Bonjour!   Well, you can tell my French classes are working out very well. I am progressing slowly. We have been told by some native English-speaking people who are used to speaking fluent French, that even after 10 years, it is still a struggle to speak in French and think in English. Most of them have plans to retire in a country where English is the native language. They are just plain tired of translating everything. (Especially the jokes!)

Last Friday, we drove 5 hours to Paris so that I could meet with the French Immigration office to complete my Visa Application. We need Visas because we are going to stay in France for over 90 days. I took a medical exam and passed except they said I was too fat. Then, I took an eye exam and they said that I needed glasses, but they didn’t ask me if I wore contacts! I did pass the eye examination. At the end of the day, they asked for my passport photo and proof of accommodations to prove that I have been living in France. They rejected my passport photo even though it is the one in my passport and the identical one accepted by the French Consulate in Chicago when I applied for my Visa. Apparently, they have official photo “cabines” called “Photomation” in France and that is the only photo they will accept. They are similar to our photo booth. In addition, my proof of accommodation was in English and they wanted it to be in French. So, it was rejected also. They rescheduled me for another appointment on July 18^th to bring them a new passport photo and proof of accommodation. We spent one night in Paris and drove home the next day dejected for being rejected!

The French Immigration office also finally found Rita’s paperwork this week. They had lost it for over 6 weeks. Technically, she did not exist and was not in France according to their records. But, they could kick her out of France after 90 days if she did not get their approval to be here! Her records were paper clipped to my records and surfaced when I had my meeting with them. So, Rita has to complete her Visa requirements on July 9^th.   Assuming we both pass this time, it will have taken us three trips to Paris to get approval. It is frustrating to experience all this bureaucracy, but I understand that the US is even worse!

We at least took a few pictures after dinner!

Notre Dame at night

We have had two exciting events this week.

Preparing for our visit with family.

First, Rita’s family from Lille in the north of France, came to visit on Saturday and are staying until Friday. We have Isabelle, her daughter Jasmine (4), her mother Lina and their cousin Yoran (12) in our home. We have been swimming, playing cards, visiting castles, specifically Chateau Puymartin and Chateau Milandes, and enjoying touring small beautiful villages.

Chateau Puymartin and the legend of the lady in white. (Madame Blanc)

The Chateau Puymartin has a roof of stone. The stones cost 700 Euros ($955.00) per square meter and each square meter weighs over a ton.   They are laid by hand and are not held in by mortar or cement, but merely by laying one stone against another. It was built in the 12^th century. The roof was repaired once with cement in between the stones and it had to be re-done as it did not allow for ventilation and was not good. The owner of the castle caught his wife in an affair and locked her in a tower for 15 years. She never left the tower before she died. He even buried her in this room behind a eucre colored block, which you can see in our pictures. You can rent a room here at this castle as a bed and breakfast place, but they say that if you do, you will see a lady in white, Madamme Blanc…. She comes out only at night. Later, in the 18^th century, there was a 40-year fight over the ownership of the castle between a brother and sister and eventually the sister won out. The property is still owned by the original descendant’s.

View of Chateau Milandes from the parking lot across the street.

The other castle, Chateau Milandes was the home of Josphine Baker, an American black woman, who went to Paris in 1925 and became a showgirl, singer, dancer, and a comedic star at the Folies Bergere (being topless probably didn’t hurt her career!) She was the only woman to march beside Martin Luther King at the March on Washington and to give a speech. She was a great humanitarian, got involved with the Red Cross, set up an organized resistance network where she hid arms in the cellar and installed a radio for communications and she carried secret information on sheet music that had been inserted with invisible ink!! She also traveled with Captain Abtey as part of the counter-intelligence services to Marrakesh, Africa, Maghreb, Libya, Egypt, Beirut, Syria, Palestine and Lebanon to spread the word of Free France. She was awarded a second lieutenant in the Women’s Auxiliary of the French Air Force, a Medal of Resistance, and was given the Legion of Honour award and the Croix de Guerre as she had worked risking her life for 5 years during World War II.

We received our cooking lessons this week from Lina. She is a really good French cook. We had wonderful salad dressing, polenta with gruyere cheese, rice salad and a vegetable tarte and a tuna/broccoli tarte; All of which we will be making again, soon. Hope they turn out!

