France Days 11 & 12 (6/8/10 & 6/9/10)
For the first time since coming to France, we have finally been able to put our clothes away into closets, leave the shampoo and toothpaste out of the bag, and feel as if we have some sort of home base.
After getting unpacked, the next item on our ‘feel at home’ agenda was to go grocery shopping. We used the GPS to find the local Intermarche in the town of LeBugue, and were surprised to find that, aside from the sale of horse meat and cans of foie gras, it was very similar to a Wal-Mart in the states. Since this is a tourist area, Alex immediately commented on how much it felt like those initial trips to the Wal-Mart with the Shafer family down in the Lake of the Ozarks. (They even sold water noodles, Dad!) We planned out our meals for the week (tacos, and left-over tacos, spaghetti and leftover spaghetti-hey, we’re trying to live cheaply here), purchased some snacks, and headed home to unpack our goods in the kitchen.
As a general rule, sharing a refrigerator with other people is difficult. Sharing a refrigerator with French people, Chinese people, Russian people, and German people is just plain interesting. Thus far we have discovered anchovies, rabbit, and other mysterious plates in the fridge. But to be fair, our taco meat probably looked just as bizarre to everyone else.
Alex and I have also settled in to a bit of a daily routine since landing in Les-Eyzies. A very French routine, but a routine none-the-less. In the morning we wake up, eat some Museli (a very granola, dried fruit cereal commonly found over here), possibly pick up some pain chocolat on the walk to the museum (okay, possibly should be replaced with always), work at the museum for a few hours (I swear I’m starting to feel like Maggie Gyllenhal from ‘The Secretary’, :) though Alex did note that we are working at twice the speed he did alone), head back to the house for lunch (bread, cheese, jelly),
go back to work (or hunt for rocks), then fix dinner, then head out for a run (or bust up rocks in Alex’s case).
This afternoon we went to the actual museum portion of Les-Eyzies that we’ve been working at for the past 2 weeks. Our badges got us in for free, and we were able to look at the massive collection of stone stools, with techniques described and displayed in such detail it even made Alex’s head spin. The weather was a bit too damp to go outside on top of the castle and the look out, but we’ll be doing that before the trip is over.
After the museum the rain let up and we wet out in search of more rocks-Senonian to be exact. I swear we have driven/hiked all over this country, through hundreds of little towns. We were pretty lucky and found some good examples of what he was looking for.
Tomorrow it’s back to the museum, and then Friday we’ll be heading up to Burgundy to see Alex’s advisor at Arcy-sur-Cure (a famous dig site Alex has worked at before). I’m sure we’ll also be stopping to make time for a vineyard.
The windows are open right now, and we can hear the Vezere river gurgling right outside. There was an amazing sounding owl that came hooting by last night that I hope will visit again. It’s about 10:30 at night our time, and we’re off to bed.
