St. Michael, spider juice, strikes and Monet...vive la France!

Ok. Sorry I haven’t written in a while, but things have been pretty busy lately. I think that I actually need to catch up on several weeks’ worth of blogging…oh my! So, a short summary of what I have done is necessary. About four weekends ago we (IES group) went on a day trip to Mont St. Michel and then St. Malo. The weekend after that I went with my host family to a family reunion in Bourgueuil. Two weekends ago, the IES group and I went on a tour of five chateaux around Tours. Last weekend I stayed in Nantes, yay! Classes have been going great, and my family life is really good too. Now, I will elaborate a little…

Mont St. Michel is an island on the northern coast of France. It is situated on a large peninsula of beach, and it is literally a mountain that rises up out of the sand. The weekend that we went to the Mont, was the weekend of the “Grande Marinée.” It was the weekend where the tides were the most dramatic as a result of the moon being closer to the Earth. The effect was perfect! The water was coming right up to the Mont’s walls, isolating it, with the exception of the causeway that allowed tourists to enter/exit the island, from the rest of the coast. Mont St. Michel is the highest point for many miles around, which makes it even more breathtaking simply because it shouldn’t be. On the very top of the Mont is an abbey and a cathedral that look as if they were carved right out of the natural stone. The cathedral’s spire forms the crown of the Mont and at the very top of it rests a gold statue of St. Michael, dressed in full armor and wielding a sword with the dragon/devil beneath his feet. The statue is always illuminated by the sun…no need for halos there! There is a legend attached to the Mont that I actually read the first week that I was here in France. I read the version by Guy de Maupassant. In the legend St. Michel outwits Satan and kicks him from the top of Mont St. Michel out of France. I guess it is appropriate for there to be a gold statue crowning St. Michael’s Mountain!

St. Malo was also very beautiful. It is a small city, also on the coast of northern France, that is completely walled in. It was fortified to protect the city’s people from not only the English, but the sea itself. We didn’t get to spend much time in St. Malo, but I was able, at least to visit Chateaubriand’s tomb that was on an island separated from the city. Usually the sea separates it from the land, but the tide was low enough for me to walk across the sand bars to reach it.

The family reunion with my host family has probably been the most interesting experience that I’ve had so far. We went on a Saturday morning to Bourgueuil, near Angers, to the family home of my host mother. Well, I was miserably sick with a fresh cold, and I wasn’t looking too forward to spending the night in a 100 + year old house with a bunch of people that I’d never met. When we arrived, my mood totally changed (despite the cold). We arrived and immediately all of the family members warmly accepted me into their home. My host mother shares the house with her 6 sisters, who were all there with their husbands, children (including in-laws and soon-to-be in-laws), and grandchildren. After lunch, we all divided up into teams and went on a 22km bike ride/scavenger hunt, that lasted several hours, around the village and the surrounding countryside. It was the best family tradition I think I’ve ever experienced! I loved it! That night we all watched the rugby game together (France vs. New Zealand) and I won the bet for predicting the score. I said that France would win 21 to 19, and they did win 20 to 18. Little did I realize that I’d won dish duty for the next day! Before going to bed, each of the seven sisters tried to cure my cold with different remedies, all soothing but ultimately ineffective. I ended up getting a glass of water and headed to bed (I had to share a room with all of the female cousins, which wasn’t bad at all I just hope I didn’t snore!). I didn’t sleep all that well, and several times during the night I got up to sip on my glass of water. One of those times, I kept feeling something prickly on my forehead and nose, thinking it was just some of my hair in my face I brushed the feeling away and went back to sleep. The next morning I woke up feeling a little better, until I reached the kitchen and started cleaning my water glass. Apparently, the prickly feeling wasn’t my hair. It was a very large arachnid trying to escape certain death by drowning in my water!! Well, it did drown, and yes I did drink more water after that incident in the night. I couldn’t help but feel a little disgusted. At the breakfast table I tried to communicate to the family that I was feeling better and that apparently my remedy was spider juice. I mispronounced spider in French, and they all thought I’d said rat juice. They gave me this really disgusted quizzical look until one of them figured out, with the help of a hand gesture from me, that I was trying to say spider. They had a good laugh at my expense. I think that the only differences between an American style family reunion and a French one are that: French family reunions last whole weekends; they drink a lot; instead of playing football in the back yard, they play rugby; and they all smoke each other’s cigarettes (I was the odd man out in this tradition). Overall it was a great weekend!

Two weekends ago, we went on a tour of 5 chateaux. Basically they were all beautiful and big. The first one that we went to had a really remarkable cabinet made entirely of hand-carved ebony! It alone is worth more than the chateau that housed it. We went to the Chateau d’Amboise which is the burial place of Leonardo da Vinci!! Yes, I saw his tomb. It is in a little, beautifully decorated chapel next to the castle. My favorite chateau was Chenonceau. The woods around it were absolutely beautiful! The leaves weren’t completely turned and the colors of the leaves against the sky were incredible, as they always are in the fall. I managed to sprain my ankle. I was being stupid, playing Frisbee in my Danskos...big mistake! I shouldn’t have done that. Poor Geoff had to carry me on his shoulder that Saturday night to dinner. Again, everyone had a good laugh at my expense. Yeah, I laughed at me too…couldn’t help it!

Last weekend wasn’t too thrilling except I did get to go to the local art museum for a little while on Sunday afternoon. I was able to get close enough to a Picasso and two Monets to smell the paint. I realize how strange that sounds, but for me it was heavenly! As far as other things go, school is getting more intense. I’ve had two midterms, an in-class essay, and one homework essay. There was a strike last Thursday, and all of the trains in France that were connected to the SNCF lines stopped running. I was able to get around last Thursday just fine, but it was kind of a big deal. Apparently Sarkozy, the French president for those who don’t know, is trying to change the retirement age for SNCF workers from 50 to 65? (I think that is what I heard, basically the same age when everyone else in the country can retire). The French are really dramatic as a people. There are strikes here all the time. That’s really all for now. I hope everyone is doing great! Elizabeth, Geoff, Brooke and I are all doing fine here.
Jordan W. Rawl