Cooking adventure went acceptably (it was edible). However, couldn't really taste the ginger... or the garlic... and I think I used too much soy sauce. Hopefully will improve next time.

Today, I dug holes for fence posts, cleared out some more of an old fence, and shoveled out the chicken barn. Fucking satisfied.

Food!

Let's talk about food. A significant motivation for going WWOOFing was that I imagined I would be eating fresh, delicious, wholesome, healthy food at these organic farms. In my head, these meals were pretty expansive; lots of spices and dishes. While in reality, the food that I've had so far has been pretty simple, it has definitely fulfilled all those other expectations. The salads, as mentioned previously, couldn't get much fresher or more local. And the food itself is fresh from the market we went to on Saturday (if not from this farm itself), and, though simple, really satisfying. Also, they make their own bread here, which I have now resolved to start doing (key ingredient is spelt in addition to wheat flour). A notable exception to the simpleness is the piece of apple and berry crumble that Wolfgang bought for me at the market, from their preferred baker. I was going to say that it was classic French baking, but the guy we bought it from is actually German. Whatever, it was great.

I think I'm going to cook tomorrow- hopefully it won't be disastrous. I won't say "I can't imagine it will be" so I don't jinx myself, but still, I'm going to fry up some tofu with a few spices. This is something I can (should be able) to do.

Now, let's talk briefly about barbed wire fences. They are extremely frustrating to take down (rolling up a line of barbed wire is annoying, as it gets caught on everything, including but not limited to gloves and shirts). However, putting up barbed wire fences is kind of fun. (Not much to it, as the posts were already in the ground, but still, compared to taking down the other fence, much more enjoyable).

Also, it's really pretty here. (I was going to illustrate that sentence with a picture I took today, but I'm too tired to upload it to the computer and give it the necessary tweakings to put it online. Next time.)

La Lombarde Ouest

Whew. So, I made it through my first 24 hours as a real WWOOFer. It's been emotional.

Got in last night, train was relatively on time. Recognized Wolfgang from a couple of pics I had seen of the farm and the people; I'm sure he had no trouble picking out me from the 4 other French people (only one of whom was male, and did not have a large camping backpack or hoodie). He's Austrian, and thus speaks English and German in addition to French; however, we've mostly been conversing in French. In the fading light as we drove from the train station to his house/ the farm, it was clear that this was a pretty middle-of-nowhere area; not much more than vineyards around. We drove through the tiny village of St Vivien (where La Lombarde is technically located); I may have to go explore that on a day off. The house/ farm itself is a house, a barn, several acres (18 hectares= how many acres?) 12 chickens, 2 donkeys, 3 cats, a greenhouse, and various fruit and nut trees. He took me on a bit of a tour around the property before it got dark (including an artifically-dug pond with lots of frogs and frog eggs around the edge; I'm listening to a lovely chorus of frogs (unidentified as of yet) as I sit in my room right now).

I then got to meet his wife Ingrid, who left this morning for a 6-day meditation retreat in Switzerland (they are both very into meditation; Wolfgang has apparently been doing so for 30 years). She's nice (they're both nice) but much more talkative than he is. Dinner consisted of a thick slice of home-made bread with some local, organic goat's cheese (not a problem; as I was kind of anxious, I didn't have much of an appetite). Small talk, practicalities, then bed. I discovered that I am addicted to screen-based entertainment; no WiFi available, so I watched part of a movie I had on my flash drive, and felt much better/ less anxious. Hooray for escapism.