 Secondly, our neighbors had a baby!!! We were all awakened by our neighbor’s cows that live next door by loud, continuous mooing. Rita thought that I had gotten up and went out side to talk to them, as I do everyday by mooing to them. After an hour of this annoying mooing, we decided to check it out and we learned that one of my cows that I say Bonjour to every day her had a baby calf “en plain air” as the owner/farmer told me in French. Now we know why this particular cow had a purple hair band on, we thought it was the hippie of the group! It was really funny because the birth was met with such excitement by the entire village of 400 residents and day visitors. They would line up across the street from our Maison to take photos of the new calf. Rita was surprised that the calf was standing and walking within a few hours of birth. “Neither Stephanie nor Missy did that” she said! But, then she was also surprised that the birthing mother went about her normal daily routine of walking and grazing immediately after giving birth with the little calf nursing on her as she walked and grazed.

Standing, walking and eating within the first 24 hours!

Well, I think I have caught you up on most of the things that have been going on at Green Acres in France. We are having fun. Experiencing the language, food and culture. So, all in all, it is a good trip. Check out our photos to see the things discussed above.

Paris Skyline including Eiffel Tower from the rooftop restaurant of the Holiday Inn St. Germain de Pres.

Notre Dame at night

We think this is what the French do when there is no water in the fountain and sunny skies above!

The Dordogne countryside from the top of Chateau Puymartin.

The hand-laid stone roof of Chateau Puymartin.

The Chateau Milandes, the former home of Josephine Baker.

Chateau Milandes from the front.

Beautiful palm trees at Chateau Milandes.

They had a bird show after our tour, (had NOTHING to do with the castle) but we decided to watch it! Here is an eagle coming towards us! Look out!

Isn’t is amazing how close he is?

Another view

Yohan handling this big creature!

Hey Mary (Mary R) …. Is this my Owl????

Or is it this one?

Or is this my Owl???? We yelled his name, “Owl” and he turned around for me to take this picture!

View of another castle nearby Puymartin in the background. They are everywhere!

Norm trying to hold her back, yeah right, that’s not going to work!

Jasmine playing with her new duck friends!

Fresh Paella at the market in Sarlat!

Mother and calf are doing fine! The population of St. Leon-sur-Vezere has just increased by one.

Standing, walking and eating within the first 24 hours!

Norm and Lina in the Le Source Garden.

Le Source ( the restaurant) has a new friend for Jasmine… Meet Anna Sophia!! Yeah, I’d say she has a princess name too!

The most beautiful garden setting for our dinner!

At our last celebratory dinner with Lina, Jasmine, Isabel and Yoran!

Whitefish dinner topped with crayfish! AMAZING!!!

Free Range Pork dinner!

Here’s how you say it Rita…. TROIS!

Here is Jasmine’s facial expression trying to show me how you pronounce “trois”! TWA!! I still can’t do it right!

Dessert!! So Pretty! and Yummy!

Anna Sophia telling us goodnight! Bedtime calls.

Lina, Isabel, Jasmine, Rita and Norm… Bye Bye!!

Saying good bye to Yoran, Lina, and Jasmine!

Six weeks, or forty-two days, we have been in France. This week we got to see the Chateau Clarens, which is next door to our maison, up close and personal, but only from the outside. It has been beautifully restored, with formal gardens, a swimming pool and a view of the river Vezere.   The owners were away this week and their property manager invited us to do a walk around. It is 5 stories. The rumor in the village of St. Leon-sur-Vezere is that the Chateau is for sale, but no one knows how much the owners are asking for it.

Chateau Clerens

On Tuesday, we took a cooking class at Le Chevrefeuille, which is a hotel and restaurant (more like a bed and breakfast or what they call a “Gite” here in France) which is about 7 km away from St. Cyprien, a small village nearby. The class was taught by Ian, who is English, but started the hotel a few years ago with his English wife Sara. Le Chevrefeuille means honeysuckle in French. The hotel is small, lovely, well maintained and looked after by Ian and Sarah. We only had one other couple in our class. They were Matt and Amanda, a very nice young couple from Australia, but have lived all over the world in the last 12 years.

