February, 2007 at Carnac - The sun is shining in February!
Five Years On
(Written this year by Emily, because Trever was too lazy)
Trever
still doesn't eat tongue. He has, however, tried andouille
sausage AND LIKED IT. Andouille is offal (or awful) sausage and
is a Breton delicacy, but one that until last fall was firmly on our
'yecch' list. Then we went to our local creperie -- which has
changed hands for the second time since we arrived -- with friends, one
of whom ordered the andouille crepe. He was kind enough to offer
us each a taste and I have to admit that I was astonished to find how
tasty it was. His wife swears that blood sausage is some of the
best stuff in the world, but so far I'm not buying. Perhaps in
another five years.....
Emily and Emily at Ranrouet (see, Mom and Dad, I do have eyes!)
The
biggest highlight of the last year for me was a visit from my friend
Emily Barker, who came for three days in February and actually got to
experience some decent weather while in Brittany. We had a good
time showing her 'round the region, and were particularly pleased to
tour the ramparts of the newly refurbished and reopened Chateau des
Ducs in Nantes. It has been under renovation/construction almost
since we arrived and has been emphatically closed for at least the last
three years. I'm still hoping to take a visitor to Mont St.
Michel, since we've never been and it's not all that far away. I
think that, after the Eiffel Tower, the silhouette of the Mont is the
most recognizable image of France for most people (at least most
Americans). I'm sure folks out there will let me know if they
disagree. Anyway, it would be interesting to visit a place that
has been continuously inhabited for more than a thousand years and
still retains some of the original furnishings, so to speak.
Other
important things that happened this year: we finally found a
local supplier for sandblasting media so we no longer have to pay
freight on 50-kilo bags! When we began to try to get the
sandblaster set up in the fall of 2002 we quickly found out that
'sandblasting' to most people meant the process used to clean off the
brick- and stonework of houses. In that category, 'fine' media is
the size of beach sand. We even ended up at a quarry in our
quest, and got a somewhat bemused response from the man behind the
window when I showed him our little envelope of floury dust. I
managed to escape from the office without being squashed by the giant
dumptrucks that kept pulling up to his window to check in. We
eventually did find a company in southwestern France that sold our
preferred stuff and gratefully paid the freight for about 300 pounds.
Several times. But last summer, almost out of media and
armed with improved phone skills, we decided that we might be able to
do better and rootled out a company in Sautron, about 40 minutes away,
with very friendly and helpful owners who (taadaa) speak English.
Emily & Trever at the Chateau des Ducs in Nantes - for once, we can both be in the photo (thank you, Emily B!)
Looking
back over the time we've been here is a real-life demonstration of
incremental change in action. Finding the supplier for the
sandblasting media is a perfect example; it probably doesn't sound very
exciting at first blush. 'What's so hard about that?' you ask,
and it's not an unreasonable question. When we lived in
Thomasville, Trev whipped out the phone book, made a few calls, and
quickly found a media supplier about (coincidentally) 40 minutes away
in Jamestown. Simple. Then we moved to France.
When
we arrived, everything was new, everything was confusing, and
everything was difficult. And of course, everything had to be
done at the same time. We never seemed to have the first fire out
before the next one started. Every time we went anywhere we got
lost. We felt as though we would never be able to do even the
simplest things without having to mount an Everest-worthy expedition,
and it was hideously frustrating.
Think about all the
transactions that have made up your life. If you're reading this,
you've probably bought a computer. That computer may be sitting
in your apartment or house, which you rented or bought through a series
of negotiations. You may be wearing clothes (we shall not
speculate) and sitting on a chair at the desk on which your computer is
placed. Obtaining these items, and the various other belongings
that surround you in your putative nest, most likely involved
interactions with other people and institutions, from the simple
handing over of a few coins to the labyrinthine coils of corporate
dealings. Consider the aspects of any of these that you found
confusing when they took place in your native tongue. Then
imagine conducting them in another language, one that you may not speak at all. Are your palms sweating?
(To
anyone who is reading this stark naked in the public library after just
having taken over an Asian company without speaking a word of the
language, my profoundest obeisances.)
In addition to speaking
with the grammar and vocabulary of five-year-olds, we often felt
that our ability to do anything else had been reduced to the same
level. Oddly, one of the things I found most difficult was
talking on the phone, and using the yellow pages was nearly
impossible because most of the headings made absolutely no sense.
We did most of our supply-shopping online because we could avoid
having to talk to someone and annoy them with our school-child French.
But gradually, in some cases imperceptibly, things began to
improve. We learned first to cope, and then to feel comfortable.
We learned a few of the tricks the locals use to make life
easier, such as the wonderful tram system in Nantes that Trev wrote
about in our 'Three Years On' year-end commentary. And I got much
better at using the telephone. My second try at tracking down a
local media supplier only demanded about two afternoons' worth of phone
calls, and found us what we needed.
So there we are. We've
been in France for five years, and I can scarcely believe it. If
asked before leaving the United States about how difficult the move
would be and how long some of the settling in would take, I would have
seriously underestimated both. It would perhaps be apt to quote
the Grateful Dead about our life here so far, since it has been both
long and strange, and many parts have had a distinctly hallucinatory
quality to them. However, 'strange' has ceased to automatically
mean 'bad', and we look forward to many more interesting adventures in
our adopted country. One recent happy discovery, thanks to a
friend, is that there is a direct fast train to Lille that leaves from
La Baule, providing a quick (and relatively inexpensive)
connection to the border with Belgium and thence to the rest of
northern Europe. Our previous researches had convinced us that
train travel was going to be outrageously costly, but it turns out that
we were evidently trying to get to the German equivalent of Stumpy
Point, NC. Now we're hoping to visit other parts of France and
even (gasp) other countries with a minimum of kerfluffle. And of
course, there's still plenty of Brittany left to see!
Some random church in Nantes...
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Life in France