my last post before jessica gets here

I had quite a day yesterday, an almost perfect day until...I sprained my left ankle...AT DINNER!!

WellI started my day out by renting a scooter (so much fun but scary at the same time) and rode 70 km to a city that is supposed to be full of foie gras...and that it is...every second store is another person selling foie gras. Now Foie gras is the fattened liver of goose and duck. The geese and duck are force fed for about 3 -4 weeks so their liver fattens up to be between 500-1000g in weight.

There are many arguments as to if its humane, and alot of the crap that peta tries to put out there,so I figured I had to go see it for myself.

Quite funny actually. So I get to Sarlat, and go to the tourism office, and they direct me to a city that is called Carsac where there is a farm that you can see the geese being fed. So I go there and the guy calmly says I can only see the 6:30 feeding. we spoke and he was very nice and told me about another farm that I can go to instead, that did the feeding earlier, as I didnt want to drive the scooter at night. ( the french drivers are bad enough during the day.)

So I go back to Sarlat for lunch, had an absolutely amazing lunch and yes of course I had foie gras for the second day in a row. then I headed back towards Perigueux to see the other farm. Well I got to a fork in the road, saw a sign of a city I recognized, but the others I didnt, and took the road. To make a long sotry short, I took the wrong road and went 25 km out of the way, thats about 1 hour driving total...it was pretty funny, especially when it started to poar. Dont forget im on a scooter, open air and i was getting soaked. The roads were slippery so I had to slow down, and people were passing me which I was ok with, but then someone ran me of the road, and didnt even slow down to mke sure I was ok!!..I was ok thankfully I didnt get hurt. But I was scared for a second. When I realized I was going the wrong way, I stopped, got out the map, in the pouring rain to try to get a feel for where I was, and still no one stopped to offer assistance, or tell me how to get to the place I wanted to go!

Anyways I turned around went to the nearest tourism office and the girl gave me a map and told me a shortcut, I got to the farm just as the farmer was finishing hte last goose. I told him who I was and why I was there, and because it usually takes 2 hours to feed the geese, and he was done in 45 minutes, he demonstrated for me how he does it. plus Foie gras is usually done in September, hes one of the very few farmers who do foie gras in the begining of the summer, before it gets too hot.

It was definitely an interesting thing to see. He told me the geese dont feel any pain since its natural for them to fatten their liver for the winter, also at this age tehy have no gag reflex, so the tube doesnt cause them any pain either.

I drove back to Perigueux, returned the scooter and went for dinner, as I walked down the steps to the patio, I tripped fell and sprained my ankle. ON MY LAST DAY HERE!! Oh well, its not broken but in a little pain. I elevated it, iced it and put a tenser bandage on it over night, and kept it elevated as much as possible. Should be easy on the train i hope I have enough space to elevate.

Anyways I leave for Madrid at 11:25 am and arrive at 10:08 pm. Going to be a loooong day, but good thing I bought a big book the other day.

Thank you everyone for all the support and emails through out the past 8.5 months. Im coming on home though in one month.

love yehuda