Day one of life in southern France

I've been in France for one full day, and I feel like I'm living in a movie.  Today I went with my hosts to the vineyard her parents own and helped cut grapes all morning.  It was exhausting, and my arms hurt from carrying giant baskets packed with grapes around, but it was so damn cool.  I wish I'd taken a picture, but my hands were sticky with grape juice and dirt.  The vineyard is surrounded by small mountains, so the view was unlike any I've ever seen.  Twenty of us, mostly family and friends of the Arsacs, loaded three little trucks full of grapes, and then we returned to the house.  Everyone got a glass of wine and sat outside drinking and eating little appetizers.  The house is absolutely gorgeous:

My photography skills can't capture all the majesty, but this house is huge and feels like it's from the early 1900's.  Those are grape vines draped all over it; you can reach out the window and grab fruit off the tree if you're in the mood for a snack.  I don't know if I can go back to eating grocery store grapes from a box when I come home.
No one here speaks very much English, so I spend a lot of time socializing with the animals.  Here is Rex.  We've become good friends.

Around two o'clock, we had dinner.  It was fancier than most weddings, but they have this kind of get-together every week.  My host's parents set a long dinner table outside for thirty people, with fine china, wine glasses, and beautiful cloth napkins.  In America, dinner for this number of people would seriously be a buffet occasion, but not here.  Dinner was four courses, and our hosts brought us each new plate as if we were at a fancy restaurant or wedding reception.  They didn't cop out with easy dishes, either; they made tuna-stuffed tomatoes, sauteed string beans, braised pork, created a cheese platter, and made thirty lemon tarts, an amazing hazelnut cake, and a flan.  Apparently, they got up at dawn to put it all together.  A dinner like this would take weeks to plan in the US!

Dinner took about two hours, and the house-made (delicious) wine flowed freely, and the people sitting around me tried very hard to make conversation.  The sixteen year old boy to my left had studied English a little in school, so he sort of played translator for me.  The lady sitting across from me at the table took a liking to me and invited me to stay at her house next year and go to all the August bullfights.  Yes, they do bullfights here.  I thought they were exclusively Spanish!  She gave me her phone number and told me I'd better call her next year or she will be sad!  The boy who spoke a little English told me to find him on facebook.

After spending all day trying to speak French and listening to broken English, I'm actually having a hard time thinking and writing with proper grammar, so I'm thinking this blogging thing will have to be a daily habit.  Otherwise, I might forget how to write well.  But it really was a magical afternoon.  I had all these ideas about what life in southern France would be like.  People had always described it as a heaven on earth.  Beautiful, full of good food, quaint architecture, kind people, a relaxed way of life.  My imagination has never failed to be better than reality until now.  France is more amazing than I ever thought possible.

A bientot!