Un jour près de la mer: Adventures in St. Malo and Dinan

Last Saturday I journeyed with the CIREFE group (international students) to St. Malo and Dinan, two ancient maritime trade cities located about an hour or so north of Rennes. We met Madame Galbrun, our guide and my history of architecture professor, at the métro stop by the university early in the morning (for a Saturday, at least) and were all loaded on the bus and ready to go by 9am. I spent the hour-long bus ride to St. Malo talking with my friend Rhea, a student from Germany working as an au pair (nanny) for a French family. Rhea is trilingual--she speaks German, French, and English fluently--but we stuck to French, since we both agree that while in France our goal should be to speak French.

Scale model of the old city, or the walled city. The château is the four-sided structure to the far right; Cathédrale St-Vincent is in the center; the ramparts enclose the city.

We arrived in St. Malo a little after 10am. After driving through all the "new" parts of the city (those that have been built in the past 300 years), we stopped in front of the oldest part of the city, a fortified village nestled into the rocky coast. We were greeted by gray, cloudy skies and a nippy wind that made us grateful that our first stop would be the St. Malo museum. The museum is inside the 14th century château which marks the beginning and end of the ramparts which encircle the old city. The château is also home to the Hôtel de Ville, or city hall. Madame Galbrun, a veritable fountain of French historical information, gave us a quick briefing before each place we stopped.

In front of Château/Hôtel de Ville/Museum.

Figurehead

Lit clos

Inside the museum we found lots of maritime relics, some interesting, some not. Of interest to me:

-A 8-ft tall figurehead (the wooden figure that juts off the front of a ship) next to a scale model of a ship, the ship being about 1.5 ft tall and the same figurehead measuring about a quarter of an inch. That's one BIG ship.

-A lit clos, or enclosed bed, the traditional bed of Breton homes before the 19th century. It looks like a linen cabinet, but people actually sleep in it. The theory was the enclosed space would provide warmth and privacy to its inhabitants, who, interestingly enough, slept sitting up on the little benches found inside. It was believed during the Middle Ages that laying down completely was a position reserved for the dead, so people slept sitting up. Comfy.

-Ships called "pouquoi-pas?" or "why-nots?" were used by explorers in the late 19th century on voyages to the icy waters of Greenland. The ships were so called because the voyages had no purpose other than pure adventure in unknown and dangerous waters.

After leaving the museum, Rhea and I joined up with Iulius, an Erasmus student from Romania (also trilingual: Romanian, French, English), to explore the rest of the city. We visited the Cathédrale St-Vincent and walked on the ramparts for a couple of hours, soaking in the St. Malo-ian goodness. We even found a traveling carnival, which prompted a long conversation about theme parks in the United States. St. Malo has this great feel. It is so classically French yet so fresh at the same time: the salty sea air, the waves crashing against the ramparts, the mussel searchers (a.k.a. the local St. Malo-ians on the hunt for dinner) in their bright yellow rain jackets and rubber boots, the crumbling walls of the château and the ramparts, tinged yellow-orange and green with growing things, the little village with its winding streets and maritime architecture, the ships, sail boats, and kayaks docked in the harbor, the colorfully bustling carnival full of excited children...it's so nice to be by the sea, in France!

Interior of Cathédrale St-Vincent

Rhea and Iulius exploring the island.

Me on an island accessible by foot only at low tide. Old St. Malo and one of the forts are behind me.

View from the ramparts. The sky finally turned blue!

Rhea checking out a canon on the ramparts.

French fun house, very similar to the one in Grease.

View from château; harbor with 18th century ship.

Around 3pm, we got back on the bus and headed for Dinan, an inland port on the Rance River which begins in St. Malo. While St. Malo and Dinan are almost the same age, St. Malo was almost completely destroyed during World War II and was rebuilt to model an 18th century sea port. Dinan, on the other hand, has maintained its medieval look over the centuries.

Medieval center of Dinan. Note how the buildings seem to be in danger of falling into the street.

Statue of medieval knight. This space, which is now used as a parking lot, was once used as a list, or jousting arena.

Rhea and I on the ramparts of Dinan which overlook the Rance River Valley.

We returned to the university at 6:30pm, tired but exhilarated. I'm hoping I can return to St. Malo for a weekend--attend an orchestra concert, go kayaking in the ocean, spend a day searching for the perfect seaside ice cream shop, collect shells on the beach--and perhaps also to Dinan, if I can find the right bus. I'm really enjoying visiting other, little-known parts of France that hold all France's magic but not its tourists. As I found in Paris, it's those small, simple moments, usually enjoyed with friends, that truly touch me. All those little, everyday, unexpected treasures are the substance of my feeling for a place, more so than its famous monuments, must-sees, and Kodak moments.

