It’s often like this. There are only 5 native English peeps (excluding the many  Filipino wives) in the town of Buan and we stand out. I say “hi” or “hello” about a thousand times a day, of which half to people I’ve never met. It is cute. I think sometimes i’m going to get tired of it, but it hasn’t annoyed me yet. Well, except perhaps on bad days. But on those days any cheerful talk is annoying.

30 miles drive north east of Seattle it stopped raining. That place was Wallace Falls State Park. Mal and I decided to check it out on this rare day. We had three uphill hikes to choose from: Upper, Middle and Lower Falls.  Mal was well prepared wearing only flip flips, so we took the 3 mile Middle Falls hike. The hike was not too steep, nicely marked and well maintained. I was surprised that we hit only a few muddy patches.

No…really it wasn’t steep.

Matt says it wasn’t steep but I say IT WAS! and the only thing that got me to the top was the fact that there were a million little kids coming down and I wasn’t gonna let them beat me! - Mal’s WORD

This weekend, with sister-Tilde, brother-in-law-Abe and little-Vic, we went to Gas Works Park. I think I would pay to see this park. It has an excellent view of the city, it’s right by the water, and there are cool old oil refinery structures of rusted metal. There’s also a hill there that I climbed up and ….

It’s bricante season in France. I guess you could say its when France cleans out its closets. Townspeople get together and have a huge sale. I can’t say if its all over France but at least in the northern part, there were bricantes going on each weekend. (There’s a regional guide book for this.)

This weekend I went out to see what I would discover. I found the one above there. The owner initially said 50 euros, then came down to 30 euros. I couldn’t do it. Perhaps if I had returned at the end of the day I would have got a cheaper price. Instead, I decided to take a picture. It was impressive.  This was no painting. This ouvre d’art was crosstitched. Click on it to get the finer details. Wow!

Visiting my good friend Regine in Granville, France (along the coast of basse normardie)