Foreigners coming to visit: Part II

In other news, my cousin Tom came and stayed with me for 5 days! He's travelling around Europe at the moment and dropped in to say hi.

My host brother took us to an Aboriginal music festival, which was REALLY COOL! There were native musicians from all sorts of countries - Mongolian chanting, Indian instruments and food and best of all, Australian Aboriginals: didgeridoos!
I've never seen so many didgeridoos in my life. Tom and I met an English guy who explained about the international didgeridoo trade - turns out that Germany imports more didgeridoos than any other country in the world COMBINED, and France is not far behind.

MAKING dideridoos on-site

We saw an Aboriginal man play didge and talk to the crowd – he had a translator because he had to explain the story behind each song, but she had a bit of trouble understanding all his Australian slang! For me, it was really refreshing and homely to hear his classic Australian accent, even though only 2 people in the audience could actually understand him.

Lewis Burns on didgeridoo

Tom had a chat with the didge player (Lewis Burns) and found out that he loved France because his work was so much more appreciated than in Australia. Australian Aboriginals have one of the most well-known cultures in the world but at the same time (somehow), are the least understood, even by their own country. I thought it was interesting and really great that France, or even Europe, embraces musical cultures worldwide like that. Especially because Australia seems to be lacking in that area.

Exotic Nepalese instruments

Super cool sax-didges!



In a festival of hippies and vegetarians... ANTI MATERIALISM!

Another day we went walking around the woods near the house to try and find one of the many dolmens in the area - a rock with (allegedly) dead people buried underneath to give it spiritual energy. We found some! Just seemed like a rock. Maybe it was asleep.

I love sunflower season!

But we did find a paddock full of sunflowers! They're EVERYWHERE, it's so colourful and picturesque (and take pictures I do).

An actual weather report. Shame it's starting RAINING NON-STOP.
Also, I live just above the sunny bit.

La tour carrée

Showed Tom around Loudun with Jade and her dad, saw the famous Loudun Square Tower! And lots of other amazing Loudunaise attractions. Then we stayed at Jade's dad's house for dinner.

Tom playing Jade's dad's didgeridoo... does everyone in France
have one of these lying around the house or something?!

Tom left a couple of days later, but it was really good to see him because I hardly ever do!


Merzhin

There are heaps of free concerts going on in my area because it's summer, and one of Marie-Anne and Jade's favourite bands was there - so we saw Merzhin! I didn't know who they were before, but the music is cool.

Merzhin

Aaaaaand then there was another concert! I love summer.

Groundation - a reggae band

Even though most French music is just reggae, this concert/festival was pretty great.

Fouées cookin'!

 Another French revelation is a fouée! It's dough cooked in a wood-fired oven so it puffs up, then you fill it with whatever you want - goats cheese, nutella, jam, chicken curry...

Fouées being made - there are always HEAPS being made at a time,
I've never seen less than 2 full tabletops of dough. GOOD! More for me!

Asad Avidan - this guy had an incredible voice and was singing soprano most of the time

Le peuple de l'herbe - they play an awesome mix of genres like hip-hop/dub/reggae/sampling

Then Clariesa came to visit! She stayed with my family in 2007 while she was on exchange from Malaysia, so it was really great that we could be there for each other's exchanges. Plus I hadn't seen her for 3 years! She even came to Rotary with me! There was practically an implosion of young people there because Jade came too - 3 TIMES AS MANY YOUTHS!

I showed her around Tours and Loudun (she was here for 2 nights) and one night we went out for Chinese for dinner. It was funny because the owner of the restaurant was Vietnamese but he could speak Chinese and English (and French, obviously). So he was chatting away with Clariesa in Chinese and the rest of us sat there with our mouths open! It was so cool!


The day after, Clariesa got the train back to Bourges where she was staying with her friends from her exchange. It's been quiet in the house with no visitors!

An exciting turn up of the books - Jade and I have been pretty dedicated and going running! We've been twice in a week! We're trying to get fit for handball, because training starts on the 17th... so hopefully I'll survive that one.

Izis the cat playing in her happy plastic bag - she was under surveillance, don't worry!

I don't think I've mentioned this cat much, but when she arrived she was scared of EVERYTHING. (Quite literally, a scaredy-cat) Now, she's come out of her shell (not literally) and even progressed to running around in the garden instead of breaking vases in the house! I'm getting used to living with cats now, I might even prefer cats to- NO, I'M JOKING. Dogs win every time. Still, having a pet is nice.

Almost got stuck in a tree

That's all the news for now! The 'rents and little brother arrive in 3 weeks... better brush up on human dictionary skills.