Now that was a long day.

So, first thing yesterday I went to an old abbey with Eve and Luc. It's now a historical site where they also have art shows, so there was a photo expo inside too. A big chunk of the abbey has been destroyed, I don't know if by time or by war or by what, but most of it is still standing, including the tower, which is 26 meters high, and it's 126 steps to the top. I counted.
So, after the abbey and lunch, Eve and Yves and I loaded up the car and drove north for a birthday party for two friends of Eve's in the Ardeche region. On our way we passed a place called le Monde du Nougat (Nougat World). Apparently the Ardeche region used to make a lot of silk, and Eve's hippie friends live in an old silk factory. The birthday party had everything you could want, there was music and mutton and sumo wrestling and everything.










Oh, also, alcohol and marijuana. The beer on tap was Kwak, which is a Belgian beer that's 8% alcohol, and may explain partly why I'm having a bit of a hard time remembering the concentrating, remembering and spelling. Also, at some point during the evening somebody was walking around with a water bottle full of some unidentified cloudy booze, insisting that everybody try it. It tasted like kerosene filtered through a dirty gym sock, then flavored with artificial kiwi.










When we arrived at the party, just outside of a tiny, tiny village, there were 3 sheep in a pen just at the entrance to the designated parking area, which was designated by a couple of bright hand-painted signs on cardboard. We parked the car and were greeted by the birthday girl, Maude. The party was inside a little stone-walled courtyard. There were inflatable sumo suits and a sparring ring, a big canopy erected with counters underneath made out of pallets and two-by-six covered in fabric. At the far end there was a long table that was just starting to be loaded with food, and a long barbecue being lit. Yves and I chatted while Eve disappeared with Maude. It turns out Idiocracy is one of Yves' favorite movies. After a little while I took part in the sumo wrestling.









A large container of mutton appeared and the pieces were put on the barbecue. For a second I thought maybe I should go count the sheep again, but it was dark.









I met a friend of Eve's who's a winemaker in this area, and learned that Grenache, Syrah, Gamay, Viognier. It's not a very well known region in France, but he said the wine quality has improved dramatically over the past 10 years. He also told me that there's an American grape that goes by the name of Clinton here that ended up here when vines were brought over for root stock grafting, and he says some of the best wines from the area are from this grape. It was after my conversation with him that things started to get weird. The reggae band was replaced by a rap band. Apparently French hippies love American rap music. I couldn't understand the frontman well enough to tell if he was any good, but Yves said he wasn't great. It did sound like he was rhyming Ardeche with Ardeche an awful lot. Eventually they started just playing songs off of a cd, and the frontman was still on stage with a mic bouncing his hands in the air (like he just didn't care) and singing along when he could, which wasn't that often because it was American rap and he didn't seem to know many of the words.
Then Jerome, the winemaker I'd been talking to, suddenly had his shirt torn off for reasons I was never able to ascertain. Then the first award for Drunkest Guy at the Party went to a stumbling guy long black hair in a ponytail, who went onto the stage, then promptly dismounted, nearly taking a lighting tree with him. I pointed out to Yves that Ponytail was performing a valuable public service by being so drunk, thus letting me know that I'm not the drunkest one at the party, and I can keep drinking. The second award went to a guy who, earlier in the night, claimed I wasn't an American because I didn't know that Nirvana was why Seattle is famous. At least I think that was his line of reasoning. He won the award when, too drunk to stand, he sat on a barrel that was being used as a beer cooler, toppled it over, soaking himself and several people around him.
This morning when I woke up the first person I spoke to was Ponytail, who was trying to locate his pants, and who told me it was a good thing his girlfriend wasn't there because she'd freak out about him losing his pants. At least I think that's what he said, he was talking kind of fast, I don't think he realized I wasn't a native French speaker, since all I said was 'bonjour'.
After a breakfast of baguette, more mutton, jam and coffee, we broke down the tents and headed out. I didn't see the sheep in their pen when we drove by.