Mondays are always kind of a bummer no matter where you happen to be. Sophie and I slept in on this gray misty morning. Once up, I did my dishes from last night and fed us both breakfast. In no rush to do anything, I sat at my computer and researched where to purchase a clawfoot tub , Portuguese tile, second hand bikes, and wrote my blog. After Sophie gave me more than one nudge, we did our morning walk around the village.

I wouldn’t consider myself a forager but yesterday the loop yielded a perfect apple that we plucked from a semi-public tree. I wish I had photographed this apple before I ate it because it was truly enormous, shiny and almost too perfect. It was the kind of apple one would not accept from an old lady in the woods.

Today, I found walnuts fallen beneath a tree. Ahead on the trail I had noticed an older man bent at the waist collecting something from the ground and filling up a cloth bag. When Sophie and I got to this place on the trail I recognized the walnuts and began shoving them into my pockets complete with mud and grass. When we got home, I rinsed them and dried them and now have a bowl of walnuts which I will use for baking once I get a nut cracker.

This afternoon after my daily garden jobs, I was unsure what to do. The weather looked to be clearing, so I decided to bike towards Ernee and explore that little town a bit more. Today I felt really comfortable on my new bike. I have the seat at the right height and I’m getting used to using 2nd gear to climb these long, gradual hills. I rode past town and then went to a cafe and ordered a cappuccino. I mean come on. It felt a little fairy-talish. I sat outside the cafe and watched students dismissed from a local college (which I think means secondary school here) from across the street. Funny how teenagers look the same everywhere. I guess that is the product of media and conformity. The best part of my experience at the cafe was that James called and we had a nice conversation updating each other on our recent experiences. He has been amazing to me and I can’t explain how grateful I am for his support.

After the cafe, I rode over to the Super U market, and bought myself a notebook for this week’s French class, an avocado, the butter that Mandy gets with chunks of salt, some lettuce for tomorrow’s salad, some more dressing, and a pen. I rolled all of this into my bag and strapped it onto the back of my bike. I rode back to St. Denis quite hungry and excited about my left over coq au vin.