Another Day In France

I had written a bit about the France trip in Ireland I think and so now I will copy and paste it and add any additional 'insights' (I don't think I've had a single insight in my entire life) as needed.

The house we stayed in was flanked, on all sides save one, by orchards. What kind of orchards you ask? Well. There were nectarines. There were peaches (pink skinnd and purple skinned). There were yellow plum type things and purple plums and also olives. Oh and figs. The olives weren't ripe and we wouldn't have picked them even if they were (hee hee) ripe for the taking. We were encouraged to pick all the fruit we could stand except for the olives because it was an actual working olive farm. It's probably good that the temptation wasn't there. It was an old, stone farm house covered in ivy with a funny yet, in the end, fine lay out. When you walked in the door you were facing the kitchen. To the left was a dining room nook and then a living area with fireplace, sofa, bean bag chair and Jenga…and a television to watch football matches on. Above, running the length of the dining/living area was a funny loft wide enough for one futon and nothing much else. Above the kitchen area was one bedroom with two single beds and a door. Across from that room was another door and behind it to the left was a room with bunkbeds and no door, immediately in front was a double bed and immediately to the right was a set of steep stairs that led to yet another double bed (sans frame, so really just a futon mattress on the floor). The sleeping arrangements went as-oh, you don't care where we all slept. I'll just say that the boyfriend and I slept up the steep flight of stairs which had a large window for which we were grateful because otherwise we would have broiled. The only meal we ate inside was the dinner I cooked when everyone, except my father and myself, went to Barcelona. The meal consisted of a kind of Catalan, kind of not rendition of mussels (white wine, parsley, tomatoes, shallots, garlic), salmon in my Chicagoist style, salad in my favorite style and parsley/basil pestoed pasta (also Chicagoisty).We had many other meals that I will write about as I upload the photographs.
Our second day in France we went back to Perpignan. There was a rather royal fuck up in terms of the boyfriend's luggage...mainly that it was still in England. We had hoped to have the boyfriend and my cousin get in contact with their respective parentals through an internet cafe and perhaps have the boyfriend get in touch with the airport people. Alas we did not take into account the whole 'Sunday in France and everything is closed' part of the culture. There was a bit of a forced march led by my father, which left many of us hungry and disgruntled. Some of us thought he was leading the way to an internet cafe others believed that he was on a search for a restaurant he had read about. In the end we found the restaurant...and it was closed. So we sat at the brasserie next to it, right by one of the many canals of Perpignan and had lunch.
I know a bit of French and, on occasion, can sound relatively okay when speaking it. But my vocabulary and grammar needs much work. This becomes clear when speaking to French people about almost anything and/or when reading a menu. The brasserie offered a small number of things on its lunch menu and I chose the below. I chose it because I knew that chevre chaud meant warm goat cheese and I liked the sound of that. But in getting excited about the cheese I discounted another phrase that I didn't know. That phrase turned out to be 'a heck of a lot of chicken livers which you don't actually care for'. I gave most of them to the boyfriend.
Profiteroles, on the other hand, I understand perfectly. Boy oh boy howdy I was not disappointed by these suckers...I did share one with the boyfriend.

France was good though stressful on occasion due to everyone's different ideas of what to do and when to do it…There were moments where it felt very freshmen year of collegey (or even high schooly, kind of) in that we all talked about doing our own thing and yet we all ended up doing most things as a large group. My cousin, the neighbor lady and I logged the most time in and around the pool. I even swam in it without my clothes on one night, scandalous I know, and became enthralled with the way the pool lights made the air bubbles I created by repeatedly smacking the surface of the water pink. We took a yellow train up, up, up into the Pyrenees and yet I was unable to take a proper photograph of how high up we were…bummer. We had a nice meal once we got to our stop then we went back down. We had cheese and cheese and more cheese and then some jambon with, I think literally, every meal.
Figs were the hardest fruit to come by around the house. Unlike the other fruits there weren't just rows upon rows of fig trees and many of the fig trees found didn't have that many ripe ones for us. Above is a photograph of one of the figs the boyfriend was able to find...and the boyfriend eating it.
Above and below are just a few of the views we had from around the house.
Dinner that second day/night was again brought to us care of our former male neighbor. Hearty eggs and potatoes with spices.
The next to photographs are a)some of my favorite of myself from this trip and b)not perfect examples of the frogs that seemed to surround us at night. Their ribbiting sounded much more like ducks quacking in surround sound. I have video of a frog climbing my mother's arm which I will deal with at a later time.
I liked this frog very much.
I had expected to write more, on this trip in general but in France specifically, but with all the people to play with I didn't get much done. Though the one day I did sit down and get into the mode I managed to turn out about 7 pages which is far better than I've been in recent months. It's just a matter of doing that every day, god dammit. Instead I've read a lot. Since leaving I've read (perhaps I've already done this summary?) Prep (by a woman whose first name is Curtis), 2 Elizabeth Berg books, Dance, Dance, Dance (Murakami), Ordinary People (Guest and for the umpteenth time), the new Julia Glass book (just finished that today actually), Maps For Lost Lovers (Nadeem Aslam…very good, very pretty sentences and very sad story) Like Life (short story collection by Lorrie Moore) and at least two others. I'm back to having no book to read which may be the real reason for this never ending litany of typed events I'm finally churning out. And below a much more focused photograph of les grenouilles.