Hay baling and hitchhiking.

My first encounter with hay baling was not positive. I was tired, emotional, hormonal, hot and in no mood to be screamed at by Alfred. At one point Alfred said "I crying when you do nothing and I crying when you do something because you always do it wrong". I was pretty much ready to throw in the towel permanently on the whole hay process. But Saturday proved to be another hay day... Trey got some sort of weird stomach thing (he's totally fine Joyce- only lasted for about 8 hours) so it was just me and Alfred. For 8 hours. With hay. Actually it ended up being kinda of fun. Since we had made all the hay bales the day before, we got to load them all into the trailer. I just had to stand in the trailer and arrange them all. After almost 100 hay bails, I stood taller than the tractor at the top of them. I got to ride home in the back - my own personal hay ride- which was really fun except for the occasional low-hanging branch... Sunday we sold cheese at a local fair. Every year, a huge herd of sheep comes through town so everybody celebrates with a big party in the woods (when your a town of 89 any excuse to have a party is a good one). There were really cool stands setup throughout- it felt like the renaissance fair without the costumes. Metal working, pottery, there was even a kids petting zoo with pony rides. The best part of the fair was the entertainment. A local dance troupe- Mayflower Country Steps- showed us how Americans like to dance. It was hilarious. They had the American flag, cowboy boots, huge belt buckles and reversible vests. It was pretty awesome. Monday was crazy. We got Alfred's 5 year old daughter Taya (who is so sweet and reminds us a lot of Parish), and his girlfriend Lindsay decided to end her trip early so Alfred had to drive to Italy to get her. Trey and I were excited to have the afternoon off but Alfred came home after only a few minutes on the road and told us that Taya's babysitter wasn't home so he was leaving her with us. While we love Taya, we were less than excited about a 6 hour babysitting gig where we can't communicate with the child... 4 hours later (we had Taya tied to a tree outside pretending to be a dog) Alfred's brother and sister in law arrived. We waited until after 10 pm when Alfred and Lindsay arrived- they had obviously had an argument on the way back from Italy and lets just say that Lindsay's first encounter with her boyfriends family was VERY awkward. After spending a day with 6 adults and 1 five year old sharing a house, we decided that perhaps our time at the farm had come to a close. We also realized that we had learned a ton about farming but very little French (alfred's brother and wife speak German, which didn't exactly help hone our French). So this morning we said our goodbyes and hitchhiked to Barcelonette (about 1.5 hours away). An adorable couple picked us up (the guy reminded us of BJ) and we took a gorgeous drive through the alps. It was totally breathtaking. We just arrived in Barcelonette with the intention of taking a train to Lyon. However Barcelonette is an incredible town and through a series of crazy circumstances that only work out when you're traveling with Trey, we got a French tutor who will be working with us for the next 3 days for a grand total of $15/hour! She is a professor at the local university and we are pumped to start our lessons in the morning. As always, more pics and videos to come at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/80826423@N08/