On to adventures in Geneva, Venice, and the European train system.

Bienvenue à Rennes!

Well, now that I've had a nice little vaycay from my blog, it's time to catch everyone up, using photos:

Life has continued to follow the format I mentioned in my previous post, with a few changes here and there. On Mondays I am student teaching English to a class of French 8th graders. They are rowdy but nice on the whole. My observations on French authority issues continue to line up with all of Madame Allen's theories on the subject as well as the classroom atmosphere presented in Entre les murs (The Class). The teacher I'm assisting is a native Michiganer who seems to be not so fluent in French. She confounds the French students (who are used to the iron-fisted, discipline-driven methods of their French teachers) with her laid-back, creativity-inspired, positive-feedback, totally American teaching methods. I introduced myself to the class this past Monday, and overall things seemed to go well. After my presentation the kids asked me questions about my life using the past-perfect tense (Have you ever been...?, Have you ever gone? etc.), an interesting exercise in which I was asked 5 times if I had ever been to Los Angeles (evidently this is a popular destination?).

St. Vincent, the private Catholic school where
I am student teaching, looking intimidating.

I have now done some exploring around Rennes and have a better sense of how the Centre Ville is laid out. St. Vincent is located right next to the Jardin des Plantes (yes, another brilliantly titled Garden of Plants), a rather beautiful collection of greenness in the midst of a lot of gray. Spring is well on its way, and I can't wait to see this park in full bloom. I'm looking forward to spending Monday afternoons here, reading a book under a tree and breathing in the perfumed air of life.

Carmen taking a picture of this small
fish-filled fountain in the Jardin des Plantes.

Flowers blooming in the Jardin.

The Centre Ville itself is a collection of old buildings from a variety of decades, many dating from the Middle Ages. Most of the cobbled streets look like something out of the opening scene of Disney's Beauty and the Beast, giving the ville an almost fairy tale cast.

Near Métro Ste-Anne. Buildings with wood thatches
are medieval; others date from 18th century.

A canal runs through the center of the Centre Ville.

Canal with rainbow!

Rennes is the capitol city of Brittany and therefore boasts several fancy government buildings.

What I believe to be the Parliament building, at dusk.

And, like all other European cities, Rennes is home to a good number of churches and cathedrals.

This one was built in the 10th century.

Host family life continues to be wonderful. A weekend later than planned, Charlotte and I made chocolate chip cookies. The whole family absolutely loved this exotic treat, though Charlotte was a fan of the dough in particular.

Charlotte licking a spoonful of
cookie dough for the first time.

The Berthaut family:
Charlotte, Manu, Maxime, and Carole.

I continue to be struck by the familiarity of family life which I can only assume is universal. We laugh together and tell each other about our days, good and bad. Maxime and Charlotte fight...and then Maxime and Charlotte get in trouble. On Friday nights a "fun" dinner of finger foods, pizza, and ice cream is served in the living room during the Friday night travel show, and on Saturday afternoons Maxime and Charlotte have swimming lessons, the highlight of their weekend. Life is so normal, and yet so strange here.

Next on the agenda: St. Malo again this weekend. This time I WILL bring my camera so that I can share one of the coolest places ever with you. Then the weekend after Carmen and I embark on a whirlwind journey to Geneva and Venice. A good portion of our time will be spent on a train, which is an adventure in itself. I'm nervous about traveling Europe by myself, but I'm sure it will be wonderful!

Devenir habituée or Settling In

I have now been in Rennes for ten days. I'm still adjusting and working on establishing a sort of day-to-day rhythm.

Here is a typical week-day for me in Rennes (so far at least):

07h00 Wake up, get ready, eat breakfast (bread with jam, apple juice)

07h30 Start 10-minute walk to the metro, take metro from one end of the line (La Pôterie) to almost the other (Villejean Université)

08h10 Arrive Rennes 2 campus, class, hang out in lounge between classes, grab lunch from the sandwich line or brave the chaos of the Restaurant Universitaire (scary biscuits!)

16h00-18h00 Head home on the metro (crowded!) after class ends/ I finish chatting with people

18h00 Homework, chat with Charlotte and Maxime, play Mario if there's time

20h00-21h30 Eat dinner with host family

21h30 Family heads to bed (perhaps after watching the news for a bit); I stay up and check e-mail, facebook, skype, etc. and do some reading before bed (usually around 23h00)

At this point I have done the complete rotation of all eleven of my classes. My classes in the international school all function about the same; the profs are pretty nice, as are the students who come from all over the world: Brazil, China, Russia, Germany, Japan, Cuba, Mexico, South Korea, Iran, and, of course, the United States. It's fascinating to be in a French class with students whose first language is not English. Each nationality struggles with different aspects of the French language, and we spend time in class defining words like "chronologie" and "cathédrale" whose meanings are obvious to English speakers but less so to someone whose native tongue is Chinese. The course work has been pretty easy/ non-existent so far, which is a nice change of pace from St. Olaf (I wrote over 50 papers for last semester alone).