The class started with a visit to the fresh market at La Bugue, another small village, nearby us. Each of the villages has a fresh market day. At the market, we bought goat cheese, “fromage de chevre”, which was only one day old from the farmer who raises the goats. We also bought mushrooms, “champignons”, from the vendor who searches the woods for them, finds them and then sells them in the market. Next, we bought fresh vegetables including cauliflower, “chou-fleur”, flat beans or broad beans, “feve”, and peas, “petit pois”. Ian knows all the vendors, speaks fluent French and, of course, the whole shopping experience is a social event, more than a shopping trip.

The last thing we bought was foie gras. The foie gras was 36 euro or about $50 US dollars per kilo, which is 2 ½ pounds. Thus, foie gras is about $20 a pound. Foie gras is goose liver. But, it is a liver from a goose that has been forced fed corn until its liver is six to ten times its normal size. France is the largest producer and consumer of foie gras, where it is considered a delicacy. The procedure of force feeding the geese is very controversial and many countries, and most noticeably the state of California recently, have banned the sale of foie gras. When the foie gras vendor was explaining to us the procedures for force feeding the geese, she said in very broken English that the geese were “force fed” and then changed her sales pitch to just “fed” to be more politically correct.

After shopping for about two hours, we returned to the hotel kitchen and began preparation of our dinner. We started by making a dessert of individual chocolate molten lava cake using lots of fresh vanilla. Then, we made a tri-colored salad of avocado, which is “avocat” in French, peculiarly the same word as “lawyer” in English, fresh tomatoes and the fresh goat cheese we bought in the market.

Our Green Salad

See the rest of our cooking class photos. After completing the salad, we made mini-cups of “veloute de chou-fleur”. This is a deliciously, thick cauliflower soup made of chicken stock and liquefied cauliflower, rather than cream, butter and flour. Next, we made green olive tapenade by blending capers, anchovies, olive oil, garlic, and green olives. For the next course, we quickly fried the foie gras in its own duck fat. Finally, we prepared “confit du canard” which is the leg and thigh of the duck broiled and then shredded. Of course, Ian had prepared a wonderful sauce made out of the mushrooms, stock, wine, and some chestnuts and we used the broad beans and the pois as the healthy sides. To accompany the food we prepared for dinner, we had white and red wine. The class lasted for 7 and a half hours and was a wonderful introduction to French cooking.

On Wednesday, we went to Les-Ezyies, another small village close to us for lunch. The restaurant had a beautiful garden. Les Ezyies is built into the limestone rocks and around the caves where those pesky little Troglodytes lived. We are looking for trolls, but have not seen any yet. On the way home, we drove by beautiful castles like the Chateau de Marzac in our photo section. Finally, as we approached our village of St. Leon-sur-Vezere, we watched the beautiful sunset.

The rest of the week was spent on personal maintenance, meaning cooking, cleaning, shopping, and eating. We also take turns at the pool, pretending we are Zonker Harris, the Doonesbury character, who was a professional tanner. The pool has been wonderful since the temperature had climbed to 30 degrees Celsius, which is about 86 degrees Farenheit.

On Friday, we returned to Le Chevrefeuille for fish night, invited by our new-found friends Matt and Amanda from our cooking class. A lot of the restaurants around here don’t have a set menu, they just prepare whatever they get at the market that day.  So Matt and Amanda pried the secret menu out of Ian and let us know that is would be a Friday fish fry!  Rita, being the Catholic that she is, has been to many lenten fish fry’s in her days, was all excited about fried fish, like lake perch or cod, in bread crumbs, hush puppies, French fries and maybe a little slaw on the side. But, the meal was a little more French than that. We had salmon, and some wonderful appetizers, vegetables, cheese, dessert and wine.  It could have been a Michelin Star resaurant meal!! We ate on the patio and had a wonderful evening with good food and good conversation. If you want to know how small the world is, anouther couple sitting at the table next to us  – met and attended school at DePauw in Greencastle.

Imagine that!

Well, that is all for now. We have found an old movie channel on our TV that shows movies from the 80’s and movies based on true stories, so we are getting ready to watch “The Outsiders”.   Rob Lowe, Diane Lane, Patrick Swayze, Matt Dillon, Tom Cruise, Ralph Macchio, and Emilio Estevez.

