I hope that you are all continuing to have good summers. Isn’t it crazy that once again it is coming to an end? I can hardly believe that in a week I will be heading up to Nantes to meet 60 more Americans and so many many more French people. Ohe wow! It has been good so far though. I have received so many invitations to visit different relatives here that I will have plenty to do just in France. Alone this week I have 3 relatives who want me to go see them. I entirely appreciate every offer, but I can only be in one place at a time! Life indeed has been good. Before arriving in Paris some four weeks ago you would have no idea that I had been in Europe for over a month considering my French barely improved. After a complete immersion in the family I have gone the distance, and my cousins are even saying that I can speak French well! After my family reunion I went off to a small beach side town called Piriac. I was able to spend time with all my family from the states some more before they took off. We went to the beach every day and had a great time in the ocean. We even made it up to a town called Cargnac where a friend of the family lived where we saw megalithic prehistoric stone alignments and I went water skiing on the Atlantic Ocean! It was tough saying good bye to my parents and my brother and sisters again. Family is real important to me and I have been blessed with one of the best. Living only an hour away from home I was still able to see my parents at every choir concert and Theater show I was involved in. now to say, Goodbye till Christmas is so odd for me. I think it pains me just a little more because this summer was one of the last times in a while that we are all going to be together. My brother is heading off to Washington DC and my sister Anne is coming here to france and my younger sister is off to University of Pudget Sound. My little brother is going to be home all by himself for the first time. My parents, brother and sisters, and my family from NJ left and after a little internet research I found out it was a little too expensive for me to go to Medjujorge or Greece at this time. That made it a little sad every time I saw the Olympics, but I think it is for the better, because I stay immersed in the French language, the food and drinks have exponentionally gotten better, and I get to spend another week with my Grandfather. I know understand why Europeans have coffee at the end of there meal at 10 or 11 at night. It is to give them enough oomph to be able to get up the stairs and go to bed after a meal full of alcohol. Of course, they are pulling out all the stops since we are here, and typically only drink there wine on Sunday nights, but at some meals I have 7 different types of drinks starting with aperitifs all the way through to our digestifs. There are even drinks to put on your ice cream. I haven’t had any alcohol while at Willamette with the exception of one beer this year. I might be making up for that this summer. No worries though, I always eat plenty of food here (I have become the poubelle or garbage can of the family since I have to make up all the weight I lost traveling on my own this summer) and I keep a good watch on myself to make sure I don’t have to much. Jenna has talked about how it is still odd to go to a bar and order a drink, I don’t even need bars this summer while at chez LeChevallier. I’ll be sure to bring back some of my new tastes to share with you next year. Well, if they can survive that long. I am now back in my Grandfathers hometown of Vire and I am living in my great great grandmothers chateau. This has been only in our family for a hundred years, but that still didn’t stop me from having a nightmare last night (worse yet, I think it might have been reality) laying in the bed where I sleep, in the pitch black with the wind howling outside, perceiving that there were the disturbed spirits old relatives, long since dead in the room. I also had another very “frightening” European experience yesterday. I took a bunch of my little cousins to the pool in town to go swimming, but realized that I had forgotton my swimsuit at home. So I had to buy one at the pool so I could play with them. WoW! Mike in a black European speedo with white chicken legs. Not a sight that should ever be repeated again! (although I almost want to at the beach again in two weeks with the American group just so I can throw them off, and throw off these chains of American Shame.) I am going to visit my great grandmother Mamie at the hospital today. She is nearing 98 and is paralyzed on half her body. She has her good days and her bad, but when mon grandpere went to visit her yesterday she recognized him and grabbed his hand and held it to her face as he prayed with her and sang to her. She is the mother of 12 children (two now deceased) and they each take a few weeks during the year to go and visit her so that at every meal one of her children is there to visit her and to help feed here. From here I am moving on to Paris for a brief stay at a relatives and then a final week down in Bordeaux with some more relatives before I start school