Bon Voyage

Well, almost... Due to a series of unfortunate events, it took us an extra day to get back to good 'ole, hot and humid NC. I now know why we speak English here and not French. France is much milder. They found out the hard way when trying to settle Louisiana that they would much prefer their home land. When they decided to branch out again, all that was left was Canada.

We spent the last few days with our friend at their farm/village, helping out with the renovations on their guest house. I really enjoyed working with my hands, but they seriously need a nail gun. This time of year is especially nice there in the country because the rolling hills of wheat are just turning gold, the sun doesn't set until 10pm, and the snails are just small and white enough to look and sound like gravel when you unknowingly walk all over them.


 



Hard to believe it is over. It was real. It was fun. But it wasn't real fun. Just kidding, it was a great experience.

What to do next....

Bojangles! mmmmmmmm

oh yeah - taxes, buy a car, insurance, take Kosmo to vet, etc.

Coming Home!!!

This will be our last blog from France as we are flying home this Sunday the 17th. We've moved out of our apartment last week, took a brief vacation, and now are staying with our friends Charles and Debra in their home outside of Angers.

We wanted to share some photos of our last voyage in Europe for 2007. We went to Nice, Corsica (Calvi and Bastia), and Marseille.
In Nice, we had delicious gelato and tried Afghanistan cuisine - delicious! There's not too much to do other than visit the old town, chateau ruins, and lay out on the rocky beach. The French are certainly very liberal sunbathers...we'll leave it at that.




This one is for you, Andy.


The next day, we were supposed to take a ferry to Calvi, Corsica, but for a very silly reason, missed the boat. We can explain in person. So, we spent another night in Nice before taking the next day ferry to Calvi.

Corsica (birthplace of Napoleon Bonaparte) is absolutely BEAUTIFUL. In Calvi, the water is a very vivid blue and the terrain is steep in the towns and mountainous in the distance. Think southern California. You're always walking up and down stairs to get around town. The had very fine sand that was easily persuaded by the wind. And some little green mosquito things kept us company while we tried to catch some rays.



Calvi, from the citadel


After Calvi (on the western coast) we went to Bastia (on the north/eastern coast). It was a more city-like town with a beautiful port and churches. On the bus ride there, I heard on the radio that there had been some terrorist bombings in other parts of Corsica, not too unusual as they are seeking independence from France. This seems to be a pattern with our travels...terrorist bombings right after we have visited the country (Morocco, Turkey, Corsica). No, it has nothing to do with us.



Bastia


Then, we took an overnight ferry to Marseille and spent the day there. We climbed up probably 500 steps to reach a church on a hilltop, spent some time on the beach, and Zack ate the famous "bouillebaisse" (fish soup).

On our way back to Angers we rode the train through the Provence region. This is a very arid climate, with lots of red tiled roof towns on hilltops. It was very picturesque. France is truly a diverse and beautiful country.

It was a very hectic "vacation" but worth seeing all these new places. The last train trip we're not looking forward to is lugging the 200+ pounds of baggage with us to the airport, but it'll be worth it to be home again.

See you soon -

Happy Birthday to Me

On the day of my birthday we went to a neighboring city called Saumur, a 25 minute train ride away. Saumur is right on the Loire river. They have a picturesque chateau on a bluff next to the river. But what they are known for is their horses, more specifically, the Cadre Noire. We rented some bikes to get us to the complex to see the dressage show. We were told it was only 4 klicks from the train station. It ended up being at least 10, uphill both ways. It wasn't so bad, because the further we got out of the city the more stunning the views of rolling hills became. We got to the stadium as the show was starting, but we didn't miss much because they were "warming up". After that, we saw these trained horses jump over gates and other obstacles, walk diagonally, dance (better than me, actually), and perform some fancy aerials. The most difficult maneuver is to have the horse jump up with its front and then kick with its back. I'm sure it takes a lot of training to get these beasts to that level. It was very impressive.

The best picture I got.

After that high-tail it back to the train station in order to get back to work before people in my office in Raleigh began to start working. I ended up getting sick that evening until the next evening.

