusting to our new very structured schedule in Argy has been difficult. Our first week here has been a chain of illness and blisters, and the work is challenging and messy. There is so much work that has to be done ; we arrived for the three busiest weeks of the year leading up to the renaissance festival in may. We are building a picnic area and creating games for the garden. We have been scraping paint off of beams, peeling wall paper, painting, plastering, sealing windows and avoiding cobwebs. There are a lot of cobwebs.
With so much work to do, we have to maintain our energy by eating a lot of food, so everday two of us work in the kitchen preparing massive amounts of French delicacies (not including escargot or frogs legs). A few things we have made are Boeuf Bourguignon, Quiche Lorraine, Gratin Dauphinois and Blanquette de Veau. Jack and I would like to think we make a pretty good Blanquette de Veau, and they say that if you can make a good Blanquette de Veau, all is well. Mmmmmm. When the sun was out, we had a picnic.
The château is beautiful, and the grounds are huge. There are two resident peacocks who make a lot of noise, a lot of interesting looking ducks who leave little presents EVERYWHERE, and one very lonely donkey. Unfortunately, once again, there is not a washing machine here, and Colin ran out of clean clothes two days ago.
Taking a break off of work Saturday afternoon, we got the opportunity to split off into groups of two and three and explore the area with local families. Carly, Rebecca and Joanna visited the Château Valencay with their family, and then ate way too much. Rachel and I visted Loches and got to see the nice dungeons. Jack and Tamara visited the mansion of George Sand and two medieval churches with remaining 12th century frescoes.
After dinner each night we play games for an hour or so, and we have played a lot of games with a lot of yelling, screaming and blindfolds. We also played dodgeball, which hurt. Saturday night we did a little medieval dancing, and Jonathon, our leader, taught us a little bit of the «danse techtonique » which is all the rage in France right now. Or so he says.
We celebrated two birthdays this week : Joanna’s on Monday and Rachel’s on Friday, and Jonathon spent all day in the kitchen creating a monster of a cake : double layered with whipped cream and berries and nuts and chocolate and wow it was amazing.
We thought it would be nice to share a recipe each week, but remember if anyone actually tries this, all of the quantities are meant for 15 people, so downsize accordingly. We also don’t have a cookbook or anything, so a lot of the quantities are estimated.
Blanquette de Veau
(serves 15)
5 lbs small veal steaks
5 heaping spoonfulls of flour
8 cupfuls of water (not measured cups, just drinking glass cupfuls)
2-3 cups white wine
18 carrots chopped a la francais
2 onions chopped
4 big mushrooms, peeled and sliced
3 cubes of boullion
Place a large pot on the stove and add enough oil to cover the bottom. When heated, add the veal. Cook the veal just until the outside is completely white and a little golden.
Add the 5 spoonfuls of flour one at a time, stirring to cover the meat after each spoonful.
Add 6 glasses of water to the meat. Mix the remaining two glasses of water in a bowl with the three cubes of boullion and add to the meat.
Add the wine.
Cover and let cook for 5 minutes.
Add the carrots and onions, cover and cook for an hour and a half, stirring every so often.
For the sauce : after the veal and vegetables have cooked for an hour and a half, laddle some of the liquid into a sauce pan and place over the heat. Add flour and whisk until it has the consistency of gravy. Continue adding liquid and flour until the desired amount is reached. Take off the heat.
Add salt and pepper to taste. Serve over rice.
Bon chance,
Emma
Our move to Argy has been a big change from our wonderful two weeks of homestays in Bordeaux. For one thing, it is cold here and rains a lot. The town of Argy is very small, and all we can see from inside the walls of the château are the roofs of a couple of houses and the sign for a pizza restaurant that is always closed. They’re pretty big walls completed with a pretty big gate.
Adjusting to our new very structured schedule in Argy has been difficult. Our first week here has been a chain of illness and blisters, and the work is challenging and messy. There is so much work that has to be done ; we arrived for the three busiest weeks of the year leading up to the renaissance festival in may. We are building a picnic area and creating games for the garden. We have been scraping paint off of beams, peeling wall paper, painting, plastering, sealing windows and avoiding cobwebs. There are a lot of cobwebs.
