Eric (French), Ragi (Norwegian), Regis (French), and Amandine (Belgian)
Michel cleans up the charlotte
Saturday night, late dinner of delicious pizza - nothing like Pizza Hut, it was agreed, and all were happy to hear Reed had never been there - and the crowning glory, a strawberry charlotte constructed by Amandine from the strawberries that Eric, Amandine, and I had harvested Saturday morning in the blazing sunshine.
As Walt and Reed and I were hungrily waiting around, having helped make the charlotte, prepare the pizza toppings, gone for a walk, read for hours, with still no sign of dinner being served, I realized that the key difference between the US and France is that for the French, dinner IS the entire point of the evening, there is nothing more important, in general, that will come after it except conversation. Whereas in the US, usually dinner is something we do first in the evening, followed by other things: a movie, reading a book, playing cards, watching t.v.... so when the pizza was finally served at 10 pm it was with a palpable sense of drama and lots of bravos.
The dessert was cheered, and second helpings taken all around, until finally Michel provoked a lot of jokes by continuing to cut tiny slivers, just a bit more, over and over again.
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