We waited until Friday night to go out to eat. We went to a traditional Anjou restaurant called La Ferme. Elizabeth ordered Coq au Vin, a traditional dish of rooster cooked in red wine - very delicious. I ordered magret of duck, which was basically an rare-cooked breast of duck (I didn't know what it was before I ordered it). That was the second uncooked piece of meat I had the pleasure (sarcasm) of eating this past week. The first time was when eating lunch at the school with Elizabeth. You get what they give you there, so I had no choice. Not a fan of eating meat that can be revived by a trained professional, as my coworker Scott puts it... So after the main course came the most comprehensive cheese plate I've ever seen. And I couldn't send it away without trying every single kind. Cheese is great. Even the stinky stuff.

So it was a great birthday. Thanks for all the cards!

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.

...and more travelling...

So April 22nd was our first anniversary. Being the good husband that I am I took my wife to Paris for the day.
We went to church at "The American Church in Paris", which was the first church plant by Americans in Paris over 150 years ago. They built a nice cathedral style building right on the Seine.
For lunch we ate the popular "moules et frites" at one of the brasseries. They say that the Mussels from Brussels are the best, but I'm not sure we'll get to try that before we leave.
Then we went to the Pompidou Center, which is basically the modern art museum in Paris. It was quite modern. I'll leave it at that.
We visited a nice park, got some sun, and then slowly made our way back home.

Later in the week, my brother Jake came to visit. We rented a car for the weekend, and on Saturday we drove to St. Malo, a port town in Bretagne. There is an old part of town that is really just a walled area with well planned buildings and many tourist shops and restaurants. We walked out on the beach to a fort on the rocks and ate lunch. A seagull joined us and eventually managed to beg an apple core off of us. We then investigated the tidepools with all the different types of shellfish and seaweed.
From the port we decided to take a short cruise, but as soon as we got on the boat an extremely thick fog rolled in. We got a few pictures, but the whole ride had a spookeyness because you could hear a lot more than you could see. I was expecting a ghost pirate ship to fade in for a few seconds out in the distance.


From St. Malo we drove to Mont St. Michel, which is a majestic abbey built on top of an enormous rock-island in the middle of a very flat estuary. We did not make it in time to go inside the abbey, but we did walk around the spiraling town street leading up to the cathedral. Of course there were lots of tourist shops, complete with the kind of restaurants that give you watered down wine.


Speaking of wine, the next afternoon we went hunting in our region for a winery. We drove around for an hour stopping at closed winery after closed winery. It wasn't so bad because we got to see a whole lot of countryside that was rather beautiful with all the freshly green leaves. Right after we had given up on our quest we saw a sign that advertised a winery being open on Sunday. We made our way there and learned all about the winemaking process from one of the younger guys working there. They were very generous with their tasting samples, but I had to let Elizabeth and Jake do most of the critiquing. We ended up getting a variety pack of six (yes, a six pack of wine) for about 30 euros and splitting that with Jake. Not a bad deal if you ask me.

Spring is here

Although it felt more like summer today. I hope it doesn't get too much hotter. We don't have any A/C.

Anyway, last weekend (April 13th) we took yet another trip. We bought a Eurail pass back in September, and it will expire this week, so we just had to use it up. This time we went to Carcassonne, Toulouse and Lourdes. These are all cities in the South of France, in the Occitane region, where the language variations are more like Spanish. It is called Occitane because the word for 'yes' was 'oc' instead of 'oui' down there. This was all before Paris imposed modern French on all of France, or something like that.

Carcassonne is best known for its medieval castle. This castle is really a double-walled medieval city, with a castle in the inner wall. Within the outer wall are a bunch of tourist traps. I think we dropped about $6 on 3 caramels at one of those candy shops. They were good, though. The free olive shapped chocolates more than made up for it. They had shops that sold swords and medieval weapons of minimal destruction. There were other shops that had Provencal pottery, and shops that had regional fabric. We ate at one of the many restaurants serving the regional favorite dish called 'Cassoulet', which is basically navy beans, sausage and a leg of duck. It was actually a really good meal. Rustic French food is really the best thing ever.

We took a tour of the castle. We got to visit a lot of the towers along the inner wall. All of the towers were constructed with different architecture. Near the end of the tour we could see the gardens of a really nice hotel inside the outer wall called Hotel la Ville or something. It costed about $500 a night. Kevin Costner supposedly stayed there while filming part of Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves.




