day 66: monday
- woke up (by myself, i might add), showered, and had breakfast/gossip time with hilary, grandma & grandad
- helped johann/grandma feed constance her lunch, then i helped hilary prepare the table for lunch. johann & i had quite a difficult time dividing the cakes (one citron & one with lots of fruits) martin & jill brought for us into 14 even slices – they kept falling apart everywhere and the knives were super dirty/sticky… when we ate them, however, they were absolutely DELICIOUS. today we had a measly twelve dining for lunch: hilary, grandma, grandad, laura, johann, JC, william, martin, jill, liz, victoria, and myself. maman ligot left around 11 and jean-pierre drove her to visit her other children in the south of france… i really liked her, she is very spunky and i think she liked that i actually speak French
- victoria & i walked into town to go to pub au bureau and use the internet. we booked our TGV tickets to lyon for thursday and caught up on our emails a bit… it’s amazing how easy it is to fall behind, even in the summer when nothing in particular is “happening.” we were there for 2 hours and i still feel so behind that i will surely return tomorrow
- began to work on my florence paper… luckily it was quite cloudy so i wasn’t tempted by the pool
- my studies were interrupted by hilary/constance. hilary wanted to make tea, so i became on constance duty. we “walked” about in the living room a bit, then played with william. at tea time we played with all her toys and then the grandparents began trying to take photos which very swiftly resulted in a fussy constance. will took over for a bit until the phone rang, which he went to answer. ever fussy, constance and i took a turn about the garden, looked at all the flowers, and sat by the pool while hilary swam. we then made our way back to the house and watched grandma cook while hilary (finally) prepared a bottle and relieved my arms of their screaming burden… needless to say, my productivity took a turn for the worse as the afternoon progressed
- once again we had twelve for dinner… laura left in the afternoon, but johann & constance are staying down in dieulefit for the rest of the week. the vegetables for dinner were furnished by our neighbors: “blet” (which is, as far as i can tell, a tasteless green vegetable caught somewhere between celery and leek but lacking all of their virtues) with a cheesy sauce grandma made to try and make it palatable. i feel blet is quite a fitting name for the stuff… blech
- after dinner i retired to the living room to do more reading and was joined by everyone else. johann made some popcorn, hilary brought out the herbal tea, and we all sat around reading in amiable silence until martin decided to try and make conversation at which point i got distracted and had to give up on reading (again!) until after they left
