Friends

So you wouldn't think we just stared at each other during our downtime (I always win the staring contests, by the way), we wanted to introduce you to some of our friends.
Here is a little din-din we threw at our place. This is Christina, Clemence and Lionel. Poor Clemence was fed hamburgers everyday by her American host family one summer so we tried to introduce her to some of the diversity of American cuisine, like...Italian food.














CHRISTINA'S CLASS
You met Christina earlier at dinner, who is a middle school teacher, and this is her class of 14 year olds. She invited me to visit her class to talk about North Carolina, US Civil War/Slavery, and Cheerleading. You should have heard me link all those together...
They were very polite, spoke great English for their age...can you tell that the boys were a bit more rambunctious than the girls?












TROGLODYTE
This was a wonderful evening out in a TROGLODYTE (cave-dwelling) where we dined on the traditional cave meal...fouaces. This is puffed bread meal with courses such as cheese, mushrooms, navy beans/sausage, and pork rillete (basically shredded pork left to congele in its own fat)
You'll see sitting across from me one of the professors at the school who helped me the most - Brigitte Le Bihan - her husband, Michel, her son (well, he's taking the photo actually) and his two Spanish friends in town for the weekend. This evening was a real treat as Zack and I have been wanting to eat in a cave restaurant for a while. Sorry, Shawn and Lauren, that we couldn't make it there with you. But, Shawn, Zack saved you some pork fat...


LUNCH FRIENDS
These are some of the folks I have lunch with daily at the school. There is Raquel, who does the same thing I do at the school, except that she's from Paraguay so she teaches Spanish. Next to her is Pere Drochon (Father Drochon), a retired priest and scholar. Jean-Paul, across the table, is department head at the College of Chemistry across campus.













FLE GIRLS
Finally, here are some of my tried and true students who've stuck with me the longest. This is Anais, Marie R., Marie H. Two of them are studying to be teachers of French as a Foreign Language (Anais just got a job teaching French in India for a year!) and the other Marie is a Masters student in French Literature. They worked hard to improve their spoken English and it was a delight to meet with them weekly for a year.