das Boot

Today we went to a French boot (garage) sale. I've got to say, when it comes to boot sales, the French beat Americans hand over fist. They are located in a reasonably sized town, and the block off like 6-8 square blocks of the street, and people line up all along the street. There's probably a couple hundred people selling, and 5 times that wandering the streets. They sell the usual sort of junk that they basically just want to get rid of, but because of how old all of these areas are, there's also loads of really great looking antiques and things.
I felt a little bad because we left all of the stable cleaning to one of the kids who works for Anette, but he doesn't seem to mind doing the work, and I figure there'll probably be some day when he has other things to do and we'll pitch in more. Taking care of horses is interesting because it can either be really simple, basically leave them out to pasture, or fairly work intensive. Right now there are 12 of them who are brought to and from the stables each night, which makes for a lot of horse shuffling, and also a good deal of stable mucking.
Riding has been going well, but when Ina teaches me it can be frustrating. She really emphasizes not putting to much pressure on the reigns, which I totally understand. The problem is that basically every-time I successfully get the horse to do what I want, she tells me it was too much reign, and when I can't get the horse to do anything, she doesn't really have any suggestions, so I end up using more reign, and she corrects me. All in all, I feel that I'm learning quickly, and my legs are gonna be mad strong at the end of all this.