OH BOY! How do you say “popcorn” in French???   ….

P.S. Happy Birthday Bella!! Wow, 15 !! Soon you’ll be driving!

Week Six of French Impressions

Here we are with Ian putting on the finshing touches to our green salad we all made in class! Thank goodness Ian didn’t ban our iPhones!

Here we are with Matt and Amanda on the left and Ian on the right side of Rita looking over the fois gras stand at the La Bugue market.

Here is Ian pouring the cauliflower soup into these tiny cups! Another use for the many espresso cups in France. Just enough to wet your appetite and not get too full to enjoy the dinner.

Here is the duck after it had been roasted in a very hot pan for about 20 minutes and we are shredding it.

The beautiful gardens at Les Glycine resaurant in Les Eyzies de Tayac Sireuil.

Lez Eyzies built into the limestone rocks.

Such a beautiful little village street.

Chateau Clerens

See the magnitude of the Chateau?

Sunset on our way home from our dinner with Matt and Amanda at Ian and Sara’s place.

Castle “Chateau de Marzac”

Today we start week two in our house in St. Leon-sur-Vezere. The week has passed by quickly. We have been settling into our house trying to get used to the way of French country life as perceived by two Hoosiers. As an update to last week’s blog, our allergies are better. We are both on French over the counter drugs. We like the French pharmacies. Our allergy medicine costs us about $5 a week. Rita says at CVS the medicine would run us $25. We are still learning new French words not learned in French class. This week we learned: la tapette a mouches which is flyswatter, because we had to buy one for the house since we have no screens and the doors and windows are open much of the time; le brouillard, which is fog because the mornings are foggy; and une coupe, la couleur and les meches because Rita needed a cut, color and highlights this week.

We are trying to get into the French way of life, but we have suffered some setbacks. Last Sunday, we did things around the house in the morning. Then, we got dressed up and went to the grocery store. Unfortunately, we arrived at 2:30 PM and the grocery store closes on Sunday at 12:30 PM! We also have to get used to buying our bread each day. The bread, called baguettes, is baked daily and available for purchase at the boulanger, the bakery, before 8:00 AM. If we don’t go to the boulanger by noon, we don’t get fresh bread because they run out. Then, there is the boucherie, or butcher shop, where the meats are cut and sold fresh daily. They close in the afternoon and are only open a few hours in the morning and again a few hours in the evening. Finally, if you want fresh fruit, le fruit in French, or fresh vegetables, les legumes in French, you don’t buy them at the grocery store, you buy them at the fresh market which is held one or two days a week in the villages.

This week we bought some really fresh eggs, see the photo of the feather in our egg carton. We visited Perigeaux and saw the beautiful byzantine cathedral Saint-Front see photo. Perigeaux is about 45 minutes from us and has a population of 30,000. It also has a medieval section with many restaurants and timbered houses. In our village, we there was a la petanque tournament. There must have been 100 people in our village of 400 who came to play. La petanque is also called boules and is similar to bowling. See photos.

Our nearest village of any size is Montignac. We went to the fresh market in Montignac yesterday to buy strawberries. Dordogne is the strawberry capital of France, cherries and raspberries. Then, we ate pizza for lunch at an outdoor café riverside along the Vezere River. The riverfront is well maintained and beautiful. We took another canoe ride on the river. This one did not end well either. I guess I shouldn’t let Rita steer the canoe. See photos.

One day we drove to Hautforte, France to see the Chateau Hautforte. We only toured the perimeter of the Chateau and took photos which we have or will post as soon as Rita gets around to it ( J K). But, it was impressive. It was first occupied in the year 1000! One of the owners was Baron Henry de Bastard. What was his parents thinking??!!

Another day, I was homesick for an American hamburger so we stopped at Le Tourny, a small café in Montignac so I could satisfy my homesickness. See photo of my burger. It came with a cooked egg on top. Actually, it was pretty tasty! And, of course the French fries, called frites, are always excellent. Watch out McDonald’s!

