Sunday

Alas! I am so ashamed. It's been almost a week since my last post, so in order to make it up to you I am going to make this one extraordinarily long and wordy:

Two days ago, Maëlle's family invited me to a big family dinner in Nantes. I was, of course, very happy to accept this invitation. Everybody arrived at the Trévedy residence around twelve or twelve-thirty: aunts, uncles, cousins, nephews, nieces, etc. In all there were fourteen adults and several children (I wasn't able to count the children; they are constantly moving, which inhibits my calculatory faculties). The dinner started with an aperatif; everybody had a drink and there was paté, pastachios, and other savoury snacks. Then we moved on to the entrée: two kinds of fish with white wine. When we got to the main dish I was already well on my way to being full (to be honest I had been eating a lot of really good bread, which had come with every course thus far). the main dish was chicken with fried balls of mashed potatoes and red wine. The cheese came next. In anticipation of dessert, I had wisely decided to take only a very small portion of swiss, but then I was taken in again by bread! arrg! Then we arrived at the dessert, which consisted of a variety of cakes and sparkeling wine . I had a modest slice of chocolate cake. Finally we had coffee at around six in the evening. Afterward, everybody went on a walk except me. I promptly went upstairs and took an hour-long nap.