First day of work

I set my alarm for 6 am, woke up at 9. Ironically I was having very fitful dreams about being late for work. Eve's family is very nice. We ate dinner at her uncle's house with some friends of theirs who apparently summer in a caravan on the Cartiers' property. I don't remember their names, but they had a little girl named Caroline and a yorkshire terrier that looked like a bigger version of Chiqi and Maddie. It was their last night in town. We had pasta with fresh tomatoes and merguez sausage and rosé. When the cheese course came, Eve's aunt was concerned that the cheeses might be too strong for me. She clearly didn't know who she was dealing with.

The place where I'm staying is a less-used part of the house. The whole chateau is connected, but divided into sections, so I'm between Eve's parents' house and the winery. I'm just thinking how much some in the states would pay to make their houses look like this, and here's this place just sitting here barely used.


















As I'm writing this I'm sitting outside under a canopy of grapevines eating toast and homemade quince (fr. coing) jam and drinking tea out of a bowl. Go ahead, tell me you're not jealous. Last night I tried a fruit wine made from néfle, which is a tree fruit that's apparently native to this part of the world, and also grows in Japan. We looked it up on Wikipedia to see if it grew in the US, but the Wikipedia page was in French, so I didn't understand it that well. Eve's uncle Fred has the Japanese variety. Eve's aunt's name is Blanchine and her cousin's name is Olivier.

---
We had salad, tomatoes, peppers, eggs, bread and cheese for lunch.
Today we did pump-overs, topped off some barrels, and married together some wine from last vintage with new juice for the vin de table. I got an email back from Nathalie, she tells me I'm going to have to practice my French before I get there. Good thing Eve is the only one here who speaks English.

I did my p90x chest and back workout, made it almost all the way through before my shoulder started to hurt. Eve's mom made Tian, which is a provençal dish with onions, potato, eggplant, zucchini, tomato, and pretty much everything else from the garden, it was awesome. We also had a toast spread called Melet Provençal, which is a puree of fennel seed, anchovy, and pepper, which was pretty awesome, and I'm definitely going to try and make it when I get home. Eve's dad made pork chops.

During dinner I explained why we call the funny bone the funny bone, and found out that the french nickname for the humerus translates to 'the little jew'. I was not able to obtain any explanation for this.