An important part of life in a small, friendly French village are the social  relationships. Sometimes walking up the street to the house is an experience in international relations. In our village Durfort, (approximately 200) we have older French people who are living in the houses in which they were born!, young French families who have brought beaucoup of energy to the village, Moroccan, German, British, Irish, Dutch and four Americans.

We non-natives have in common our bad French! But armed with a smile and a willingness to try, we have a grand “journey in communicating” filled with lots of laughter.

Evenings are taken up with impromptu dinners and aperos (like a cocktail hour. Apero is usually from 6-8PM-ish and you serve wines, juices and little nibblies of food. There is an whole aisle in the grocery store devoted to Apero. One side is all wines and aperitifs and the other, all kinds of nibblies to go with. Some are familiar to us- chips, nuts, olives, but also there are many exotic ones. Assorted yummies stuffed with other yummies, tissue paper thin sliced chorizo and other meats, pates, mussels ready to go in assorted sauces, crackers with lovely flavors baked on, cornichons- it goes on and on. Already in our short time here we have been to two aperos and three dinners and I have hosted two dinners!

As you can see food has taken precedence over everything else at the moment. Well, other than getting La Cascade ready for the workshops. But  I have been devoted to my drawing a day  and I continue to really enjoy the photo tips course that I spoke about last week here.

Next week I break out the polymer clay and the sewing machine!