The French Connection

These are my two WWOOFer friends, Thibaut and Camille. They're French, and food is their thing. I don't think I've ever eaten so much butter in my entire life. We cook everything in butter, and cheese must be added to almost everything. Our hosts have given us an hour for our lunch break, and that is barely enough time to prepare a meal, eat it, and clean it up. The French, apparently, always have hot, cooked meals for both lunch and dinner. PB&J isn't welcome in our place. (But today neither of them was here for lunch, and I made myself a sandwich!)

Dinner Prep

The Irish, by contrast, eat very light lunches, but the French are fond of the Irish, nonetheless. Camille regaled me with lively stories of Irish soccer fans in France this past summer for Euro 2016. Videos of Irish people on the French underground singing lullabies to a baby went viral on social media, for instance. As far as we can tell, the Irish are quite comfortable picking up hitchhikers and giving fantastic directions. Overall, I think Thibaut and Camille consider the Irish to be "very friendly" and are thrilled they chose this country as their base for learning English.

English language acquisition is a big part of the reason why both Camille and Thibaut are here, so I think it's good that I joined them so that they would be forced to practice. On the other hand, I'm learning quite a bit about French. Camille is from north of Paris, and Thibaut is from Toulouse in the south. Who knew what a rivalry that would be! The French people in the north think that they speak perfect French, while those in the south find the northerners to have a bit of an accent. Camille says that Thibaut "pronounces all the letters" in French, and I beg to differ. No one pronounces all the letters in French; that's the language.  (In her defense, though, Thibaut pronounces more of the letters than she does.)

The rivalry doesn't end with the language either. Camille would tell you that the wine in Burgundy is better than the wine in Bordeaux, but Thibaut would say the opposite. Thibaut would say that the weather in the south is better, and travel is easier in the south because of proximity to other popular locations in the south. Camille would say that the opportunities, history, and culture of Paris outweigh all of that. Either way, I love surrounding myself with people who are proud of their roots, and these two are certainly proud to be French.

Beers at De Barra's Folk Club in Clonakilty

Some of the folk musicians

Also, I finally have some photos of the actual work. I'd like to make a note about chasing chickens: I've done it everyday, so it's really not out of the ordinary. We just moved a fence to give the chickens some fresh pasture, and now they're confused and really testing their boundaries.

Camille collecting eggs in the hen house

My grandmother has a sign over her living room door that reads "Raising children is like being pecked to death by chickens." I'm certainly getting the gist of that one in a new way these days.

It's not uncommon to find multiple eggs in one little box.