Appologies for my long absense!

Sorry about that. Wow, I knew this would happen -- not the absense, but the keyboard confusion. Remember how I was complaining about the german keyboard sooo long ago (um, in my last post...) well, the french keyboard is even more messed up. In germany they just swap the y and the z and a few of the punctuation keys. But in France they go nuts! The q, a, z and w are all jumbled up -- I think just rotated one key clockwise, so while I was staying with my friends parents I had to adjust and now I find myself continuously hitting the q when I need to type an a -- just did it again in qn...
That was part of my excuse for not writing anything -- the keyboard. I couldn't find a wireless connection, so anything I wrote on my pda would have to wait until my next stop, and then I just didnt want to type anything long and involved on the french keyboard. I did end up sending out some emails though which is where my fingers got semi used to the new keyboard.
yes, I'm sure this is exactly what people really want to read about, my adventures with foreign keyboards. And I know some of you (I'm talking to you dan) will likely post a comment saying why didn't I just change the keyboard input -- I did try, but wasn't able to get it to work, and as it wasn't my computer I didn't want to break anything...
Instead I'm sure you'd all much rather hear what I did when I wasn't on the computer. Rouen was great. Thats where I was -- a friend invited me to stay with his parents for a few nights and somehow two nights turned into five. They had plans on Friday so I figured I'd probably just head back to paris for the weekend and figure out where to go next from there. Somehow their plans changed though and they invited me to go out to the countryside to a farm with them where they needed to pick up some food and to stay another night. Since its not so easy to see the countryside by train, I obviously accepted the invitation and when along. We went to two farms -- at the first farm we bought some Neufchatel cheese. Francois asked if the lady of the farm would mind showing me the celler where the cheese ages. She was more than happy to and as we decended the steps there was a hint of amonia in the air which got slightly stronger as we entered the room. All around there were little racks of cheese aging. I asked about the amonia smell and she said the cheese gave it off as it aged. Then we went back up and she showed us the laboratory where she cultures the milk (if you go over to my flickr account you can see some pictures, I'll try to edit them into the blog later). I asked a few questions about the temperature, and when she adds the renin and I guess she was surprised by my interest in cheese production. Apparently the cheese sits in the vat for 24 hours at about 26 degrees C. I thought it would be a higher temperature for a shorter period of time like when you make yogurt, so it was interesting for me to hear. I also thought she'd add the renin after the milk had cultured, but no, she added that right away. This whole conversation was a bit interesting considering I don't speak french and she didn't speak english -- Francois had to act as our translator the whole time and since renin isn't the kind of word you learn in basic english, I had to explain that it was an enzyme from the stomach of the calf to which the cheese lady (what does one call a woman who makes fromage -- fromageur?) went on to explain that cows have four stomachs which each have names -- the last of which is apparently named something like calais which produces the enzyme I was asking about. From what I gathered they just call it something like serum. Then she went on to show us where she squeezes the whey out (I again asked what they do with the whey -- feed it to the pigs -- at which point I mentioned in america they now process it and isolate the protiens and sell as a powder which people consume -- they thought that was somewhat funny) and scoops the kurds out into little cookie cutter shapes to make rectangular and heart shaped pads which then age in the first aging room next to the lab. I got a few pictures of this room, but none in the cellar where they move to later.
By the way, staying five days with Claude and Francois was probably the best opportunity I could have hoped for to learn some French. They were very helpful and patient with my obscure questions of grammar and Francois even took out one of her french grammar books to help me with my verb conjugations. Over the weekend I received intense french lessons from the esteemed professeur Elisa (their seven year old granddaughter) who when I asked plus lentement sil vous plait (slower please) would speak out each sylable slowly and clearly -- unfortunately that made it hard for me to distinguish the breaks between words -- l'animal became la--nee--mal with long pauses between sylables. In retrospect I think she probably said pa--se--que a few times and I had no idea what she was saying but now realize had she just said it a little faster I would have understood it to be because. Still, the patience with which she and her brother explained their childish questions like "do you like dog poop?" was very endearing. In this case I understood everything but poop and laughed when they explained that it was the stuff that your butt makes -- I remembered butt from earlier lessons... I can only hope that I'm not getting her and Hector in trouble with this little story...
After the cheese farm we went to another farm where we sat down and had coffee with the lady of the house. What we saw upon entering might gross some people out -- I thought about taking my camera out, but decided that might be a bit rude. On the table lay a number of skinned rabbits and plucked chickens (actually some kind of game hen) nicely cleaned and packed in clear plastic bags. I clearly remember noticing the contrast of the rabbits dark eyeballs agains the pink deskinned flesh. Sorry to all the vegetarians out there -- not to mention the easily grossed out =) I take no particular pleasure in the thought of killing animals, but at the same time, I feel that if I am going to eat meet I should at least be comfortable knowing where it comes from... When we went back home, I watched Francois cut off a few of the hens necks and tail glands before going up to use the computer.
All in all, it was a very nice day inspite of the fact that it was less than perfect weather. Even that had a bright side -- as we were driving back from the farms, the sun shown like art work through the sparse clouds. You couldn't see the actual sun, but rather its reflection off the top of some of the clouds coming back down through the lower clouds as they danced around like some beautiful little picture show.
Sorry, I had to laugh right now as I looked up and saw a man on the train with his finger so far up his nose he risked poking his brain.
The day before we went to the farms, Claude and Francois took me up to the normandy coast to see the seaside. I asked about the tides and later on Francois showed me the schedule -- I was suprised to see that Rouen all the way up the Seine river was actually effected! We drove up to one town along the coast, then drove further down the coast just short of the mouth of the Seine and then back to Rouen. Along the way we stopped at a nuclear energy production station. I've never really been that close to one in the US to compare it too, but somehow I was surprised by all the barbed wire fences surrounding the area -- and the general idea that it would be a place of interest for people to go see. We also went to see a church up on a cliff with some beutiful stained glass.
Beyond that I wandered around a bit in town, saw some cathedrals, a church on the site where joan of arc was martyred and the Musee de beaux arts. It was a very charming town with some interestingly preserved ruins (not ancient ruins, but buildings largely destroyed during the war).
Every meal was a delicious combination of fresh food mostly straigh from some farm or the market. At midday we generally had a salad of tomatoes, beets and cucumbers followed by a course of potatoes and some sort of meet -- hen, veal, hair or some kind of game animal, then the fromage with bread and wine -- mmm, fromage... Last but not least fruit or some sort of sweet for desert. Dinner was similar but usually started with soup rathe than salad, and for the meet course we generally finished whatever was left from lunch. The cheeses were great though -- camembert, chevre (goat), neufchatel, some kind of blue cheese, something similar to parmesian and another much like colby. They were all delicious!
It was a nice chance to recharge and fill up my tank =) I'm sure I replaced a few of the pounds I probably dropped running around with a backpack on my usual travelers diet, but I'm sure I'll shed them again as quickly as I packed them on...
I should get going now because my train will be arriving in paris soon and I still need to figure out where I'll be staying.
Au revoir