As I said in the last post, I had quite a lot riding on this whole harvest experience thing. I'd also heard a lot of things that made me either excited, or terrified. I heard that the food would be unbelievable authentic and awesome. Home cooked meals showing off all the classic dishes of France, with no repeats. I also heard that there'd be more wine to drink than I could possibly imagine. One friend told me that a friend of his got so used to drinking beaujolais in mass quantities, that after the winery gave him two cases to take with him, he drank all two of them by himself in 2 days without even realizing it!

I also heard stories of back-breaking labor. Getting up at 5 AM, hiking through the mountains with piles of grapes tied to ones back, stopping only when it was too dark to pick. After that you could barely eat, have a glass of wine, and then pass out and do it all over again the next day.

I told myself that hopefully it wouldn't be too bad. After all, I'm a pretty fit guy. Maybe it's just the out of shape Frenchies who never exercise that would have a problem with it. Maybe I'd be fine.

Someone else had told me that the workers would be young French kids, fresh out of college, and ready to party. In my mind I assumed they would all be male, I guess because of the back-breaking labor aspect of the job. In the United States I think this would be true. There might be the odd woman or two, but I figured in the more sexist France, it would be all men. That brought to mind all kinds of bad fantasies. When I was 16, I went to a private school (Choate) for a summer. Their summer programs were always very international, and there was this one French kid who spoke really poor English. I remembered how all the Americans tormented him mercilessly, thinking, as many Americans do, that anyone with a thick accent must be stupid. I wondered if I'd receive similar treatment?

To assuage some of those fears, I practiced my French as hard as I could all summer. I had a private tutor, a native French speaker come give me lessons 4 days a week. I texted with my wife only in French. At the end of the summer, I felt like I could figure out how to say almost anything I needed to say. Understanding everything I heard was another problem entirely, but at least I wouldn't be stuck not being able to communicate what I needed.

The reality of the harvest, of course, had some elements of what I'd heard, and some that were totally unexpected.