With so much work to do, we have to maintain our energy by eating a lot of food, so everday two of us work in the kitchen preparing massive amounts of French delicacies (not including escargot or frogs legs). A few things we have made are Boeuf Bourguignon, Quiche Lorraine, Gratin Dauphinois and Blanquette de Veau. Jack and I would like to think we make a pretty good Blanquette de Veau, and they say that if you can make a good Blanquette de Veau, all is well. Mmmmmm. When the sun was out, we had a picnic.
The château is beautiful, and the grounds are huge. There are two resident peacocks who make a lot of noise, a lot of interesting looking ducks who leave little presents EVERYWHERE, and one very lonely donkey. Unfortunately, once again, there is not a washing machine here, and Colin ran out of clean clothes two days ago.
Taking a break off of work Saturday afternoon, we got the opportunity to split off into groups of two and three and explore the area with local families. Carly, Rebecca and Joanna visited the Château Valencay with their family, and then ate way too much. Rachel and I visted Loches and got to see the nice dungeons. Jack and Tamara visited the mansion of George Sand and two medieval churches with remaining 12th century frescoes.
After dinner each night we play games for an hour or so, and we have played a lot of games with a lot of yelling, screaming and blindfolds. We also played dodgeball, which hurt. Saturday night we did a little medieval dancing, and Jonathon, our leader, taught us a little bit of the «danse techtonique » which is all the rage in France right now. Or so he says.
We celebrated two birthdays this week : Joanna’s on Monday and Rachel’s on Friday, and Jonathon spent all day in the kitchen creating a monster of a cake : double layered with whipped cream and berries and nuts and chocolate and wow it was amazing.
We thought it would be nice to share a recipe each week, but remember if anyone actually tries this, all of the quantities are meant for 15 people, so downsize accordingly. We also don’t have a cookbook or anything, so a lot of the quantities are estimated.
Blanquette de Veau
(serves 15)
5 lbs small veal steaks
5 heaping spoonfulls of flour
8 cupfuls of water (not measured cups, just drinking glass cupfuls)
2-3 cups white wine
18 carrots chopped a la francais
2 onions chopped
4 big mushrooms, peeled and sliced
3 cubes of boullion
Place a large pot on the stove and add enough oil to cover the bottom. When heated, add the veal. Cook the veal just until the outside is completely white and a little golden.
Add the 5 spoonfuls of flour one at a time, stirring to cover the meat after each spoonful.
Add 6 glasses of water to the meat. Mix the remaining two glasses of water in a bowl with the three cubes of boullion and add to the meat.
Add the wine.
Cover and let cook for 5 minutes.
Add the carrots and onions, cover and cook for an hour and a half, stirring every so often.
For the sauce : after the veal and vegetables have cooked for an hour and a half, laddle some of the liquid into a sauce pan and place over the heat. Add flour and whisk until it has the consistency of gravy. Continue adding liquid and flour until the desired amount is reached. Take off the heat.
Add salt and pepper to taste. Serve over rice.
Bon chance,
Emma
We're back from our homestays!!
April 15, 2008
Bonjour, nos familles et nos amis!!
Well, we’re back together as a group after 2 weeks on our own in our homestays on various farms. We all had a blast, and everyone had some great experience they wanted to share with the group, and consequently, with you too. We all discussed our homestays in a roundtable discussion about our experiences and the kind of work we did on the farm, and then chose our highlights, our lowlights, and then a story, if we felt inclined to share one.
Carly stayed on a vineyard in the Bordeaux region, with a family of a mother, a father and a brother, aged 21. Her work involved using a handheld tool, much like a pistol, to attach tape to the wires of the vines to hold them up. The tape was accompanied by staples. Carly has a love of motorcycles, and her highlight was going to a motorcycle show at night to see over 300 motorcycles with her homestay brother. Her lowlight, and resulting epic story, was getting sick in the second week and throwing up in her room, which was attached to a very personal family story.
Rebecca was on a farm of what the French call “forgotten vegetables.” She lived in the same house as a theater troupe. She says she learned a lot about ‘aromatic plants’ and says it doesn’t sound as good in English. Her meals were often given very late, 10:30 PM or later. Her family was a mother and a daughter, age 15. Her family took her to a music festival, to the theater and to Bordeaux, as well as to the markets to sell their vegetables. Rebecca’s work was to unload the vegetables from the car and to then tag all the vegetables with their names and prices. She says the first time she did it, she had about 75% of the vegetables correct, but the second time she had 99%! Her mother was an interesting person who was born in Algeria, lived in India, and knew a little Italian. To describe it, Rebecca said, “My whole homestay was a passive aggressive fight with a gay man. I showed Fred who’s boss.” Fred was Rebecca’s housemate who lived across the hall from her, who would sing songs loudly in the shower and folded his clothes in the hallway.