Today was the really interesting part. Got up to see the sun just coming over the nearby ridge and illuminating the prayer flags they have strung up in front of the house; beautiful. Breakfast = toast (still the home-made bread) with the same cheese; however, other options appear to be available. Then- to work! This consisted mostly of filling a wheelbarrow with cut pine branches and bringing them to the woodchipper, then shoveling the newly-created mulch into either aforementioned wheelbarrow or into the back of the tractor's small trailer. During the morning, I went through a variety of emotions; in descending order of magnitude: anxiety about my shoulder and whether I would be able to actually do farm work; general anxiety at being in a new place, doing new things; excitement at actually being on a farm, doing field work; sudden, intense pleasure at a random moment while feeding a branch into the chopper; anxiety at having to cook lunch for us tomorrow. Lunch is the main meal here, so we stopped and I prepared the salad (following Wolfgang's instructions) as he cooked the meal. My anxiety about my cooking abilities dissipated somewhat when the meal was a simple affair of rice, fried tofu slices, and the salad, plus some steamed brussel sprouts. Tofu was so-so, the salad was quite fresh (I saw him go cut it from the greenhouse while I was working) but kind of bitter, and the brussel sprouts were delicious. But the best part was just eating outside in the beautiful day, watching the birds, the cats, and the chickens. Yes, this is why I'm in France working on farms.

Felt much less anxious in the PM (work started back up at 3 PM after a nice siesta). Shoulder seemed to be holding up acceptably, and I was feeling more comfortable here. At about 5:30, he told me I could stop working, saying I had worked enough today (I am supposed to work about 5 hours per day; at that point I was probably at around 5.5-6 hours. But I decided to finish the pile of branches next to the chipper. I realized that had he not told me I could stop working, I would have ended up doing the same amount of work, but would have felt much less good about it; it seemed to be the fact that I was choosing to continue working that made the difference.

By the evening, after a shower, I was feeling great. As long as my shoulder feels OK tomorrow, I think I'm good to go. Dinner is "self-serve" (like breakfast); we each made some fried eggs, had the rest of the salad, and some bread. I feel as though I am eating less food than I normally do; however, I don't feel like I'm going hungry. Maybe I usually eat more food than I need.

Tomorrow is market day (they don't sell things, but we will go buy things). Coming on a Thursday evening was probably a smart move. Also, one of the cats is sitting on the windowsill outside my window and staring at me/ the bugs around the window.

To the farm!

I'm on a TGV right now, headed towards my first farm. The past few days at Sam's have been mostly good; we spent an afternoon in Tours, a beautiful city with a cathedral, a church, and random other cool-looking buildings. Also the Loire runs through it. Sam spent a few weeks there before his semester abroad in Paris, so he knew his way around a bit. I spent a day on my own while Sam was working; didn't do too much of import, but I talked to a few French people while buying various foodstuffs/ mailing a postcard, so I felt relatively accomplished.

One not-so-great thing was that while playing handball (the European version, a bit like a combination of basketball and soccer), I managed to hurt my (right) shoulder while taking a shot. I don't think it's anything too serious, but the shoulder's been sore and a bit swollen since then. I'm hoping I will still be able to perform my necessary farm duties, but I will probably let the farmer(s) know that I probably shouldn't be doing any heavy lifting for the first few days.

My broken body aside, I'm quite excited to be on my way to the farm. This is something that I've been planning to do for years. I'm also realizing that this doesn't feel like a "trip" as the other trips this year (Israel, Kenya) have. I'm in Europe for 4 months, so there's much less urgency to see/ do things; I assume I'll have th etime to do and see the things I want to. It's also quite different in that there will be things expected of me while on the farms, whereas in Israel and Kenya (and, indeed, so far in France) there's been someone who is taking point on everything; all I have to do is follow along.

My French is occasionally decent, more often not so great. I get flustered and forget simple vocab/ easy constructions pretty easily. Since I also get flustered relatively easily when talking to strangers in English, this shouldn't be too much of a surprise. Still, I expect that my French will eventually pick up, though only if I actually start speaking French more often (spoke mostly English with Sam). Of the two farmers, I know one of them is German; I'm hoping the other is French, though I know they both speak English, so I will have to have some force of will and make myself speak French with them. Maybe for my next farm I will choose one where they only speak French.

Time for some random thoughts.

There's a lot of graffiti in France. A lot of it is really good, artistically, and it generally seems to be the case that people appreciate this and don't take it down. And sometimes there are some nice messages: just passed under a bridge where someone had spraypainted "SExISM = FACHISM" [sic].

Some notes for potential future WWOOFERs: pack lighter than you think you will need to. If possible, bring one camping backpack with extra room in it. Don't pack it to the brim, and DON'T bring more than one very small other bag.

Vendôme

Vendôme is a pretty cool place.

