Out Came the Sun & Dried up all the Rain

It rained this morning. It rained HARD. Frances put her shirt out to dry last night...bad idea. The flower jar tipped over and our doors flew open two times last night because of the wind.

Frances and Mommy share a love of mornings and steamed milk

I was very ready for a rainy day at home just reading and sleeping and relaxing and eating. But about 10AM, "Out Came the Sun and Dried up all the Rain."

Immediately, my mom and Frances went to the Universite Populaire, where they signed us up for more art classes in a different space and language classes for my mom and dad.

With blue sky and sun all over, we went for a walk and Daddy went for a ride.

We started out on the same path as always, so we decided to play a game. We had to do or notice 10 things we hadn't ever done or noticed before. From walking in rain gutters to sweeping our hands through tall grass, to noticing tangled wire behind ivy, to noticing blooming lupine, to hearing rushing water in the drainage system below the little road, to walking with our hands behind our backs like the old French women do (it makes you walk so much slower than usual--try it!). All kinds of things we'd seen before but never really noticed. We had a conversation about whether seeing things matters if you don't notice them.

We took a small detour off the main path...

and then had to chose to follow one of two rock walls...

This way?

...or this way?

We ended up wandering along french roads and neighborhoods and saw the typical french countryside...

A curvy, thin road. Rock walls. Old buildings sided in ivy. Vineyards. New, wild lupine on the side of the road.

We turned around and onto the main trail, headed for the park. We were talking about what our first week back in Truckee was going to be like. My mom said we would be waking up in the middle of the night because of jetlag and we'd be going to get bunkbeds and slowly moving into our new house...and of course, seeing all family and friends.

We always pass a ruined building that my dad says was part of an old waterworks system. My dad says it's not from Roman times, so turrets must mean it's at least medieval. It looks very old and crumbly and there are plants growing inside. There's no roof, just beams to support a roof. But the thing is, there is tons of graffiti. Everywhere you look, there's some bright red or green or yellow or orange or pink graffiti on all kinds of old old structures, which disappoints me because the graffiti tells the building, "you don't matter."

After our walk, my dad got some food for the guests we were having over and we got crepes.

Crepes are great and all (I want them every afternoon), but I'm going to invent a new pastry, better than any pastry in the world (I think anyway). I don't know what they're called but I'll describe them: they are the insides of croissants, rolled up into a ball, and dipped in a bowl of sugar and then placed into a pile with a drisel of warm caramel sauce over it. Mmmmmmm.

Frances is trying every single meal to eat with her fork in her left hand and her knife in her right. She's getting really good.

Frances is returning from her first outing to le boulangerie by herself.

Our guests this evening were Dan and John, from Minnesota.

They both were very funny and very nice. Dan plays piano for a living and John just quit his job of 20 years to write and travel. My mom says, "There's not much better than wine, olives, cheese, baked garlic an early evening and new friends on a terrace in France. Dan and John engaged us in talk of culture, poetry readings in Paris, urban archeology (did you know medieval towns of any significant size would bury their waste/refuge/garbage in their gardens or throw it all out the window...and then, when their buildings and homes would fall, the people would just stamp down the earth and build on top of it all. Thus the layering of urban sites. We talked about the evolution of cities, the ties people have to their land, expatriatism, music, family, post World War era  sharing of songs between cultures--did you know Frank Sinatra's MY WAY was really a french song?"

Here's Dan playing the accordian he brought over.

After Frances heard and watched the accordian she said, without a doubt, she wanted "one of those."

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Check out this video and see Dan in action:

Here is a picture of John...

Here is a picture of John tasting Frances's tart lemonade.

Here's Mommy laughing at one of Dan's subtle slices of humor.

I performed a piece of my violin music and Dan played the piano part the second time through...he improvised the accompaniment. Wow. Frances played, too, and then Dan played her song really really fast. It was so fun to listen to.

This is Frances heading off to sleep on the sofa with her eye pillow and her Puppy Place.

And Daddy teaching me to load photos onto the computer.

Tomorrow, I'll be writing about our first day at our friends' house.

Eleanore