How fast the time has gone since the April vacations and my
last blog post! I’ve tried to profiter bien of my final two weeks in Nantes,
spending a significant amount of time hanging out with friends, or alone tacking off all the things I felt I
needed to do before I moved from the city.
Having ended work about a week and a half before my departure date, I had to say
goodbye to all the teachers that have given me rides to school, the English
staff, my class of teachers, and of course all my students first. I baked about 200
peanut butter and chocolate chip cookies in my small toaster oven all week. My
final teachers class took me out to lunch at our normal class time, and then to
one of the teachers’ houses when the expresso given at the restaurant at the
end of the meal just wasn’t strong enough to get us through the rest of the
working day. I spent an evening at my reference teacher’s house, the same house
I spent time at before I was able to move into my foyer… things come full
circle. We naturally had a 4hour dinner complete with champagne, mussels for
the appetizer, beef/potatoes/veggies, and a crumble dessert made from locally
grown strawberries.
In true French high school fashion, my last class of the
year just didn’t show up. I wasn’t surprised… It was odd that I worked one full
week and one Monday after the April vacations. Knowing that it was my last
week with all the other classes I think they just thought I wouldn’t be there
the following Monday. Except I was. And I took the bus all that way just to
clean out my little cubbie and give the cookies meant for the students out to
anyone on the staff who didn’t get them the week before.
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| Clisson, France |
I visited the chateau again to dit au revoir, and to check
out the museum there. If you want to know anything about Nantes the Chateau
Museum is where to go. You could spend at least half the day learning about
Nantes as a port city, Nantes’ huge role in the triangular trade and slavery,
Nantes during the wars… I probably should have visited at the beginning of
my time here, but better late then never.
Short, solo day trip to Clisson. A pretty little city about
a 10 minute train ride away, Clisson is nice to visit for about 3 hours. It’s a
pretty sleepy little place but the chateau ruins are neat and they have some beautiful
gardens. I ventured there alone and simply walked around, ate a picnic, and
read a bit outside in the grass by the chateau. Honestly my morning in Nantes visiting
the new baby goats at the Jardin de Plantes near the train station was more
thrilling. But it’s always nice to get out of town and see what else the area
has to offer.
Spanish soirée at the foyer, complete with delicious paella,
sangria, tapas and salsa dancing. It was one of those nights that was just so
good, with good food and good company, that it made me sad to think that those
nights here are limited.
8 Mai Market. I visited my lovely local market, the one that
makes my heart so happy, for final picnic supplies shopping. I ordered my
tranche de mizotte cheese and a moldy goats cheese like a pro from my standard
cheese lady. I didn’t have to think too hard about how many grams of prawns I
wanted for my dinner that night. I splurged and bought a giant brioche. I will
truly miss the market culture that seems to thrive in France.
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| My haul from my final visit to the market |
Strasbourg with the Assistants. My little group of friends
originally consisted of 2 English, 1 German, 1 Spanish and myself (which then
grew to include the French and another Spanish girl). This small original
group, sans the German, decided to spend our last weekend adventuring together
to Strasbourg, a city on the German border that historically has been both
German and French territory. Our journey began far too early with a 7am train. We stamped our tickets and sleepily climbed aboard only to find 4 people
sitting in what were our assigned seats. This happens from time to time and we
decided to take the group of 4 seats across the aisle from them, until someone
came to claim those seats, and we had to confront the people sitting in ours.
The interaction went a little like this…
“Excuse me, but you are in our seats”
“Mais non! These are our seats”
“No. Look at our tickets. You are sitting in our seats”
*they give each other some smug looks, do not take out their
own tickets, and do not move from our seats
*my friend happens to see one of their tickets and exclaims
“Excuse me, but those tickets are for yesterday’s train. You
are indeed sitting in our seats”
“This must be some kind of confusion. We bought tickets for
this train today.” “First come first serve”
*They don’t move from our seats, people whose seats we are sitting in awkwardly hover around until they realize we're not moving and then go to sit in someone else's seats.
It’s wonderful to speak both languages in this kind of
situation. They heard our accents and thought we couldn’t understand them… uhm
yes sir we can hear you, and no, these are reserved seats, so they are not
first come first serve. And now we are going to talk about you as much as we
want in our own language because you have no idea what we’re saying about you. Unfortunately my friend didn't get to use his prepared "Avec respect
Monsieur!" phrase that he had prepared for what we thought would be an
inevitable heated debate. The
conductor eventually came and made them move from our seats, after some of the
other clients rallied with us because they wanted us to move from their own
seats.
Tired and in a silly mood, my two friends were reading in
French with a dictionary between them to look up unknown vocabulary words. We
had a few discussions about some of the words, and were enlightened by a French
woman listening in on our conversation. Indeed the word cleavage in French does
not mean the same thing as in English…
At this point my friend said “We can only ever be two things
here: a novelty, or something that pisses people off. In the last ½ hour we
have managed to be both.” That about sums up the train ride.
Strasbourg is lovely. Really lovely. There are loads of
half-timbered houses, cute cafés to grab an expresso (which we had to do
often), a river boat cruise, the European Parliament Building, a massive
cathedral with a tower you can climb, and German/French food .Some of my favorite foods being the choucroute
(sauerkraut) with German sausages I had one night for dinner, loads of
gingerbread, and some spaetzle. We also some WILD STORKS. Neat huh.
I had the great luck of being in France for the presidential
election, which just so happened to pass on our final night in Strasbourg.
While walking to dinner we heard the roar of a crowd and entered a large square
to see people gathered around a small tower in the middle, dancing and waving
flags to celebrate the election of France’s first socialist president in 30
years. We decided then and there to stay and find somewhere to eat within the
square in order to enjoy this fun atmosphere… while we were waiting to order
the thumping of bass and a large car/truck with balloons rolled up to the tunes
of “le changement” which was happily greeted by the crowd in the square. The
truck stayed there until about 11:30pm, where the crowd of people danced and
sang along, waved their flags, climbed up onto the small tower (at one point we
saw a man in just his underwear dancing up there). We of course joined this
dance party after dinner. Hands down one of the neatest things I have
experienced while living here… a spontaneous street party, complete with a conga
line and air horns, to celebrate a presidential election.
The following morning we had another early train ride home,
the last time I was to be “coming home” to my home in Nantes.
