So now... Where to begin? We are still at the horse farm Cavalus in the French Pyrenees. They have a website so you can google Cavalus for pictures if you're interested. It has been quite an experience. In all honesty and fairness, we can't actually say that it has been bad. But we can make it clear that it has not been our favorite place to stay. On the upside, it is an absolutely beautiful location. 360 degree views of the mountains and a lovely rustic farmhouse and plenty of lovely horses. Based on location and ambiance alone, it is fantastic and we are glad to have been here just for that.
On the downside. If you look up "The Boonies" or "backwater" in the dictionary, you will find Cavalus. The greatest insult they throw around here is: "est-ce que vous etes un espece de parisien?" or "are you some type of Parisian?" The Pyrenees have no relation to Paris whatsoever. Ivan's son (we call him Bobbin; real name unknown) lives in a small house up the road (why??) and has no job. Apparently no one here finds it necessary to be employed. He asked us whether most people in Boston work during the week or not - and was interested to hear that the answer was yes!! We can't quite figure out how they survive up here, though it is quite clear that one requirement for the survival of the population is the death of the trees. We have cut down 3 trees in the last 4 days and chopped them up into firewood, which Nien says will last one week. We think she's exaggerating but since their entire (huge - functions as a guesthouse and sleeps 15 people) house is heated only by wood fires, it may not be too far from the truth. To give you a slightly clearer picture: Bobbin and his girlfriend are moving OUT of their house for the winter and into a "Mongolian tent" which they are buying and plan to set up on a hand-constructed wooden platform higher in the mountains, purposely accessible only by foot. Apparently the word for this neo-hippie-ism is "baba-cool". Our guess is that they'll be baba-freezing in January without a heater. Or baba-asphyxiating from trying to start a fire in their tent.
Aside from this slightly antisocial oddness, everyone is pretty nice, though Ivan prefers not to talk (we've sat through two painful lunches with him during which no one said a word) and Nien is, well, bizarre. She told us about her "very, very avant-garde" school in Amsterdam (of course) where she learned all about how to express her internal emotions through external movements and where they "did such intense body work" that she needed therapy afterwards. It's all a bit of a circus here.
The work has been fine, we just wish there was a bit more of it. We usually spend the morning busy; from 9 to 1 we have been either gathering and chopping wood, building fences, or tracking down horses that escape at least once per week. (Aside: why we don't just fix the broken fence that allows them to escape time after time is a mystery). This work is pleasant enough, though at times wrought with danger because Ivan wears no protective gear and swings the chainsaw like he's doing a do-si-do, and the ax broke today so that a hard enough swing would send the blade flying off the top of the handle, but we use it anyway. At 1ish we stop whatever we're doing to have lunch, often leaving wood on the tractor or tools in the pasture, and then we do nothing for 2 hours. The Spaniard has a siesta and Ivan disappears. We usually take a walk and feed the horses to pass the time. Some days we do work again in the evening, but lately most days we don't. We just leave the wood on the tractor and the tools in the field overnight and instead of working, have nothing at all to do. The bad part of this is that it is infuriating, since we have yet to finish a single project and the horses continue to escape while the wood for their fence sits by the side of the road half a mile away. The good part is that it gives us plenty of time to run every day.
In addition to that enjoyable farmwork, Nien has also delegated to us some household jobs. Sweeping and dishes we do not mind. It is, however, somewhat demoralizing to clean someone else's bathroom. And today she asked us to spend one day before we leave cleaning the kitchen. Like really cleaning it. As she said, "it's nice for this to be done at the end of every year" since it is never done otherwise. We have to pull appliances away from the walls to clean the backs of them, clean out the refrigerator (yuck), use a hands-and-knees scrub brush on the floor, and get "all those icky places way back in the corners that nobody ever wants to do." The crowning glory is that we also have to wash all of the walls, ceiling to floor, with soap and a sponge, including the grease-soaked untreated-wood window frames. She was going to have us repaint the walls and ceiling but luckily the store didn't have the right paint. And it's not that the house is dirty, persay, but this morning the cat caught a big rat in the living room. While we were sitting there. It then brought it up onto the couch next to Marisa. Now, we don't want to be ungrateful, since these people are allowing us to stay in their house and eat their food, but doesn't it seem as though they're maybe taking advantage of our inability to say no, just a little bit? We will clean the disgusting kitchen, but we're not too happy about it.
On a lighter note, here is a list of interesting foods we've eaten here so far - keep in mind that "interesting" can go either way: lots of quiches and tarts, escargot (chewy), lamb hearts (also chewy), "ze pizza" (love the accent), remarkably delicious butter, crepes with sugar, crepes with cheese, crepes with nutella, pate (on the table at every meal), and anchovies (Europeans love their anchovies). Quite a mix of good and bad, no?
Think that about catches you up on our adventures here in France. Looking forward to Barcelona next week!
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry
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