Next stop, Toulouse - the 5th largest city in France. It is called 'The Pink City' because most everything was built with brick (which is really more of a redish-brownish-orange). That is unusual for France, in my limited experience. It was one of the nicer cities I've seen, mostly because of the clean, dog-poopless sidewalks. There were a bunch of Romanesque cathedrals there. Most of the cathedrals in northern France are of the Gothic style. That was pretty much it.



On Sunday, we headed to Lourdes. If you don't know anything about Lourdes, just think of Myrtle Beach, or Gatlinburg, with a bunch of shops selling Virgin Mary shaped water bottles. The story behind that place is that about 130 years ago a girl named Bernadette claimed to have seen the Virgin Mary appear to her in a grotto (a little cave in the side of a hill where water flows out of). A magnificent cathedral was built on the hill over the grotto. The cathedral is relatively new, and basically is the most glorious one in France today. And there is also an underground basillica that seats probably 20 thousand people. Lourdes is a very popular place for Catholics to take a pilgrimage. And, as I've said earlier, the tourism industry reigns supreme in that town. It has the second largest number of hotels of any city in France.

Then we got back on the train for another 6 or 7 hours and ended up back in Angers. Along the way we went through the Aquitane region. It reminded me a lot of eastern NC because there was nothing but flat expanses of sandy farmland and pine trees as far as the eye could see. As we made our way north the landscape became more rolly. This time of year there are many fields planted with oil seed rape, supposedly a major source of Canola oil. These small plants have a bright yellow flower, so if you can imagine the endless fields of bright yellow you can get a glimpse of what it was like. Very picturesque!

Turkey

Merhaba!
Turkey. What a fascinating country...we visited so much that this blog will be difficult to write.
Here are some observations we made: Turkey is a clash of modern and traditional values. For example, Istanbul is a modern city of 15 million people and is fairly secular. As you move east into Cappadocia, people are practicing muslims, women are veiled, and marriages are arranged - such was the case of our awesome Turkish guide, Selim. He was the most jovial guy, always cracking jokes, and he was concerned that some people on our tour were agnostic...you could tell he loved his religion and his country and did not hesitate to ask "So, why don't you believe in God??"

The food was tasty (Kebab joints on every corner) but I don't think I will crave tomatoes and olives at breakfast again.

We drank about 50 cups of tea (apple, raspberry, lemon) offered to us by rug dealers, pottery makers, jewery salesmen, etc. We became confident in our ability to say "no" to rug salesmen though they can be quite persistant. The rugs were beautiful but very expensive. We saw the handmade technique used and it's well worth the price. For example, an 8 x 5 silk rug (the highest quality and took four years to make by hand) was $25,000. The two foot long silk rug was $900. Good thing we knew how to say no or we'd be selling my Honda and hoping that carpet could fly us around Raleigh instead.

One of my sweetest memories was when a group of schoolgirls stopped me outside of the Blue Mosque to interview me for their English term paper. They wanted to know my favorite foods, music, job, etc. They were so eager and yet timid to speak English with me. We found that common around Turkey...children loved to practice English and everytime we passed a group of children, we heard "Hello! Hello! How are you?"

Zack's highlight was going paragliding over the beautiful Mediterrean coast...I gladly watched him drift higher and higher up in the sky and he got some great pics which we've included in our slideshow.

This country is tourist friendly, the people are incredibly hospitable, and the history will amaze you. We saw Alexander the Great's tomb, mummies, ancient cities of Ephesus, Hieropolis, and cave artwork nearly 2000 years old. We even saw artifacts from the Hittite era, 4000 years ago. In Cappadocia, we saw the caves in which persecuted Christians lived between the 1st and 2nd centuries, including underground cities. One dwelling was nine stories deep with a church on the bottom floor! It was amazing to walk where Apostle Paul and other saints walked, and to imagine how life was so many years ago.

So, we'll leave you with a photo slideshow. Enjoy!





By the way, America voted, and the winning title is "Turkey, shoulda called it 'Lamb'!" (I ate lamb almost every day)