First Day

It was much more difficult getting here than what was originally planned. Unfortunately, my flight from Charlotte to Frankfurt was delayed on the runway, and landed about two hours later than scheduled, so I missed my connecting flight to Nice. I had to talk to a few ticketing agents and wait in three lines before being able to change my flight, and they rerouted me through Munich, so I had to take two flights to get from Frankfurt to Nice. After arriving, I bought a ticket for a bus going from Nice to Aix en Provence, where Jill picked me up. Finally I arrived at the entrance of the Liquoristerie (pictured above). It doesn't sound so bad when I summarize it all, but suffering from sleep deprivation, I was running on caffeine and adrenaline until I finally was able to collapse in bed.

Luckily I got to sleep at 23:30 (11:30 PM for the military-time illiterate) and woke up at 08:30, ready to get to work. I showered and ate a couple pieces of toast topped with blackberry jam––my favorite, brought from back home. My mom's long-time employee and family friend Jeannie Munsen makes it, and her blog is called Jeannie's Jams.

After descending the stairs to the distillery, Pascal asked me to help him stock the warehouse area with the product shipment. After finishing stocking, I was set to work on what became my consuming task of the day: vacuuming spiders and cobwebs out of the warehouse (on a side note, I learned two new French words today: aspirateur means vacuum, and araignée means spider).
This was my weapon:
The task ended up taking me most of the day, but I'd bet anyone they couldn't find a spider in that warehouse after my war against the arachnids. One of the reasons it took so long is because the rooms are filled with crazy distilling equipment like these:

I also helped pack up some invitations for a big party that Pascal is throwing next week. I'll post later with some more information about that, I'm still not quite clear on what exactly he's trying to do with it, but it involves some important people in French politics, so I'm looking forward to meeting some interesting folks.

After work, I took a walk through Venelles, the town where the Liquoristerie is located, and saw some beautiful village architecture. I'll leave y'all with some pictures from the walk (that southern drawl has infected my grammar, but the word is so damn useful).