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I woke up at 11:30 today, I'm making progress. It was hard for me to fall asleep though last night.

It's 3pm now and we haven't done much yet today, I think Lise's still sleeping. We've done the important things to do with pets; fed the inside and outside fish, fed the turtle, watered the plants. Let the cat inside. And outside again. And half inside but then she leaves. Haven't see since.

I had some chocolate, yogurt, nectarines, Lyoner sausage, and an apple for breakfast. The boys cooked a giant pot of spaghetti that I think will last them the entire day. So far they (and mostly as well myself up until recently)haven't done much yet except watch YouTube. But I kinda ran out of interesting things to watch, and got a bit bored with that. So now I'm writing this and listening to some Louden Swain, and hiding inside from the 34 degree heat outside. I've worn a nice long light skirt today, I thought it was appropriate for the weather. It shows off my nice giant bruise slowly spending on my right knee.

I think that very briefly I will go on a walk down to the river and along it. I was just reading about the area in the house book that comes with the house swap, and it seems like a really nice thing to do. Possibly also later I would like to go swimming, but it would be good to scout it out a bit first as in the house book they said there were some unpredictable potentially dangerous spots along it. But what also sounds cool is that if you hop in the river upstream, you can float back to the house in a reasonable amount of time. It's quite a fast flowing current.

I think we also need some more groceries so maybe I'll walk and do that too.

Alright Lise is awake now, so I think her and I will walk to the grocery store by taking a slightly alternate roof along the river.

 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

We went for a walk by the river. You can access the river by a little path that goes between our yard and the neighbours' yard, which brings you to the main path right next to the water. We turned left and started along the gravel path. It's still really hot, so there were lots of people swimming. The opposite shore had more beach-like areas. I say beach-like because it was just a small patch of sand with a couple big boulders. But there were quite a lot of people using it.

Farther along on our side, we found several water access points that were quite nice; some areas were shaded while others provided easy water access. It seemed like there were less people on our side of the river, I wonder why. There were also enclosures on our left with goats and sheep grazing on the steep slopes.

We passed a tunnel on the side of the river that the house book talked about: apparently on the other end you can walk a bit more then get to a ferry across the river to a nice garden restaurant. I think I want to try going there sometime.

We don't really look like tourists here, especially me with my summer skirt and flip flops, so people kept on talking in German a bit to us. A lot of people said tchüss ("shoose ") to us, which Lise said means hi. I haven't had the confidence yet to say it back. I'm also scared that I'll pronounce it too well and they'll say something else in German and then I'll be lost. I think the key is to say it back but mess it up a bit. Then they know I'm polite but I don't speak German. At one point an older lady said tchüss to Lise and then some other things, and she just kinda smiled and chuckled a bit with her. Honestly I probably would have done the same thing. No idea what she said. I was using my iPad at the time though, so my guess is that it was something along the lines of "kids these days and their technology, amirite?".

On the way home we passed by the grocery store again and loaded up on more food. We got a bunch of meat this time, I think we're going to try a barbecue. We also got more fruit, as well as one loaf of nice artisan bread for the gluten-eaters in our house. I managed to avoid getting more chocolate; this is probably a good thing.

There's about an hour now until we skype with Mathilde and her family at 7pm to hash out the details of our visit with them coming up. After that I think we might try to go swim in the river a bit, but it's starting to get a bit later In the day so I don't know if that will really end up happening. Tomorrow for sure though, especially if it's as hot as today outside.

 

 
 
 
   I'm just sitting at the side of the river right now. It's 8pm. Lise and I just finished the skype call with Aline and we headed down here to join Jeff and the boys. Julias and Tobin just finished wading here, Julias just found a snake in his towel.

The call went well, we planned a bit what we would do the two days we're there and checked in a bit.

It's starting to cool down a bit, but it's still humid. It's really nice down here by the river. Not a lot to report since last check in, we just had some food and were relaxing. We're basically just relaxing now. I'm relaxed. That's about it.

 

 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 

I just went for a little bit of a walk with Lise and Jeff while the boys went back home. We walked the opposite direction from this morning when I went. We found a footbridge down that way, as well as what looked to be a hydro power station. We also saw some neat houses by the side of the river. I think I'm definitely going swimming tomorrow. There's an idea that we'll try to leave early (9am) for a hike tomorrow, so swimming might be nice after that.

For the rest of the evening we'll just cook some food and relax some more and go to bed, I think. We're all still a bit jet lagged.