So, my two weeks is almost over here. My hosts have been gracious enough to offer me a ride to the next place i will be wwoofing at since it is only an hour or so away. 2 weeks has seemed to go by quickly, but i also felt at home very quickly too, and it is a little sad for me to be leaving.
As far as my work here goes, i have been mostly working in the gardens. I rescued an apple tree from honeysuckle vine, which is quite strong, and blackberry brambles, which are quite thorny. Before i started this job, i had no idea there was even an apple tree in there. Other than the biting and scratching of the blackberry, i have been really enjoying this work. I get to climb trees, be outside, see the beautiful view whenever i want, hear the birds singing.... sometimes it is so quiet here that if i open the window, i can hear the cows chewing their grass. i also get a lot of time to ponder how silly we humans are. We create so much work for ourselves when we decide we want to control nature. We like some plants, we don't like others. We want to save some plants by killing others. I'm not saying we should just let the invasive plants take over our gardens. These are just the thoughts that i have when i spend hours at war in the garden. The only reason it was so bad though is because the people who owned the place before Jim and Regine haven't been working on it. They only bought this place last March.
Since it is a holiday in France, i think mostly just for the kids (they get a week off from school), the museum was open on Wednesday. It was really nice to see it open, and people visiting. Because of the holiday, one of Regine's friends from Paris, came with three children on Monday, and are here until Friday. It's been really interesting these past few days, sitting around the dinner table with 6 people, who are all speaking French, when i have no idea what's going on. I still find myself laughing though because I'm realizing words aren't actually that important when it comes to communication, at least in this context.
On Sunday, Jim and Regine and I went on a little day trip around the region. We drove through all of these small villages, where all the buildings are made of stone, and there's only one restaurant and one general store. We went to this one place with a bridge, which i have a picture of, and went for a walk, finding bugs and mushrooms everywhere. While we were driving, we came to a big flock? herd? yes herd of sheep. We got out and they were all baaaaaing at us, the lambs too. It was great! There were at least 50 of them. At the end of the day, we went to this really cool bar with local artwork and a shop, and they have live music there too sometimes. It kinda reminded me of Boulder. It made me wish i could speak French.




















Anyway.... i'm trying to figure out how to put captions on my pictures, but until then, you'll just have to figure it out for yourselves.
OH! I forgot. So Halloween. We didn't really get all dressed up, but i showed them how to make a jack-o-lantern, and we made one. I have a picture of that. And we had a music night. They have a million instruments: xylophone, drums, harmonica, guitar, violin, shakers, and lots of other cool noise makers. Plus Jim was on the computer playing with the sounds that people made into the microphone. So with 7 people and "a million" instruments, you can have a lot of fun. So, even though Halloween is not a big thing in France, we had a good one anyway. Jim told me that there's an organization in France that is trying to keep Halloween out of France because it is too American. I guess i can see that, maybe...but i like it.



If you want to check out the website, it's www.lacitedesinsectes.com

I love you all!