07 September 2010

I tasted really expensive wine, but I’m not going to lie I was more excited about the dog.

Last Thursday class ended half an hour early (YES! Although, I actually I should talk about that at some point, because Thomas (my teacher) is awesome. All the other classes have actual work, like presentations, etc.; we have games in which two people get up in front of the class and one of them can only say “oui” and the other can only say “non”. Which is 1) surprisingly entertaining and 2) the least stressful performance to have to give. And I still actually feel like I’m learning stuff (though not necessarily from the oui/non game, nor the porquoi?/parce-que game), which is pretty nifty.)  I didn’t actually intend to go on that long tangent.
ANYWAYS, where was I? Oh right, we got out of class, and had a provided  “pique-nique” which consisted of hardboiled eggs, cheese, lettuce, and tomato on a baguette (this is kind of disgusting, but less so than the one I had the day before that had tuna instead of the cheese), and an individually wrapped brownie. Unlike the last picnic, we actually ate this one outside. Then we got on our buses and went to a vineyard, where the property owner gave us a long speech about grapes and making wine, presumably, I wouldn’t know because it was really hot and I couldn’t bring myself to care about either of those things enough to listen close enough to understand. Basically all I got out of it was that he said “champingon” a lot, which to my knowledge meant mushroom which made absolutely no sense. When I found out it can also mean fungus it started to make more sense. Basically the fungus is actually desired to concentrate the sugar in the grapes, to make a good wine, or something like that.
This is across the street from the most famous Bordelais vineyard whose name I have forgotten. We didn't go there because it's too expensive
OMG! GRAPES! WITH CHAMPIGNON! *yawn*

He showed us his garden, and talked some more during that, I didn’t listen at all because I was distracted by the fact that he had PEACOCKS (and also black swans, which totally don’t exist, guys).
Yep, that's Peacock.
Elusive black swan is elusive
Then we went inside, where it was cooler but not quite cool enough, and tasted the wine which was pretty good, if not a bit too sweet. Then he took us into the wine cellar, where at last we found respite from the heat, and he bragged about how expensive his wine is and how he has the audacity to charge more for the wine that’s sold with a picture on the seal than for the wine without the picture.
Demon-eyed vineyard owner, and celar

And then the tour was over, except we walked back towards the bus by his front yard where his FANTASTIQUE dog was hanging out. So all the decent people got really excited and petted the awesome dog through the fence, and the dog very kindly spread his awesome doggieness around. He was a really awesome dog.
Awesome dog is awesome
Obviously, the awesomeness of the outside of the house pales in comparison with the dog, but it was still pretty
Then we continued on to Malagar, the country home of Francois something-or-other (the author who lived part of his childhood in that one house in Bordeaux). On the way, we passed by a city that had a really pretty cathedral by a river.

The house itself and the tour was a bit less than interesting to me, which probably had a lot to with the heat and the fact that I had no idea that there was an author named Francois something-or-other until a week ago let alone anything about his books. As I am sure you can tell, I was a little less than enthusiastic about this trip (EXCEPT THE DOG) for which I blame the heat. But it’s undeniable that the grounds were pretty.

2 comments:

  1. Whenever I read your blogs my roommate is always like "What's so funny?" and I'm always like "MY FRIEND IS HILARIOUS" because it is true. AWESOME DOG IS AWESOME. You are the linguistic twin of my soul. I went on this horrible tour once where the tour guide just talked really fast to us about, like, underground escapes from east Berlin or something and he kept GOING and GOING and then he led us OUT of the tunnels, took us on the SUBWAY to a random FIELD and talked to us there (WHO THE HECK KNOWS WHY), then randomly took us to STREET CORNERS and talked to us THERE an sometimes he would pull out this LAMINATED MAP and point to it like it was supposed to MEAN SOMETHING and we were all just staring at him like DUDE WTF I AM SO CONFUSED RIGHT NOW and then he finally stopped and our brains were totally jellified.
    That was a bad tour.
    Brought to you by the writerly stylings of Maureen Johnson. WHO IS INFECTING MY BRAIN.

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  2. Is it terribly sad that I read my blogs and laugh? Never mind, you don't have to answer that, it's sad.
    I have declared twitter bankruptcy. Not having easy internet access makes it very much not worth it. :/

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