Hello!!

I feel like I have so much to tell you. To start, the sky has been blue for FOUR days and I've been on FOUR runs and it has been just wonderful. Talk about a pick me up.

On top of that, this Thursday was Beaujolais Nouveau, which happens every year the third Thursday of November. It's when this type of wine, the Beaujolais Nouveau, is released from the Lyon region. It's the first batch you can drink that was made in 2009. It was really fun, and I went to a teachers house and there were many people drinking wine, eating cheese, and just being merry. Among the ten or eleven people who were there, we drank thirteen bottles of wine. I still can't hang with the French.

The next morning when I biked to the farm (at 9am instead of 7am because of the festivities), I was thinking to myself I that I should have just stayed in bed. When I got there, I saw that Jacky was thinking the same thing. They had seven people over the night before for the holiday, and drank ten bottles of wine. Isabelle was okay, but Jacky was totally hungover. It was really funny. Needless to say it was a pretty low key day there. I made the cheese while Isabelle worked with the cows (we had one die this week) and Jacky and Remi worked with the hay and the sheep.

BUT! The great news is that I am finally helping! When I first got there, I was sort of a hinderance, with the fact that I didn't know the farm vocabulary in French, and that I had never made cheese before, etc. But now, when I'm there, I actually help them do things more quickly, and this week, Isabelle left me in the cheese room ALONE and TRUSTED me to MAKE it MYSELF. It was really cool, and I felt a lot of pressure-- I made sure that I did everything perfectly and cleaned up and did well. She inspected later and sent me a text message telling me that I did a good job. I felt like I had passed some sort of test.

So yesterday, we were all in a Beaujolais stupor, and their niece Eva stopped by the farm. She invited me to a brewery/party that night. I was supposed to hang out with my friend Fleur, so I invited her too. It turned out to be really fun, except that all the people were looking cool and chain smoking-- in a closed space. Ick, it was rough. But besides that, it was super fun and familial almost. I felt lucky to be there; it wasn't a place you would be unless you knew someone. There was live Turkish music, and the owner agreed to let me come for a day in the spring and learn to make beer. Toward the end Fleur and I became kind of like the English speaking spectacles and everyone wanted to show us how well they could speak. Which was not very well. But it was cool, and we got home pretty late. It was nice to sleep in this morning. Here's a picture of the boisterous table at the brewery, and one of me and Fleur (she's from Wales).

And now for the big news: after some chaotic trip-planning with Anna and Heidi, I decided that instead of spending an inordinate amount of money to go to Morocco for the holidays, I would put it all toward a flight home. Thus, I will, in fact, be back in Ohio for sixteen whole days. And I can't express how happy that makes me. Like I told my mom, doing all the researching of things to see and places to go, I realized the only place that I really wanted to be was with my family. So I am very fortunate, and my flight leaves December 21.

Copenhagen Dec 14 - 20, Paris Dec 20, and home Dec 21 until Jan 5. How exciting! Now, of course, I'm itching to get to Denmark, and see Paris at Christmas time, and see my family! But all in good time.

Happy Thanksgiving soon! I gave a lesson about it, and I went around the class and made each student say something he or she was thankful for. It made me happy. I said I was thankful for my friends and family.

Love,

Sam