While we are out driving around, we try to visit some of those one hundred most beautiful French villages so we can cross them off our bucket list. This week we visited St. Amand-de-Coly. (Damn, I get tired of typing village names with hyphens.) It is dominated by a Romanesque fortified church which you can see in our photos. The walls of the church are 12 feet thick.

Next, we continue to be baffled by the French supermarket where we go for all of our entertainment. They don’t have self scan lines. They don’t have cash only lines. They don’t have “less than 10 item” lines. You also bag your own groceries and, if you want to be truly French, you don’t get your money out to pay until all of your groceries are bagged and put in your “caddie or chariot” French for grocery cart. Of course, all of this contributes to long lines at the checkout. It is so funny to watch people stand in line and observe all of this. It shocks us that it is not more efficient, but “c’est la vie.”

Finally, I have placed in our photos an aerial view of our village. The Chateau and Church stand out as landmarks in the photos. Our house is right next door to the Chateau, but it is not in the photo sorry. No we did not take the photo from a hot air balloon, but we wish we had. It is a photo of a photo on the wall at the town hall or Marie in French.

Next week, we take our first French cooking lesson. We hope to blog on French cooking next week.

We have re-read our blog above. I thought it was from Green Acres and Rita thought it might be from the Beverly Hillbillies. What do you think?

Impressions from  St. Leon sur Vezere, Haute-Fort  and Montignac!

Aerial view of St. Leon-sur-Vezere with our next door neighbor’s Castle and our landlord’s Castle.

Hamburger is hiding under the egg! It is on a bun with all the trimmings. Only the egg was unexpected.

Rita is no longer in charge of steering the canoe!

Petanque tournament in St. Leon-sur-Vezere.

Perigeaux’s Cathedral Saint-Front. Byzantine architecture.

See the feather in our egg carton?  Those are really fresh eggs!

This would be considered a modern front door here in Montignac! We like them all!

We liked this home because it was a corner lot.

Here is a typical front door in Montignac.

Had lunch on the river bank in Montignac.

Just a little street we walked by in Montignac.

Saint Amand-De-Coly

Haute Fort

View of a few of the restaurants in Montignac.

Our first view of the Eiffel Tower!

Our favorite lady, Notre Dame. A visit is not complete without paying a visit to Notre Dame..

View from our hotel on Rue de Seine.

Les Deux Magot Cafe. Yes, it is called the two magots. No visit to Paris is complete without having an aperitif or two here on the left bank.

Our wonderful French family going back to 1968. Dominique, Alain, Aude, Yann and me.

Same group, without Dominique, but with Rita.

We drove to the French Riviera, St. Raphael to check out a house to rent. We stayed at this hotel on the beach.

A rare sand beach on the French Riviera at St. Raphael.

This is the main square at Sarlat la Caneda.

A timbered building in the old town of Sarlat.

A quaint street scene in Sarlat.

Market days are Saturday and Wednesday in Sarlat. This is an artisan bread maker. We eat lots of fresh bread and none of it is Wonder Bread!

You want fresh fish? This is the place. The market in Sarlat. Just cut the heads off before you cook!!

How about fresh produce? There is plenty to go around in Sarlat market.

Rita loves potatoes and white asparagus is in season!

In addition to food, the Sarlat market has other vendors. In this photo, the vendor is selling umbrellas.

We did a weekend in Brittany after Sarlat. This is the beach at La Baule. Notice the nice sand!

Evening was coming rapidly when we snapped this photo on the beach at La Baule.

A photo of our hotel in Dinard on the North Coast of Brittany. Our Megane is the first car you see in front of the hotel.

The beach at Dinard. Notice the low tide and wide sandy beach.

A photo of our hotel in Dinard on the North Coast of Brittany. Our Megane is the first car you see in front of the hotel.

No trip to Brittany/Normandy is complete without paying a visit to Mont St. Michel. It is incroyable.

We had lunch at La Mere Poulard a famous omelette restaurant in Mont St. Michel.

We spent the first day of Rita’s birthday at this hotel in Brantome in Dordogne. A great location.

This is one of the modern showers we blogged about. It has two rain shower heads and jet sprays on the sides. It also has a sign about saving the world by not laundering towels each day!!

Modern, or Contemporary Vanity, with towel warmer for those cool mornings.

