BELATED FOURTH OF JULY PARTY

Carpet of sunflowers close to Nico’s riding school.

We went to the French “class” today. Unfortunately, there were only three French people. The rest of the participants were English. The group gets together twice a week – on Mondays to speak French and on Thursdays to speak English. It happens in Chinon every week but I guess a lot of the French people are on vacation. It is a little difficult to learn to speak French from English people.



Floral centerpiece at the party.

In the afternoon John Shaw came by to take a look at our house. He is an Englishman living in this area who has developed a business of remodeling old homes for the large number of English people who live here. We wanted him to take a look at our house to advice us on what it will take to get plumbing up to the first floor and convert the granier into another bedroom. He was very positive about what he thought we could do. He thinks that we will have to have a custom-made spiral staircase to fit into the space we have for accessing the grenier. He also suggested that we should put a wood floor in the grenier instead of a lightweight cement floor. He thinks he can do most of the work during the winter when we are back in California.



Nico, waiting for his front teeth to grow back.

After our meeting with John Shaw we went to meet Karen and Nico at the riding stables where he is taking lessons. They were also going to the Fourth of July party at Tom and Mark’s house. We followed them because we didn’t know the exact location of the house. Christina and her friend Jessica were also in Karen’s car. Jessica is a friend of Christina’s who has just gotten back from a 10-month stint in Nepal. Her tales of head lice and ghiardia were a little unsettling but she never made mention of the historic changes that have taken place there in the past few months (Goodbye king, hello Maoist paradise).
At the party there was a bunch of people we knew. Tim and Steve were there with Bailey the dog. The other Steve was there too but I never did meet his partner Bruce. We also met some new people and I was introduced to a lot of people who Rich already knew.