Jack, too, stayed on a vineyard in a family of a mother, father, brother and sister. His average work day consisted of “man’s” work on a vineyard: “planting the points” or nailing posts into the ground to hold up the vines, from 8:30 to noon and then from 12:30 to 5:00. He also went to the schools of his homestay siblings: the middle-school (le collège) and the high-school (le lycée). He says at the brother’s school, the brother almost got into a fight, which Jack stepped in to break up. He went with a worker at the vineyard to a music show at a club in Bordeaux called The Heretic, a show which proved to be quite interesting as it was a punk show! He says he had a great time, even if sometimes he couldn’t understand the names of the bands. He also attended English classes at the schools he went to and said that they asked him a lot of questions which he answered in English, and said that the teachers spoke with British accents.
Emma was also on a vineyard (I bet you’ve gathered by now that most of us were on vineyards!) and her work day was the same as Carly’s, only she didn’t use a pistol to tape the vines to the wires, instead using her own hands. She lived with parents and two sisters aged 11 and 19. The younger sister became Emma’s “professor” in French, including homework and lessons (Emma learned a poem, but she refuses to recite it for us at the time of writing this). She says her family was very humorous, and very unique: the mother moved to France from Poland and her father is Spanish, but they both spoke perfect French. She says the kitchen was being redone and that the people who worked on it were very funny. They were guys from the town and one guy enjoyed talking to himself and skipping work to work on other people’s homes in town. She went to Bordeaux with her older sister to post posters advertising the wine for an upcoming convention, and then they all went to dinner with friends. No doubt it was intimidating, but she also claims it was the best night and she had a fantastic time talking to les jeunes.
Colin likes to say his overall experience was “like a small Bible.” Colin’s farm was dairy products: “Really good cheese, really good yogurt… okay butter.” The farm was very clean, and there were about 100 cows, 25 goats, a baby mule, some pigs and some chickens. His job was to give milk to the baby goats. His claim is that it sounds adorable until you actually feed the baby goats, which he says smell bad and are stupid and jump on you like puppies. He knows now how to prepare baby goat milk, so if you have baby goats that need feeding, Colin’s your man. He had three very interesting stories to share: he accidentally let all the adult goats out of their pen and had to fetch the homestay parents so they could wrangle them back in. He also accidentally flooded half of the first floor after the shower didn’t drain properly, causing overflow into the other rooms. And lastly, he witnessed a stillborn cow birth, which he said was interesting but, naturally, a little distressing. His parents did traditional Irish dancing as a hobby and says that the dancing was much like Larry Muir’s contradancing class except with Irish music. His father played the accordion, which Colin says is an underrated instrument: “It’s like if a saxophone and a piano had a kid.” The most interesting thing he discovered was that death on the farm wasn’t as shocking as he thought it would be, because it is accepted.
Claire too had an interesting experience. She says she wasn’t quite sure what her farm was, as they did a lot of things: they kept and sold chickens, they cultivated a small bit of pine forest, they farmed cereal grains and they also kept bees for honey. Her family consisted of a mother, father and four brothers ranging in ages from 7 to 17. Her first day, she cleaned the screens in beehives with a butter knife and a screwdriver, but most of the time what she did was varied. She says the whole family, including grandparents, uncles, aunts and cousins all lived on the farm as a big business, and along with that, the family also ran a small house to harbor the religious pilgrims following the path of St. Jacques from France to the coast of Spain. She says the highlight of her time was when the youngest son would teach her various French board games and card games.
Joanna was on a vineyard with a 70-year-old couple, the couple’s son and their grandsons. She said the son, in his thirties, really liked the French soccer player Zidane and told a story about how one time he followed Zidane to a restaurant after a game and asked for his autograph. Her homestay mother was “very into being French” and would often tell Joanna, “What I’m doing now is very French.” On her vineyard worked a very interesting man who would sing songs about America whenever she walked by, including the National Anthem. The son had two young sons, ages 8 and 12, who were very cute and sweet. Her lowlight was a constant embarrassment of going the wrong way to do the traditional French greeting of bisous (kisses in the air next to both cheeks).
