Thursday, September
27, 2012
Well, it’s time to
review the last couple weeks in a very fall like France. I wore long pants,
socks and shoes until mid June and as soon as August was over, back to them
again…….so very different from my Georgia weather. I even put the heat on last
week….in SEPTEMBER…..argh!
We spent a weekend in
Angouleme with Jacques and Claire for the Circuits des Ramparts; which is an
antique car show and race through the city streets. We also toured the Chateau de la
Rochefoucauld, outside of Angouleme, which is family owned and lived in. The history was interesting to see and I
loved the family tree painted on a wall in the chateau. It goes back about 40 generations, but for
the last twenty there has been a Francois right down to the current, Francois XX.
He is Tristan’s age and his father Francois XIX is Ross’ age, so it was
interesting for me to see this modern family who still maintain a family
castle. It wasn’t the best kept up or
renovated castle we’ve seen, but still interesting since the family has a wing
they use. The grandma (wife of Francois
XVIII) came into the courtyard carrying her grocery bags and chatting with folks
as she entered the private quarters.
My favorite thing in
the day was the photo Ross took of me with Claire. Yes, she’s very tiny and I’m
not, but the distance between us and the angle makes her look soooo small and
me sooo large. It’s pretty funny!
It was fun being
downtown with the crowds watching the cars being shown off in the city
center. It’s not my thing, but some of
these people traveled from all over Europe to show their cars and it was
impressive to see. There were modern
Ferraris and Lamborghinis all mixed in with very old restored cars. I don’t know all the names but did admire the
work involved. It reminded me of a day
with my dad, he loved car shows and this one would have been one of his
favorites.
It was a great
weekend of laughter, which was just what I needed to clear up my lonely moments
of the previous week. We played a game
which was new to us, Settlers of Catan which was a lot of fun; but if you’ve
never played a game with the Coquerel family, watch out, they play to win and no mercy! I ordered the game (yes the English version)
on amazon.fr so we can play it with the kids at Christmas. I think it will be a lot of fun. We always play a lot of games at Christmas
and I realized I didn’t bring any to France with us, but left them in Georgia. So now we have the Settlers of Catan, Blokus,
Uno and Pinochle here. That should do.
Claire again did a canard(duck)
dinner for us and it was delicious. The
skin was crispy, crunchy and we enjoyed it very much. Now I realize all those times at her house in
Georgia where we thought we were eating really good chicken, it was duck!
We arrived home
Sunday night and again Sophie did great in the car. She gets car sick so I
asked the pharmacist here what to do. Here
you get meds for people and dogs at the pharmacy, not the vet. He gave me these cheap pills that she takes
only a half of one and they work great. The
car sick meds I got in the US for Rosie were so expensive, you had to decide if
it was worth using them.
Monday morning Ross
was off for a five day trip to Italy. Yes,
I’d love to go to Italy, but this was days of seminars and several different
cities and he was with another guy, so this wasn’t a good one for me. Turned out to be a good thing too as I spent
part of the week with a bad headache and stomach virus. Very weird one, but once it passed, I was
fine. Ross unfortunately came down with
it too,. But after he was home, so that was good.
Saturday was a busy
one for us as we went to Anne-Rachel and Paco’s for lunch and then a neighbor’s
house for dinner. Anne-Rachel and Paco
have moved into a house this summer and I was excited to see it for the first
time. We loved it, it will be such a
great house for their family. Lots of
room and very bright and airy. They live
about an hour and fifteen away from us so it was a nice day for the drive as
well.
At 8PM (or 20:00 -I
don’t know if I will ever get used to the time thing!!! ) anyway, we walked down the street to a
neighbor’s house. It is one of the couples we met at the Fete de Rue a
couple weeks ago. They are the ones who
traveled to Georgia this summer. They also invited another neighbor couple so
it was a great evening of getting to know each other. They all speak about as much English as we do French,
so it was a night of mixed languages. One
thing I thought was sweet…..the couple have three children, the youngest about
16. I met her at the fete as well, but briefly. She
was home with a friend over for the evening and although they spent most of it
upstairs in her room, both girls came to greet us and the other couple with the
cheek kiss thing they do here. I thought
it was very polite and nice. Dinners
here are long, relaxing and in courses so it was after midnight before we walked
home. It is such a different schedule
than we are used to in the US. It was a
really nice night and hopefully they will be couples we can occasionally do
some things with.
I made Tartiflette last
week for dinner. It was something Claire
cooked and I wanted to try it. It’s
potato, onion, lardon (which is similar to bacon) with salt, crème leger (kind
of a liquid cream) and white wine topped with this special tartiflette cheese
you use only for this dish. It’s a
hearty fall meal served with salad. It’s
funny, when I bought the cheese I discovered it was the smelliest cheese yet we’ve
had in France. With my air flow fridge and the cheese box we don’t have trouble
anymore, but phew, this was double bagged, sealed and boxed and it was awful
smelling. The oddest part is, that the
taste is very nice and smooth and not foul……sometimes here the smelliest
cheeses are not the strong tasting ones at all.
