Old McDonald had a farm

Today was a good day; my job for the last couple days has been to plough the vines to get rid of the weeds that grow at their base, to do this you need a tractor, a driver and 2 extra people that go behind checking that the metal propeller-type things don't chop off any of the vines. So my role in all this is to be the driver! Driving a tractor is really easy and quite fun, although I was kind of surprised when they asked me to do it knowing I'd only just passed my driving test and not driven since the exam. But I seem to be pretty good at it and it's no where near as tireing as hoeing and the sun came out today so it was great. It was also nice to have some quiet time after such a busy and drama-filled weekend:
So, on Friday evening all the helpers went out for dinner, nothing fancy, just bought some croaue monsieurs and some lambrusco and sat by the Dordogne river, listening to peacocks and watching rowers on the river. On Saturday we went to the market in St Foy and looked around the stalls and had a cup of coffee on a little terrace, then went back home to make a giant chocolate cake. Ellie, one of the American girls bought this festive cake book for 3 euros and we just had to make one, following french instructions. It took us pretty much all afternoon and God knows how much chocolate. We also paintbrushed some vine leaves with the remaining chocolate to create patterned chocolate, but it didn't really work out, the chocolate simply won't unstick. The house is pretty busy at th moment, a friend of the family is staying her for a few days with his 2 children so there's quite a lot of babysitting to do. We played UNO the card game with them and I made sangria again, which soothed us all a little bit.
Sunday was really the big day. We went to St Emilion for an hour at 9.30 to start the day off. It's a beautiful little town, said to be the wine capital of France - it's full of shops selling wine and the countryside surrounding it is breath-taking, never-ending rows of perfectly tidy vines and grandiose chateaux everywhere you look. After that we drove to Libourne, we'd been waiting all week for this: a giant omelette was to be cooked somewhere ion the city, made up of 3,011 eggs (it was trying to beat the 3,010 egg record). It took us about an hour to find it, first we went to the park where a canine show was taking place, then we were directed towards the stadium, where there was a car boot sale (or a vide grenier as the french call it, which translates to empty your attic), then we were told to go to the tropical gardens, by which point we were ready to give up, but luckily we saw a sign, confirming that the giant omelette did in fact exist. It was a sort of neighbourhood fiesta, we were the only tourists there, and it was fab. Another small scale car boot sale, benches, huge families, face painting, a little dancefloor and a man with an accordeon, bottles of wine for 2 euros, and a giant pan full of eggs which 5 men were stirring with giant wooden spatulas. The cooked omelette then proceeded to be place in big trash containers, yes, and then into medium sized bowls, and then onto plastic plates - 1 euro per serving, and the portions were huge.
You can imagine what the day turned out like, lots of drinking, dancing and getting our faces painted. The other helpers kept buying unnecessary things from the car boot sale, like an ash tray merged into a spinning wheel (2 euros), a smoking pipe (1 euro), metre-long straws (1 euro), and a pair of shoes because they spilled wine on them so they had to buy them (2 euros). Seeing them dancing in ridiculous second-hand clothes just bought at the stalls amidst the old couples on the dancefloor: priceless.
We then went on to Bordeaux, taking a couple of bottles of wine with us. Phil, the 50 year old Brit was driving, therefore not drinking - I felt quite sorry for him, having to deal with us! But he was quite amused anyway. In Bordeaux we went to a couple of cafes and drank coffee and ate croque monsieurs and watched the world go by. I had to wipe the paint of my face after a while, people were staring, we must have been quite a strange group really.
Tonight Ellie and I have been painting rose petals with egg white and sugar, we're baking another cake tomorrow since her and Jenny, the other American, are leaving on Wednesday. I'll really missed them, I've gotten pretty close to them and they're a good laugh. They're working in cheese farms in the south of France til July, so I might rejoin them at some point.
Let us eat cake.