Esme was on a vineyard as well, with a man and his parents, but no children. She said it was much like going to stay at her grandparent’s house for two weeks, including the food and décor, but that doesn’t mean she didn’t have a good time with them. She said her first three days were spent sitting for ten hours in a room with a bunch of old French men at a wine tasting convention. She says she was the only girl in the room. The parents run a gite on their property which Esme stayed in, mostly alone except for two masons with whom she talked a lot. Her work included working in the field, like weeding with hoes. Her homestay was different as she was not actually in the Bordeaux region, but rather in the Medoc region. She said she spent a lot of time walking and got lost a few times, but always managed to find her way back to the farm.
And last but certainly not least, me, Rachel. I stayed on an organic beef farm with a family of a father, mother and two sons ages 13 and 17. I regret saying I didn’t have much work, though I did do a little gardening and I went with the father on all his errands. My lowlight was a good time turned bad the next day after I went bike-riding (although it was more like spur-of-the-moment spelunking through thorns) with my younger homestay brother and his friend. That was not the bad part, but rather the bad part was when I discovered the next day a thorn buried in my thumb, at the base of the nail in the corner. I managed to dig it out but it hurt a ton! I don’t have any extreme highlights, because my whole experience was wonderful, but one of the best moments was my last night, when we had company over and at the end, they brought out home made cream puffs with birthday candles in mine, and sang “Happy Birthday” in English. It was so touching! Also interesting, and incredibly fun, were the two nights where my homestay father took me to a local theater to see the rehearsals of two plays, one play with kids my age and one play with adults. Most of the kids were younger than me but I did make a new penpal friend while at their rehearsal and we played theater games, which is always fun. The play they were rehearsing was strange, but not in a bad way. It was very much contemporary and very good. The adults were doing more of a comedy piece, which was actually pretty funny and I could understand most of it after the third time viewing the scene. There was a part where they sang in English, which I helped them with, since they wanted help with pronunciation. It was great to see the rehearsal, and cool to see how similar it is even globally between the community theater and the theater at Bush. The process was pretty much the same, which was comforting, but different because it was with older people, in another language. It was fantastic and really jump-started my research on French theater for my project in Paris.
Don’t forget that if you would like to hear more about our experiences, as some of us have some other intensely riveting stories (I’m not just saying that to sound like an advertisement or a book review, but I do mean that some of us had some very surreal experiences that can only be shared one-on-one! I know I did!), you can always ask us to tell you some stories and we’ll be more than happy to comply.
At the moment, I am sitting in the refectory in the chateau in Argy. It’s very beautiful here, but it’s been kind of rainy and cloudy. I hear it’s been snowing back home in Seattle, so at least we have a little more fortune than you folks, but it is very cold sometimes (my fingers are a little cold right now) because of the stone walls, and because it is so airy. We’re all staying in a gite onsite, with all the girls in one room and the boys in the other. There’s been a good amount of work, including cleaning out a small moat, feeding the donkeys and moving carriages. We’ve been here for a day so far and we have three weeks here, so we’re still all adapting to the change from being away from our familles d’acceuil and back together, still swapping stories. It’s a huge change, and it’s very tiring, but also pretty cool. There’s a lot of nature around here. None of us have yet had the opportunity to go into town, but this weekend we are all planning to do so. This week has actually been doubly exciting because of the two birthdays that are happening! Yesterday, April 14th, Joanna turned 17 grand years of age and, incidentally, this Friday the 18th is my own birthday. It’s a very exciting time for all of us!
We miss you all very much and you can expect an update in the coming weeks from Emma. Thanks for reading and good luck with your midterms!
-Rachel
Bonjour, nos familles et nos amis!!
Well, we’re back together as a group after 2 weeks on our own in our homestays on various farms. We all had a blast, and everyone had some great experience they wanted to share with the group, and consequently, with you too. We all discussed our homestays in a roundtable discussion about our experiences and the kind of work we did on the farm, and then chose our highlights, our lowlights, and then a story, if we felt inclined to share one.
Carly stayed on a vineyard in the Bordeaux region, with a family of a mother, a father and a brother, aged 21. Her work involved using a handheld tool, much like a pistol, to attach tape to the wires of the vines to hold them up. The tape was accompanied by staples. Carly has a love of motorcycles, and her highlight was going to a motorcycle show at night to see over 300 motorcycles with her homestay brother. Her lowlight, and resulting epic story, was getting sick in the second week and throwing up in her room, which was attached to a very personal family story.
