For the record, life here is not as glamorous as one might imagine being described here in my writing. As simple, yes. While there is little that could tempt me to trade my time here, this lifestyle is not for everybody. Take the food, for instance. In many ways, it is wholesome and satisfying -- but I've had no coq au vin, nor any of the legendary local veal and beef. The vegetables are grown organically, most are taken from Leni's garden. The grains -- oats, flour, rice --and legumes -- beans, lentils -- are primarily organic. We have porridge every day for breakfast and usually some lentil-veggie-rice combination or soup for lunch and dinner, complemented with locally-produced bread and cheese. I think everyone knows that vegetarian meals, aesthetically, can leave much to be desired. 

Matt washes much of his laundry in the tub, and then it's hung outside on a line. Okay, that's not so unusual. We might go four days without showering. Leni says the air is cleaner out here so it becomes unnecessary to shower as often. I say, when we're digging around in the dirt each day, what's the point. We may all have gone that long while, say, camping, but this has become somewhat routine over the past three weeks. I worry about ticks and stinging nettles. We find slugs in our salads. And when I fantasized winter-long about this trip, the thought of sharing living space with giant house spiders didn't once cross my mind. My extended stays in northern Michigan should have taught me better. If it's rural, damp, and you are living in a house built of wooden beams -- there are going to be spiders. Hundreds, no, thousands of them. In the garden, there are small jumping spiders and ones with large, tan abdomen. In the house, there are leggy vibrating spiders and three-inch-wide house spiders that squish like grapes if you kill them with a paper towel. I have become much more comfortable around smaller spiders than I was before I came, to say the least. 

One of the most difficult parts of daily life is to act as the secondary homeowner. Obviously this is Leni's home. She welcomes us as guests, but still expects us to share household responsibilities. Everyone has his or her methods to run a home -- how often to clean, whether to use sponges or rags, how to properly wash the dishes, where to store the whisk -- and I have to continually find the proper balance between following Leni's preferred methods and wanting to accomplish something without needing to ask her how she wants it done. As a competent adult, I would be able to complete any of these tasks (to my own satisfaction) entirely on my own. But it's not my home and not my place to exert control. So far I haven't had any major trouble, of course, but I am constantly reminded of my experiences with my host mother in Paris, and how much everything I did seemed to upset her (and let us not forget, vice versa). 

I'm outside in the patio area now, utilizing my post-breakfast quiet time to update this blog and enjoy the intermittent sunshine. There's a darling hummingbird, no larger than a silver dollar coin including the wings, I had first mistaken for a bee, suckling a flowering sage. A home-brewed tonic for the tomato plants is sitting in a large stew-pot beside me on the table. This afternoon I'll boil it so that it's ready for when Corinne returns from work. Every now and then a speedy military jets soars overhead, a sound and sight so unfitting to this locale that it causes my heart to beat manically every time it happens. Otherwise, it's just the sound of my fingers tapping the keyboard and the birds.