A great chocolate dessert for Rita’s Birthday.

Dordogne is known for Foie Gras. Foie Gras is goose liver. It is really good. Yes, I know there is an ethical question about the forced feeding of geese. But, when in France it is hard not to partake.

Rita and I tried canoeing one day. It did not end well!

This is a privately owned Chateau (Castle) we ran across in Dordogne.

This is a pizza place in Sarlat with live music where we had dinner one night.

This is Rita in Sarlat buying produce in the market for the first day in our house. She used a lot of pointing.

To the left of our car is a limestone cave that our hotel was using as a parking garage! We didn’t go into the cave. We were afraid there may be troglodytes in it!

The first view of our house in St. Leon sur Vezere for the next 9 weeks. Rita did well. So far, so good.

This is the main house. It has four bedrooms and 4 baths You are welcome to come visit us.

Photo of main house with pool, covered of course.

Photo of living room.

Photo of kitchen with Chef.

Photo of master bedroom. No screens or air conditioning. You have to make choices. It does have a heated pool.

Photo of master bath.

This photo shows the name of our house and our nearest neighbors in the background.

This photo is of our landlord’s gatehouse which is located right next door.

Photograph of a home in St. Leon sur Vezere.

We are in Maison de Clerans. This is Chateau de Clerans, the Castle which is owned by our landlord and located right next door to us!

This truck is parked inside a home at St.Leon sur Vezere where it is being used to rehab an existing home.

This is a photo of our delicatessen. It is just one of 4 restaurants in St. Leon sur Vezere.

Today is Saturday. We have completed one full week in our French house. The first 5 days were pretty overcast and rainy and cool. Not a great start to our first week, but it could have been worse. The weather has started to improve. We are approaching the 70s and the sun is now waking us up in the mornings. That is the good news.

The bad news is that with the nicer weather Rita and I are noticing that being in a rural setting has brought on our allergies. We do have itchy red eyes, runny noises and sneezing. Hopefully, this will be short lived.

The first week has been spent on personal maintenance. We go to the market almost every other day because we want fresh produce, meat, fish and chicken, but also because the refrigerator is European style which is only half the size of its American counterpart. Every other day, we have also stopped by the Inter-Marche or Carrefour, which is France’s answer to Walmart. It takes us an hour to shop because everything is located in a different area than where it would be in a US supermarket. In addition, we shop with a dictionary so that we can look up words describing foods we did not learn in French class. For example, we did not learn the word for “flour” which is “farine”. We did not learn the words for “2% milk” which are “demi-ecreme lait”. We did not learn “buttermilk,” which is “lait battu” or “babeurre”. When the dictionary does not work, I stand around and look lost until an English person fluent in French comes along, notices me, and offers to help! Sometimes, this is much faster than the dictionary and besides I am learning to be an expert at looking lost in French!

Yesterday was farm day in Sarlat. All the nearby farmers brought live animals into the village, I guess so that you young French children could have a petting zoo. There were pigs, cows, ducks, turkeys, goats, and chickens. It reminded me of Old MacDonald and got me wondering if there was a French equivalent. I think there is, but it might be “Monsier Dupont a une ferme et dans cette ferme il y a un chien” etc.

The house has worked out lovely so far. We do have some unwanted visitors at times. There are flies because we have no screens. We also have an occasional bee. Of course, Rita’s favorites are the daddy long legged spiders.   Naught!! Last night, we had a bird, but fortunately a cat came along and the bird disappeared. I know “How you gonna keep them down on the farm….”

I started my French lessons on Thursday. My instructor comes to the house and her name is Patricia Mongendre from nearby Montignac. She asked me what I wanted to do for my first lesson and I said I wanted to practice conversational French. So, she responded, in French, “what would you like to speak about? Please start.”   We spoke to each other while sitting at the kitchen table for an hour. It is probably the most French I have ever spoken. I am looking forward to my next lesson.

Next week, we hope to be over our allergies and to take day trips to the various nearby villages. There are at least 8 of the most beautiful villages in France within 30 minutes drive of us. Yes, there is a contest each year, and the French vote and choose the 100 most beautiful villages. Hopefully, we will have some more photos for you then.

Have a great day. –Norm and Rita