Aug 1 - Weekend by the Pool!

Marco and I got back last night from the south of France (in Valence, near the Alps).

His friend Fred invited a group of about 14 of us down to his family home. It was all Marco's friends from school, who I've gotten to know quite well over the years. Fred's family has a great back yard and a modest but highly entertaining swimming pool. It was great. I haven't hung out in a good ol' backyard with a vast span of good ol' green grass and good ol' lawn chairs for a couple years now. Paris has no backyards, almost no grass, and usually no sun.

On saturday we visited a local vineyard, played a lot in the pool, basked in the sun and played heaps of games. At about 3 am saturday night we were avidly into a card game where two or three people were designated "werewolves" and the rest were villagers and everyone had to discuss to try to figure out who the werewolves were and kill them. A good game.

The next day we played Trivial Pursuit on the lawn and tried to stand on and put chairs onto to a big foam platform in the pool. We had a gargantuan picnic on the lawn and played more of the werewolf game (just couldn't get enough) until it was time to drive 5 hours back to Paris. Our friend Damien rode in the car with us, and he talked all the way down and all the way back up to Paris which was enjoyable because he actually had some entertaining things to say. Just off the freeway we ate at Quik - France's version of McDonalds. It rots the stomach and is not even very quick.