I forgot to post about a survey I participated in last week. While I was doing all my shopping, I was asked if I had 10 minutes and wanted to answer a few questions, and I figured why not, seeing as how the stores were still going to be there.
I was shown into a building and went up to an office, which had a reconstruction of a supermarket! After a few questions, I was given a mini shopping cart and a list of items to choose. I strolled around, picked up the items, and then answered questions about spreadable cheeses and what I thought of the packaging. If Boursin is sold in plastic tubs instead of aluminum foil in the future, that will be because I said I found in impossible to fold up the aluminum after I'd eaten some Boursin and the edges always got dry and hard. I got an inflatable chess board with foam pieces as a thank you gift, so maybe I can teach B how to play.
Otherwise, we are now relaxing at the in-laws for an entire week. The cat has already tried to bite my ankle (then he runs away), but he's now napping directly under the air conditionning vent. It's definitly warm here in the Gard, but there's a nice breeze, and this afternoon we could smell the dog food factory that's about 2 miles up wind.
The music festival this weekend in Ariège was a lot of fun and the Spanish band that was there said they wanted to do an exchange with the band from Montpellier that B's mom is president of. There were about 70 American teenagers there who are on a French tour as part of a fine arts summer camp in Michigan. I think some of the kids didn't know what to think when I started talking to them in English. I overheard one of them say he didn't like France, and I wondered if that had to do with a bad host family experience. They had a translator with them and one of the teachers spoke good tourist French, which he insisted on speaking with me, even after I told him I was from California. I spoke with him a number of times because there had been a fuel leak in the charter bus and several instruments were soaked in diesel. B's friend lent his clarinet and another band had a piccolo they could lend, so everything was okay for the concert, but we all felt bad for the girl with the clarinet. Clarinets are made of wood, so her instrument is pretty much trash now. You can't exactly wash out the fuel, and I'm pretty sure it would be a health hazard to handle wood soaked in diesel.
Saturday night we were in Tarascon sur Ariège, and they had the town fête. There was music, fireworks, and even a bonfire. B's mom said that on June 24th almost every town in the south used to have a fire and celebration for saint John the Baptist, and that when she was young, the young people would try to jump over the fire. It was made of straw and not huge like the one Tarascon built Saturday night, so successfully jumping over the flames was actually possible. She said that it originally was a pagan celebration for the solstice, but that the Catholic priests had found it handy to shift the celebration a few days in the name of John the Baptist. I haven't seen the celebration the other years I've been in France, so I wonder how much the tradition has been maintained.
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