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Location: Edmonton, Alberta, Canada

Right now I`m taking a year off from high school. For the past 2 and a half years, I`ve been working towards my grade 10 piano exam with the Royal Conservatory, and I finished in January, with a mark of 83%. Now I want to travel and volunteer, particularily in France because I love the country and I don`t want to lose my French after having gone through 12 years of French immersion. Until I leave for my trip, my days consist of going to work (I work in a restaurant), playing the piano for fun, planning my trip, walking the dog, going to yoga, and going out with friends.

Monday, June 12, 2006

Hi Ho Cherry-o

This weekend was pretty lax-- it wasn't really off for me, and yet I didn't do much work either. Estelle was away all weekend working a market in another town, so she didn't have a chance to explain things to me about the garden The 2 boys weren't in school, so Pierre-Yves was pretty preoccupied with them. Saturday I went with him to the farm, and I now have it sorted out why on earth they would live 4km from their farm where they have to work everyday: They're buildinga house there, and their house in Nozières is just temporary until it's finished. The barn is less than a year old-- when they bought the farm a few years ago, it was just land and cherry trees. At the farm, I helped him clean the cherry press (they don't sell the cherries, they make juice and sell it), pasturize some juice, and milk the cows (they only have 4).
Sunday morning, I woke up with w determination to get the place somewhat clean-- I started with the worst part of the house: the bathroom. I'll spare you the details, but I'll just say that it took me about an hour and a half, and I didn't do all that thourough of a job, because I'm not a maid. When I came down around 11am, Pierre-Yves had already started cleaning the kitchen. I was a little impressed and somewhat relieved, and immediately started to help him. We did a very thourough job, and it's quite livable now.
This morning we drove about 15 minutes to the farm, and Estelle gave me a tour of the garden, and got me started picking cherries in the grove. Picking cherries is so much harder, more tiring, and a lot more frustrating than it looks, especially when you can barely lift the bigger of the 2 wooden ladders, and therefore can't really reach the higher branches. Bonus: I could eat as many cherries as I wanted...and I did. After lunch I went to the massive strawberry patch to pick strawberries. And I naturally helped myself to a fair share of those too. Estelle explained that her strawberries are a different breed then your average grocery store strawberries. I really noticed the difference in the sweetness (a little sweeter, not so sour), the texture (soft, but not mushy), and the taste (the taste of strawberries magnified, with a hint of what I thought tasted like flowers). Afterwards I helped Estelle, Pierre-Yves, one of their friends and his 9-year-old daughter pick cherries for about another hour. I was absolutely exhausted after today, and I almost fell asleep in the car on the way back to the house. It wasn't just the actual harvesting of the fruit that wa so tiring either-- getting to the plants takes a lot of effort too, because a)the cherry grove is about a 10 to 15 mintue hike from the farm (and I say hike, not walk), and b)the farm is on a mountain, so in order to plant things, giant steps are carved in the side of the mountain, which makes for a steep climb or descent every time you want to get to another part of the garden.

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