Lunch with Frenchies and exploring

On Sunday, my family and I were invited to a French family's house for lunch. There was Dominic, Arnold (19 year old son), Veronique (Dominic's wife). The family normally lives in Toulouse, but comes down to the Montousse area on the weekends. We all started lunch off with multiple glasses of Drappier champagne (the champagne that General de Gaulle used to drink, my host informs me). After the wonderful drink, we sat down to an equally wonderful meal of homemade venison stew (which Dominic himself caught the day before) with pasta and a homegrown tomato salad. The chat during the meal mostly consisted of my Dad and Dominic talking about work and french life in general, in english of course (Dominic spoke almost fluent english being that he worked in the US for the past 9 years). I chatted a little with Veronique (who is an osteopath) and their son, Arnold, in french, but was shy to talk in fear of messing up or going too slowly. I have no idea how it came up, but Veronique asked me if I would like to go to the river to swim this weekend and I said yes (I mean when a local invites you to do something how could you pass up the opportunity?). So off I go this weekend to swim in the local river, La Neste. I'm hoping its not too cold!

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