The dish turned out well and while
I wouldn’t make it all the time, it’s kind of like lasagna or chili that you
love to make and eat, but usually don’t want again for a while.
Speaking of chili, I
have a batch going right now for dinner. I am trying so hard to make small amounts of
things and this seemed like it would be a little batch, but in the crockpot it’s
more than I thought. It’s just about ½ the
crock pot, but way too much for two of us. I’ll be freezing some for a later
date. I hope I can squeeze it into the
freezer; I’m thinking some juggling will need to happen first. Space is limited
here so it’s hard not to have my big freezer where I could just whip up large
batches of things for future eating. Here
every inch of freezer is accounted for.
This weekend we are
going Saturday afternoon to a church retreat. It goes until Sunday late afternoon, so this
should be interesting. I laughed at the
announcements for it. We need to bring
bedding -guess we’ll take the sheets, pillows and duvet from our single beds
upstairs since we have no extra bedding here at all. We also are to bring
finger food snacks and sweets for Saturday night, but in the announcement it
says, “no strong alcohol please”…that just made me laugh, it’s so very
different here. At home it would be a
given that strong alcohol wouldn’t be a church retreat thing! It should be a good chance for us to get to
know people a bit better, and you know how Ross loves a crowd and being
uncomfortable!!!
I had a weird thing
this week at the massage therapist guy. I’ve
mentioned before he does some Chinese energy stuff; but he’s a good massage
therapist and seems to be able to keep my muscles from having issues even
though I don’t understand all of it; he knows his stuff and finds where I’m
having trouble and works on it. Okay but
this week, he’s at my feet and he has his eyes closed and doing some breathing
thing and he asks me (keep in mind he speaks NO English, so we communicate in
my broken French) “Have you been sick? Your head and your lower stomach? Okay,
so how on earth does he know that from my feet??? He was absolutely correct, but I’m clueless as
to how he knows things like that. We’ve worked out okay communication and he
smiles, but respects my need for a bit of modesty. I now bring my own small towel for my chest,
just so I know they’re covered. I still am amazed that women just strip down to
their undies or less right in front of him. I know it’s how it is and when I’ve
talked to women here about it, they are fine with it and say it’s the best time
to have conversation with the doctor or massage therapist since they’re waiting
on you. Those who have gone to the US
find it so funny that we see a nurse, then they leave the room and you strip and
out on a gown before the doctor comes. So, I guess it’s all in what your normal
was growing up. But, he is fine with my
issues and lets me stay covered!
I also went to the dentist
for the first time here. Talk about nerves!! I don’t mid going in Georgia and
the dentist is a friend so that makes it easier, but, I still don’t love dental work!!! The dentist here is a French woman who trained
in Texas so she speaks English-hallelujah!!
Still very different. There is
one receptionist/clean up person and the dentist. The dentist’s husband works at SKF, so that is
how we found her. So, one half the room is her office with her desk and then
through the archway is her dental room. You
meet her first at her desk and talk. I
wanted her to understand my gum grafts that are just a year old. After that much money and work, I don’t want
anyone digging at them! Then you go to the dental chair. It’s very modern and clean with the latest
technology. The x-ray is different, none
of that nasty thing you bite on and she cleans with an ultra sonic thing which I
loved. She does it all herself with no hygienist or assistant. I had a small filling that needed to be fixed
and she took care of that as well. It
was a really good experience and my whole bill was 66euro. That is less than $80. That’s not after insurance, that’s the actual
cost. We pay everything up front and get
money back from our expat insurance, so we know full costs of healthcare here. I made an appointment for 6 months explaining
to her I’d like my teeth cleaned again. She said if she sees a French patient every
two years, it’s good. Usually it’s only
for a tooth ache and then a lot won’t pay their part for a crown so they lose
the tooth. A crown is about 300 euro…..in
the US my co-pay for a crown is $500 and that’s half. She said she can tell I take good care of my
teeth and she was so impressed that Ross and I got braces as adults. She
said that is unheard of here and thought it was pretty great. She will repair my permanent retainer too if
it should pop, so that is awesome.
Ross has had a crown bothering
him for a while, so he is in the process of a three step old crown replacement.
So far, he’s been twice and the next is
the final where he will have a little bone surgery before placing a new crown
on. He says it’s cool though, she only numbs the tooth and not the area all the
way up to his nose, so while he couldn’t feel anything she did, he left without
that numb feeling in his face. So, while
he doesn’t enjoy dental stuff either, it’s been an okay experience.
I’m off to the Super
U for a few things, it’s the little grocery store here in Luynes. Not my favorite, but perfect for a few
things. It’s too far to walk but only
five or so minutes by car, so it’s handy. Oddly though, I can get a few things
there that I can’t get anywhere else; like vergoise brun, which is my closest
thing to brown sugar. Here they use
cassonade which is similar to what we’d call sugar in the raw. For some recipes I just want the flavor and
consistency of brown sugar. I even
thought to add molasses to white sugar which would work, but I can’t find molasses
anywhere! I’m guessing no treacle toffee
for Christmas this year……that will be a first! My kids might just revolt! What will we eat
while paying a game?
Until next time……
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