Rebecca was on a farm of what the French call “forgotten vegetables.” She lived in the same house as a theater troupe. She says she learned a lot about ‘aromatic plants’ and says it doesn’t sound as good in English. Her meals were often given very late, 10:30 PM or later. Her family was a mother and a daughter, age 15. Her family took her to a music festival, to the theater and to Bordeaux, as well as to the markets to sell their vegetables. Rebecca’s work was to unload the vegetables from the car and to then tag all the vegetables with their names and prices. She says the first time she did it, she had about 75% of the vegetables correct, but the second time she had 99%! Her mother was an interesting person who was born in Algeria, lived in India, and knew a little Italian. To describe it, Rebecca said, “My whole homestay was a passive aggressive fight with a gay man. I showed Fred who’s boss.” Fred was Rebecca’s housemate who lived across the hall from her, who would sing songs loudly in the shower and folded his clothes in the hallway.
Jack, too, stayed on a vineyard in a family of a mother, father, brother and sister. His average work day consisted of “man’s” work on a vineyard: “planting the points” or nailing posts into the ground to hold up the vines, from 8:30 to noon and then from 12:30 to 5:00. He also went to the schools of his homestay siblings: the middle-school (le collège) and the high-school (le lycée). He says at the brother’s school, the brother almost got into a fight, which Jack stepped in to break up. He went with a worker at the vineyard to a music show at a club in Bordeaux called The Heretic, a show which proved to be quite interesting as it was a punk show! He says he had a great time, even if sometimes he couldn’t understand the names of the bands. He also attended English classes at the schools he went to and said that they asked him a lot of questions which he answered in English, and said that the teachers spoke with British accents.
Emma was also on a vineyard (I bet you’ve gathered by now that most of us were on vineyards!) and her work day was the same as Carly’s, only she didn’t use a pistol to tape the vines to the wires, instead using her own hands. She lived with parents and two sisters aged 11 and 19. The younger sister became Emma’s “professor” in French, including homework and lessons (Emma learned a poem, but she refuses to recite it for us at the time of writing this). She says her family was very humorous, and very unique: the mother moved to France from Poland and her father is Spanish, but they both spoke perfect French. She says the kitchen was being redone and that the people who worked on it were very funny. They were guys from the town and one guy enjoyed talking to himself and skipping work to work on other people’s homes in town. She went to Bordeaux with her older sister to post posters advertising the wine for an upcoming convention, and then they all went to dinner with friends. No doubt it was intimidating, but she also claims it was the best night and she had a fantastic time talking to les jeunes.
Colin likes to say his overall experience was “like a small Bible.” Colin’s farm was dairy products: “Really good cheese, really good yogurt… okay butter.” The farm was very clean, and there were about 100 cows, 25 goats, a baby mule, some pigs and some chickens. His job was to give milk to the baby goats. His claim is that it sounds adorable until you actually feed the baby goats, which he says smell bad and are stupid and jump on you like puppies. He knows now how to prepare baby goat milk, so if you have baby goats that need feeding, Colin’s your man. He had three very interesting stories to share: he accidentally let all the adult goats out of their pen and had to fetch the homestay parents so they could wrangle them back in. He also accidentally flooded half of the first floor after the shower didn’t drain properly, causing overflow into the other rooms. And lastly, he witnessed a stillborn cow birth, which he said was interesting but, naturally, a little distressing. His parents did traditional Irish dancing as a hobby and says that the dancing was much like Larry Muir’s contradancing class except with Irish music. His father played the accordion, which Colin says is an underrated instrument: “It’s like if a saxophone and a piano had a kid.” The most interesting thing he discovered was that death on the farm wasn’t as shocking as he thought it would be, because it is accepted.
Claire too had an interesting experience. She says she wasn’t quite sure what her farm was, as they did a lot of things: they kept and sold chickens, they cultivated a small bit of pine forest, they farmed cereal grains and they also kept bees for honey. Her family consisted of a mother, father and four brothers ranging in ages from 7 to 17. Her first day, she cleaned the screens in beehives with a butter knife and a screwdriver, but most of the time what she did was varied. She says the whole family, including grandparents, uncles, aunts and cousins all lived on the farm as a big business, and along with that, the family also ran a small house to harbor the religious pilgrims following the path of St. Jacques from France to the coast of Spain. She says the highlight of her time was when the youngest son would teach her various French board games and card games.
