A Glimpse of Le Tréport

France loves vacations. I don't even hate to generalize about this. It's true. (I started reading Bonjour Tristesse, and in it they've rented a villa on the Mediterranean for two months!) Les Vacances de Toussaint started today, and we don't start back to school or work until 3 November. To celebrate, and just to get out and enjoy the lovely weather, I rode over to Le Tréport this afternoon, and TOOK SOME PHOTOS!


A sign, directing me to Le Tréport. The church, to the right of the sign, is l'Église Saint-Jacques. There was originally a church in the same location during the 14th century, but it was destroyed during a violent storm. Construction to rebuild the church began toward the end of the the 17th century, and if I remember correctly, it was finished during the 18th century. I went inside, but didn't take any photos. I figure I'll save that for its own day.



When the tide goes out, boats that're left in a certain part of the harbor end up on dry land. I was eating my "fesse de bébé" (see later photo) when the tide was coming back in, and watched a couple of fishermen walk out and hop in their boats, then wait for the water to rise and take off!


On my way across the harbor I noticed that there were boats lined up in the locks, waiting to be lowered and released from the harbor, out into the sea:

Notice the moving water in this photo:


No more moving water; it's all been released! The door starts to open:


And out parade the boats!





Here is a photo of some rather scenic, rusty old fishing equipment that I bike past on my way into Le Tréport. Just... yunno... some French stuff, bein' French, in France.



"Il fait souvent de la broum." Or, "it is often foggy. " Thus, "il y a un phare", or "there is a lighthouse." Also, you can sort of see in this photo that the water is a really nice, light blue color. However, it's not at all clear. In fact, when I went swimming I was only up to my knees and I could no longer see my feet! "Beaucoup de calcaire!" The water here is calcareous, or full of calcium.



And, finally, I stopped into a boulangerie/pâtisserie after wandering around for an hour or so, and bought this treat. It's called "une fesse de bébé", or "a baby's bottom." It"s two meringues dipped in hazelnut chocolate on a stick. Yum!



Last, but definitely not least, this is how I spent my mid-morning today, from about 11h30 to 14h. It's probably how I will spend many, many an afternoon while I am here... Coffee, Speculoos cookies (yup, I ate about half the package... they're just too delicious!), and some French literature.

Le Premier Tour à Vélo

A couple of weeks ago I did what I think anyone who knows me would expect me to do: I bought a bike! Meet Amandine, my Peugeot. I found her at Emmaus, a European charity organization. She came with "les garde-boue" (fenders), "le porte-bagages" (luggage rack) and "la pompe" (a pump). The chain is definitely "à remplacer" (to be replaced), and so far I've only managed to get 8 of the 12 speeds to work (rear dérailleurs were not meant to be indexed with a butter knife...). Otherwise, she rides like a pro and stops like one, too.




After two weeks of typical Normandy-grey skies, the clouds parted for the weekend, and blue skies abounded! So, I decided to take off to Dieppe, the nearest big city. 60km/40miles round trip. Along the way I pedaled past scores of "éoliens" (wind turbines), "vaches" (cows), and I pedaled through 8 or 10 little towns in the French countryside. It was a relatively flat ride, but it took me two and a half hours to get to Dieppe, because I was riding into the wind during "l'allée" (the trip there). With the wind at my back, "le trajet du retour" (the return trip) only took an hour and a half. At one point I passed a machine that told me how fast I was going. On the way there I wasn't even going fast enough to be registered by it, but on the way back it clocked me at 29kmph.




Dieppe is such a lovely port city. There were loads of English-speakers there, thanks to the ferry that runs between Dieppe and Newhaven. I followed the road signs to get to Dieppe, but once I was in town I just had to guess where I was headed. I made it to the harbor, where there was a huge fish market. There were dozens of sail boats, too. The fishermen were all jovial, and I managed to speak to a few of them. Just quick, passing conversations. At any rate, everyone seemed shocked to meet an American in Dieppe. I followed the flow of market foot traffic, and eventually found myself on La Grande Rue, which turns into Rue de la Barre, the street that Brittany, an English assistant from Canada, lives on.




Brittany was a wonderful hostess. She showed me around Dieppe and let me stay the night with her in her studio appartment. Apparently, during WWII there was a battle at Dieppe during which 900+ Canadians were killed, 1700+ Canadians were taken POW, and only about 2000 Canadians made it home to Canada. There is a Canadian Memorial Garden, and this monument to commemorate their losses. I thought it was especially meaningful to be shown these hallowed grounds by a Canadian.




Dieppe, like Le Tréport and Mers-les-Bains, has a couple of cliff faces that you can get to the top of for a beautiful, panoramic view of the city. Here I am, sitting in front of an art installation on the grounds of the château. There's also an art exhibit going on in the chateau right now, but we didn't make it there in time to see it on Saturday, and it was closed on Sunday.





I leave you all with a house that we walked past, which looks like it has grown out of the vines. There are loads of buildings here that look like this. It's a shame how commonplace they've become to me, because when I first got to Poitiers their beauty was absolutely stunning.

