New Address

Thankfully, we have safely made it to our new home (for the next 8 months) will all of our luggage and in good health! We have been warmly welcomed by old and new friends are thankful to have a home to stay in (with a nice basketball hoop and an old Land Cruiser to use). We even managed to get 4 bikes left here up and running (yes, the bike repair guy transported all of them on the back of his moto).

Within the past 2 weeks we have wrapped up our brief language training, transported twenty some suitcases over thousands of miles, stockpiled food food for a family of 8, made some serious climate adjustments, and started new school and new work. Whew!

It is good to be here. I am proud of the flexibilty and resiliency of this team!

We thank God for protection in our travels and the kindness of people we have encountered on the journey.

Fishing in France

A very persistent 12-year-old boy’s 24-step process for catching a fish from the Loire River:

1. Order a collapsable fishing rod and mini-tackle box from Amazon at the very last minute so it arrives the day before departure.
2. Pack these items in your dad’s shoe in an overstuffed bag
3. Research fish that you can catch from the Loire River on YouTube. Start daydreaming about the enormous fish you can catch there.
4. Fly to France.
5. Take a 3 hr taxi ride to a town near the Loire River.
6. Ask your mom to look for fishing line, that you failed to obtain before departing home, when she takes a taxi to the "Marche” for groceries the day after arrival in your new town. She tells you they don’t have it there.
7. Start French language school.
8. Walk (500 feet elevation drop and climb back) to the same grocery store with your dad and find entire fishing section there that your mom did not see. Purchase fishing line.
9. Research fishing license requirements in France.
10. By the third day of French class - begin asking your teacher about local fishing and where you can get a fishing license.
11. Your teacher tells you that a “carte de peche” in France can only be obtained from a bar that sells tobacco?!
12. Ask your teacher if you can just order the “Carted de Peche” online and use the school printer. She laughs at you and tells you that this is a very funny idea… but that France is quite unlike the USA in this regard.  When something, like a fishing license, requires a permit from the Government to be able to sell it - you will definitely have to go that exact place of business with said permit to obtain it.
13. Walk with your dad to the “Bar Tabac” that your teacher recommends. Use google translator app and your collective limited French to inquire about your fishing license. They tell you they don’t sell it but refer you to a bar in the nearby town in the valley closer to the Loire River. The exact name and location of this bar is unclear after your short conversation with the bartender.
14. Walk to the tourism office and ask about fishing licenses there. The kind lady there with good English will tell you that she hopes you can get a Carte de Peche from the same grocery store that you purchased your fishing line. 
15. Hike to the grocery store again. The check out lady there confirms that they sell fish but clearly they do not sell fishing permits.
16. Have dad rent bikes so you can ride to the nearby town in search of a licence. For 14 Euros per day he rents 7-gear bikes with not totally inflated tires.
17. Ride to the larger town in the valley near the river with your fishing pole in your backpack.
18. Use Michelin GPS map app to find the Bar Tabac that you think you were referred to by the bartender in your your town.
19. They will tell you they don’t sell fishing licenses but that a bar down the street does. They point you in the right direction but it is difficult to know what distance they are describing (hope they mean meters and not kilometers).
20. Find the "Bar PMU" they referred you to just a few hundred meters away.
21. Unbelievably - when you ask “Vendez-vous carte de peche?” the bartender says “Oui!”
22. Provide your name, date of birth and address and she disappears behind a door marked "Privee" for awhile and then returns with your official Carte de Peche!
23. Continue by bike to the Loire River.
24. Real in a barbel (smaller than the ones on YouTube) on the first cast!

Festivendanges

The grape harvest is wrapping up here in Sancerre. We have learned that the hills, rocky soil and climate in our area here create a perfect spot to grow grapes.  This makes wine (and tourism) the main industry here. When we first arrived,  tractors pulling wagons full of grapes were a very common site but harvest seems to be wrapping up now. The smells and sites are refreshing breaks from class.

 


We had the, ahem, privilege of being right in the middle of the festival that celebrates the completion of the harvest - called Festivendanges. By right in the middle I mean this was the view from our kitchen window.

In some ways this was nice - free live music right into our apartment and free VIP passes for everybody b/c we had to walk through the concert to get into our own front door (after a bag search by security). Some of the bands were good. The Moorings (mix of celtic / folk / rock) endeared me to the electric violin. However, by law music / noise making is supposed to end at 2 AM. Apparently, this rule is routinely bent and the last band of the Friday night concert, The Flemish Flamingo's, played some odd form of disco consisting almost entirely of deep thumping base.

It was so awful that it reminded me of a sleep deprivation interrogation technique that could be roughly recreated by someone standing outside your closed bedroom door and pounding it every two seconds with their fist hard enough to rattle the lamps and windows. At one point my delirious wife told me she thought she was going to lose her mind.

So, at 2:25 AM I did what any man of the house would do - I got dressed, got my google translator app and waded into the concert. It wasn't pretty but I got my point across. After failing to convince the sound control guy I approached a security officer and pleaded my case. The event director took notice and shut it down for the night.

The next day we visited the event food stand stand right outside our door for lunch and managed to order for everyone in French. The goat cheese on hamburger combo here is amazing! The event director I encountered in the middle of the night passed by and we were able to communicate with some non-verbals, his limited English and my limited French. Hilarious! He was very kind and bought our drinks and really looked out for us through the rest of the festival.