Joanna was on a vineyard with a 70-year-old couple, the couple’s son and their grandsons. She said the son, in his thirties, really liked the French soccer player Zidane and told a story about how one time he followed Zidane to a restaurant after a game and asked for his autograph. Her homestay mother was “very into being French” and would often tell Joanna, “What I’m doing now is very French.” On her vineyard worked a very interesting man who would sing songs about America whenever she walked by, including the National Anthem. The son had two young sons, ages 8 and 12, who were very cute and sweet. Her lowlight was a constant embarrassment of going the wrong way to do the traditional French greeting of bisous (kisses in the air next to both cheeks).
Esme was on a vineyard as well, with a man and his parents, but no children. She said it was much like going to stay at her grandparent’s house for two weeks, including the food and décor, but that doesn’t mean she didn’t have a good time with them. She said her first three days were spent sitting for ten hours in a room with a bunch of old French men at a wine tasting convention. She says she was the only girl in the room. The parents run a gite on their property which Esme stayed in, mostly alone except for two masons with whom she talked a lot. Her work included working in the field, like weeding with hoes. Her homestay was different as she was not actually in the Bordeaux region, but rather in the Medoc region. She said she spent a lot of time walking and got lost a few times, but always managed to find her way back to the farm.
And last but certainly not least, me, Rachel. I stayed on an organic beef farm with a family of a father, mother and two sons ages 13 and 17. I regret saying I didn’t have much work, though I did do a little gardening and I went with the father on all his errands. My lowlight was a good time turned bad the next day after I went bike-riding (although it was more like spur-of-the-moment spelunking through thorns) with my younger homestay brother and his friend. That was not the bad part, but rather the bad part was when I discovered the next day a thorn buried in my thumb, at the base of the nail in the corner. I managed to dig it out but it hurt a ton! I don’t have any extreme highlights, because my whole experience was wonderful, but one of the best moments was my last night, when we had company over and at the end, they brought out home made cream puffs with birthday candles in mine, and sang “Happy Birthday” in English. It was so touching! Also interesting, and incredibly fun, were the two nights where my homestay father took me to a local theater to see the rehearsals of two plays, one play with kids my age and one play with adults. Most of the kids were younger than me but I did make a new penpal friend while at their rehearsal and we played theater games, which is always fun. The play they were rehearsing was strange, but not in a bad way. It was very much contemporary and very good. The adults were doing more of a comedy piece, which was actually pretty funny and I could understand most of it after the third time viewing the scene. There was a part where they sang in English, which I helped them with, since they wanted help with pronunciation. It was great to see the rehearsal, and cool to see how similar it is even globally between the community theater and the theater at Bush. The process was pretty much the same, which was comforting, but different because it was with older people, in another language. It was fantastic and really jump-started my research on French theater for my project in Paris.
Don’t forget that if you would like to hear more about our experiences, as some of us have some other intensely riveting stories (I’m not just saying that to sound like an advertisement or a book review, but I do mean that some of us had some very surreal experiences that can only be shared one-on-one! I know I did!), you can always ask us to tell you some stories and we’ll be more than happy to comply.
At the moment, I am sitting in the refectory in the chateau in Argy. It’s very beautiful here, but it’s been kind of rainy and cloudy. I hear it’s been snowing back home in Seattle, so at least we have a little more fortune than you folks, but it is very cold sometimes (my fingers are a little cold right now) because of the stone walls, and because it is so airy. We’re all staying in a gite onsite, with all the girls in one room and the boys in the other. There’s been a good amount of work, including cleaning out a small moat, feeding the donkeys and moving carriages. We’ve been here for a day so far and we have three weeks here, so we’re still all adapting to the change from being away from our familles d’acceuil and back together, still swapping stories. It’s a huge change, and it’s very tiring, but also pretty cool. There’s a lot of nature around here. None of us have yet had the opportunity to go into town, but this weekend we are all planning to do so. This week has actually been doubly exciting because of the two birthdays that are happening! Yesterday, April 14th, Joanna turned 17 grand years of age and, incidentally, this Friday the 18th is my own birthday. It’s a very exciting time for all of us!
We miss you all very much and you can expect an update in the coming weeks from Emma. Thanks for reading and good luck with your midterms!
-Rachel
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