I've mostly been hanging out with Sam's friends, a few French guys and girls around our age (plus a 30-year-old English woman) who live near him. Friendly group, they seem to enjoy having me around and occasionally trying out their English on me. I'm realizing my French is not nearly as good as I thought it would be. I have a pretty easy time following conversations with 1 or 2 other people, but when it gets to be a larger group, it's pretty tough for me to keep track of everything going on, plus the speed of speech tends to increase, as does the amount of slang used. But still, some things are coming back to me; I expect to significantly improve my French during the months I am here.

Sam and I biked through a bit of Vendôme today. It's a beautiful small-ish (~20,000 inhabitants) French town, with an abandoned castle on a hill, a beautiful abbey with amazing carvings that you just sort of come upon suddenly, as well as a church with a steeple that's illuminated at night. Haven't actually gone in to any of these yet, but that's the plan for tomorrow. We drove around on Saturday to a few of the castles/ manors in the area (we're on the very edge of the Loire Valley, so there are a good number of "chateaux" around).

Also been drinking a good deal of pastis, another anise liquor that you add water to (it turns milky white when you do so). Delish.

My next adventure begins

At the moment, I am sitting against a wall in the corner of Gare Montparnasse, a train station in the middle (more or less) of Paris. I left my house yesterday at 2 pm (EST) with Deidra, made it (eventually, despite some train troubles) to 125th St Station in New York, where Mwanzaa's parents picked us up (Deidra lives near JFK).
Flight over was relatively uneventful; I was in a swanky new A380. Since my last 2 trips each required multiple long flights, this jaunt over to Europe seemed downright quick.

(If you're just joining us, quick rundown: I'll be in France and Europe for about 4 months, mostly WWOOFing (World-Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms), working for room and board at various places around France, and occasionally taking trips to visit my boyfriend in Berlin, other people I know in other places in Europe, and the odd ultimate tourney with the team I played with in Paris).

I love Paris. I don't have time to go walk around (plus I have my bags, which, despite my best efforts, are pretty bulky), but it's nice to be back after living here for a semester junior year. It still feels pretty familiar; I may have to spend a week or so here (not farming, of course...)

A dilemma while packing was what kind of clothes to bring. Since I'll be mostly on farms, I opted for mostly practical clothes (synthetic t-shirts, hiking pants, etc.) BUt I do hate being in Paris and having all these well-dressed people around, and knowing that I could easily fit in if I had brought other clothes. But again, I overpacked as it is, so that wasn't really an option.

Plan for today: Get to Sam's place in Vendome, hang out, probably fall asleep early. I'll be visiting Sam for a few days, and then I'm off to my first farm (somewhere in Dordogne) on Thursday!

Side note: Apparent recurring theme: my watch band breaking on the first day of a trip. Happened in Africa (repaired it); happened today on the RER into Paris (different part of the watch band). Tant pis.

Part 2
I'm finally at Sam's place. This seemed like it would not be a big deal: 40-minute TGV ride from Paris to Vendome. What I didn't count on was the massive TGV delays due to some sort of "technical accident," such that we sat on the train in Paris for about an hour and a half (getting updates every 20 minutes or so saying we would be departing in "a few minutes." It got to the point where we would all laugh every time they said this; it was actually a kind of nice, collective, good-natured resignation to the fact that we were going to be quite late). We had to stop a few times on the track for unclear reasons, but the worst was when they announced that we were approaching Vendome, and then the train came to a stop (NOT at the station); we found out there was some unclear issue, and we were again stopped on the tracks for about 15 minutes. Finally, I got to the station to find out that the bus I was supposed to take to Sam's wouldn't get there for an hour. Fortunately, Sam got his friend to drive me (only 10-15 mins), and now I am here, showered, somehow a bit awake (lots of napping on the train), and ready to go!

Masai and Herd

Masai and Herd a photo by GeoffSJG on Flickr.

Nom Nom

Nom Nom a photo by GeoffSJG on Flickr.

Boing

Boing a photo by GeoffSJG on Flickr.

Cheetah Wide

Cheetah3 a photo by GeoffSJG on Flickr.