Family

Yesterday was a good day for family. We spent the day with Lionel's family and I talked to my mom and dad over the phone!

I'm not positive as to how many siblings Lionel has, but I know for sure that he has a brother who is 27, Guillaume, and a sister who is somewhere between 33 and 37, Martine >. I believe there's another brother in there somewhere but I have yet to meet him. We had Sunday lunch over at the sister's house: salmon with capers and onions accompanied by an Alsatian riesling followed by duck with potatoes and white beans accompanied by a Bordeaux red. The final course of lunch was, of course, cheese! There was a bleu cheese, a goat cheese surrounded by apricots, a very soft cow's milk cheese, and a few others. Dessert was crème anglaise, vanilla gelato, strawberry tart, and peach/rhubarb cobbler (all on one plate so I HAD to eat each thing... too bad) ;>)

Martine has a 13 year-old son who invited us to play some wii with him while Guillaume went in search of a couple bottles of cognac he had saved over at his apartment, the grandpas went for a walk and the grandmas, mothers, and other relatives looked over Perrine's Allande collection.

:::: If you want to check out the collection, the address is: http://www.allande.fr/ and Perrine's boutique number is 91802693 ::::

So, about the wii.

.. I'm just aparantly not coordinated as to the

new game systems... even Marine kicked my butt at Mariokart! Zut!

When Guillaume returned we all retreated to the back porch to play a couple card games and the U.S. railway game. The really interesting thing about the games I've played so far is that they all have as an integral part, picking the other players' minds/misleading and out-reasoning the other players. Its very neat, very French. And yes, the French ARE very good arguers!

We headed back to the P&L pad around 19:00h and we all (Perrine, Guillaume, Lionel, and I) changed into shorts and sweats to just chill out while Perrine fixed some onion soupe with 'boules' for dinner, Guillaume and Lionel played on-line games, and I read some e-mails. During dinner we played the forehead post-it note game (I was Michael Jordan... an improvement from being Chewbaka the other night!) Then enculé, another card game which is quick and fun, and I was the one who ended up enculé, lol

The evening ended up with Perrine, Lionel, and I watching a couple episodes of CSI, en français, on the couch. More like Lionel and I watched while Perrine snored lightly.

Today I'm going down into the mall for a bit to get some groceries and possibly a straightener, and when Perrine gets home we'll get me a cell phone, hopefully an iPhone, and we'll head to the theater next door to catch a film. The theater, with 32 screens, is actually the largest one in Europe!

An aside: Smoking has been banned from all indoor public locations! All restaurants, bars, and discos are now smoke-free! Yes!