Day 9: Meeting Ends

I woke up this morning with one goal: to finish picking the plaster off the wall of Garth's house. I worked at this all morning, and by the time lunch rolled around, I had accomplished my goal. After lunch in the garden and a short nap in the hammock, I got to work scooping up all the plaster that had piled up in the driveway. I filled about seven boxes with the very heavy, dusty plaster, and we drove a few minutes down the road and dumped it in a trash heap by the side of the road. Alvin, years ago, thought this place was on his land, and began to dump his crap by the side of the road to make a turn around spot. One day, while off-loading some stuff, a man approached him and informed him, quite calmly, that the man owned this land, not Alvin. The boys still use it, discreetly, instead of driving to a legitimate dump twenty minutes away.

After the scooping came the fun part: learning to weld. Garth is working on some metal sculptures his friend Sophie, a winemaker, is going to put in her wine tasting bar. He taught me the basics of using an arc welder, and set me to work, on the piece he was working on. Now that is trust. I did not mess anything up too horribly, and then worked on grinding the excess off the joints. After another trip to the dump, I set to work practicing my welding. I took some scrap pieces of metal, and, well, welded them together. Garth is going to find something that actually needs doing so I can weld something of importance. Welding is way cool; it opens up a whole new world. Metal is very flexible, and can be used in so many different ways, and welding makes it workable. After a shower, and my first skype date with my brother, I gave Garth a short massage.




For dinner we headed to Stephan's house, in Limoux. We had a small dinner with Stephan, his daughter, and his adorable four year old dog, and their beautiful dog Chica. Switching between English and French, we had a lovely dinner. After the meal, the guys headed to the bar to watch the France/Mexico match. Coincidentally, during the game, Alvin and Andrea showed up in the bar. It was a sad night for France. As Chuck quoted, "France hasn't been devastated like this since every war they've ever fought."

After the match, we headed home. I didn't make it through more than fifteen minutes of So You Think You Can Dance before I headed to bed, and had a great sleep.