"are you meeting loads of amazing french people and cycling to little sidewalk cafes, drinking wine all day long and every type of cheese in ever?"

"...cause thats what i assume french people do all day"

So, I've been in France for roughly 2½ weeks, and I miss the shit out of every single one of you. One of my dearest friends, whom I love incredibly, just had her first child, my community is finding new places to voice its artistic expressions, my mother is substitute teaching almost every day (I am so proud of her!) and not to mention, revolution is sparking across my country.

Things are going well here, but, to answer the above question: No. That's just about all I don't do here. I've had a lot of trouble deciding how to word this blog post in order to prevent it from coming out like some sort of pity-party, yet still convey what is "real" for me right now.

I "officially" started work on 3 October. My first two weeks are an obligatory observation period. Essentially, I spent most of last week sitting in on high school classes, and am doing just about the same this week, too. While slightly boring at times, it's proving to be a great opportunity to get to work with professors I would otherwise have absolutely no contact with. I've been to communications, philosophy, French literature, French history, American history (in French!), and Spanish classes. I'm lucky to be so proficient in French; I understand about 95% of what's going on in any given class, and after each class I stay and chat with the professor for anywhere from 5 to 20 minutes.

Some of it has been loads of fun, like when I went rock climbing (for the first time in my life!) last week while observing a class of "terminales". Other bits of it are more mundane, such as the 2 hours I spent being passed off from person to person at "la vie scolaire" (roughly the equivalent of an American "guidance counselor's office"), and the 90 minutes of watching 3 secretaries type away while I silently sipped coffee during my "observation" of the "secrétariat".

The students are anywhere from 15 to 20 years old. I'm still trying to establish boundaries, especially with students that I'll be teaching. Some of them (the younger ones, "secondes", mostly) spend the entire class staring at me, then quickly looking away and whispering to their friends when I look their direction. This afternoon during the pause in French literature some of the "secondes" asked me about Justin Beiber. After 5 minutes of chattering on about American pop culture (which I am learning about more here than I ever did at home...) one of them accidentally "tutoyer-ed" me, or addressed me informally. She quickly corrected herself, but I told her it was cool, they could all "tutoyer" me. Giggles and laughter ensued, and the atmosphere became comfortably relaxed.

The professors and staff are anywhere from 10 to 30 years my senior. They have spouses and children to go home to at the end of the day, and family vacations planned for all the "vacances scolaires" this school year. Across the board, they're all incredibly welcoming. A few have asked me if I'd be interested in coming over for dinner sometime, and a couple others who live in Dieppe have said I can stay with them some weekend if I'd like.

Overall, I know it's going to be a lot of work to not "se déprimer" while I'm here. I live in a tiny, lost, redneck town in rural France. There are only two or three bars, and pretty much everything shuts down by 8pm. That said... I've already read a couple of books; I bought a 12-speed Peugeot and it takes me 10 minutes to bike to the coast; I have a google voice phone number, so I can call anyone I want (time differences do suck, though); and, last but not least, I knew before I applied for this post that it would be lonely at times, and after a year of more love and joy than some people know in their lifetime, I decided to take on the challenge of moving here, to Eu.

some photos!

The beaches in Le Tréport and Mers-les-Bains are all cobble stone beaches. They're a bit of a pain to walk on, but the weather has been so incredible since I arrived, and I've so far put my feet in the water three times. Tomorrow I plan to go to Le Tréport for a brocante/vide grenier (multi-family yard sale, literally 'empty (the) attic'), then go swimming for a while. The English Channel isn't as cold as the Pacific Ocean, but it's no Gulf of Mexico, either.


The view to the east at Mers-les-Bains. Clémence told me that there's a hike that starts in Mers and goes up to the top of the cliff (la falaise), then along it for a ways. Last weekend she took me to the top of the cliff that's to the west and we hiked all the way to the next town over. I collected some feathers, but didn't have any photo-capturing technology with me at the time.


Voila! What 4€ can buy you if you're willing to hunt for it! Ponce, you're off the hook insofar as the procuring a new coffee making device for me goes. I found this (1-cup) gem at a Magasin de Troc, which is another type of French thrift store. It was unopened, in its original packaging, and it works like a charm. So far I've had 4 individual cups of delicious joy.


Um. This is the living room of my apartment. It's new, and everybody swears up and down that it's much, much better than the old ones. Apparently, the whole school was torn down and rebuilt in the past few years. The construction wasn't very thoroughly thought through, on account of the fact that there was an upcoming election, and all government-sponsored construction projects had to be finished by a certain date. The door is open because, in general, there's no central air system in French buildings. That means, mostly, that the only way that any air circulates is if you open all the doors and windows and let nature run its course (ie. it's super cold in the winter, but you kinda have to open the windows, or breathe stale air).


Last but not least, the local fromage! It's called Neuchâtel L'Évêque, but it's nothing like the "neufchatel" that we Americans know as "the cheese next to the cream cheese that claims to have 1/3 less fat than regular cream cheese." It's a salty and sharp cheese made from cow's milk, a lot more dry than cream cheese. It's almost always sold in the form of a heart, though I haven't gotten a straight answer out of anyone as to why...