La guerre des etoiles

I am currently in the wine country south of Dijon, staying with a friend of a friend who has the added distinction of being a vineyard owner.  Since the countryside is very beautiful here, and I am blogging from my hostess's computer and so cannot upload my photos, I will hold off on exclaiming about rustic location until I have the wherewithall to show some of the views as evidence.

For the moment, things are very quiet here.  It is a rainy sunday afternoon and Kellen, my vinter-hostess, is preparing to roast a chicken with vegetables from her garden.  This morning, her two children (10 and 7-ish) were watching Star Wars: Episode II, and I joined them for some of the fight scenes.  Kellen is an american expat, so they are more-or-less bilingual, but they were watching it dubbed into French, which improved the whole thing immensely.  In good geek-girl form, I consider George Lucas's later additions to be an almost unforgivable blot on his oevre, but the execrable dialog is much better en francais.  Lines such as "Bien fait, mon jeune paduan" and "Tu vas payer, Duku, pour tous les jedis qui sont morts aujourd'hui" go from being painfully embarrassing to pretty amusing.  I had to hide my smiles from the kids, who were fully emotionally invested in the story, and informed me  in their melange of English and French, that "Maitre Yoda" was going to save the day.