I have a total of four classes outside of the international school, meaning at the university with actual French students. Two are part of my translation course (one being French to English and the other English to French), and the other two are English courses taught in English by French professors of English to French students majoring in English (I hope that made sense). In one we are reading Elizabeth Gaskell's Victorian-era novel North and South (of England, not the U.S. as I stupidly assumed), and in the other we are attempting William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying. Taking an English class at a French university is, in a word, bizarre. For one, we are spending the entire semester focusing on one novel rather than the seven plus expected at an American university. For another, the profs speak the king's English (with a French accent) so it's almost like taking a class in a third language as I try to parcel out the meaning of "molonkly" ("melancholy") and "abitrally" ("arbitrarily"). Furthermore, the teaching style is completely different. The French students are united together and sit in a large clump in the back two rows of the classroom, as far away from the prof as possible. (I made the mistake of sitting in the second row and had to move back as to not be the only person sitting within two arms' lengths of the prof.) The professor is basically the all-powerful and all-knowing Wizard of Oz who pronounces her opinions decisively. If she desires class participation, she will ask the class a leading question and then fish for the answer she wants until the French students finally break their silence and come up with a half-way decent response that she then amends for good measure (this process is extremely painful). At the moment I am struggling between my own desire to respond because I'm excited about the text, can answer in fluent English, and want desperately to end the excruciating fishing-process, and my desire to be cool with the French students by acting like them (I get the feeling the over-enthusiastic student gets kicked out of the French student solidarity circle).

My reception in both classes has been interesting as well. In the Gaskell class, the prof briskly asked me in French why I hadn't read the novel yet and sent me scampering to my seat; in the Faulkner class the more absent-minded professor-type joyously welcomed an Amercian to her classroom and demanded that I explain the American South to the class (this was before she figured out I was actually from the South--when she discovered that little factoid I think she had to suppress a happy dance). The French students tend to look at me blankly and return my timid smiles with even more trepidation than me. I don't think it helped that over-excited Faulkner prof told everyone at the end of class that they should ask me out for a drink because I am a poor, lonely American student who can help them with their English. As you can imagine, no one really jumped at the idea.

My favorite classes so far are my class on medieval architecture and my class on French phonetics. Both are headed by kind, extremely knowledgeable profs who have the same accent and facial expressions as my host mom. The architecture class is intimate and the topic is fascinating. I can't wait to go on our excursions around France and actually be able to know something about the cathedrals and castles I come across. (Cool fact: Notre Dame was once completely painted in bright colors to designate its status as a house of God. Only royalty could afford to wear colors and decorate their homes with them; it therefore makes since that God's house would be the most colorful of all--though I can't say I'd fancy a Notre Dame decked out in clown colors.) In Phonétique, as it is called, we have an hour of class time learning theory and another hour in the language lab. Today's class involved going over vowel placement in the mouth (a familiar topic from voice lessons) and a lab where we recorded ourselves speaking and got individual help with our pronunciation.

Family life has been pretty awesome so far. I can't stress enough how nice my family is. Sometimes we struggle to communicate, but overall between their effort to slow down and my semi-decent French supported by my exaggerated body-language we are able to share information. Manu LOVES Canada and especially admires the beauty of the lakes and forests, so we've talked a lot about the Boundary Waters. Tonight I gave my family the first in a series of gifts I have stashed away for them: a calendar of Minnesota. It went over even better than I had imagined. Not only did they "Oh" and "Ah" over the pictures, but Maxime went to town pronouncing and translating all the English words that he found in the calendar.

I met Charlotte last Saturday. She is such a ball of energy! She's very witty and loves teasing her older brother. She also loves everything to do with women's fashion and frequently walks around the house with Carole's shoes and purse pretending to be a grown-up. We hit it off almost instantly. We play games together and draw (another love of hers), and she is always ready to give me a hug or sit on my lap. When something doesn't go quite her way, she makes a sad face and pretends to flick away a tear while saying, "Sniff" (pronounced "Sneefe"). She was shocked when I imitated her for the first time, and now it's become a joke between us as I can now anticipate her "Sneefe" and beat her to it.

This Saturday I will have my first excursion with the American program CIEE. Because of my time in Paris, I missed out on all the American-student bonding that happened in the two weeks before I arrived. I'm hoping our ten-hour adventure to Mont St-Michel (monastery surrounded by quicksand) and St. Malo (coastal town in Brittany) will help me get to know the group a little better. Then Sunday I will dedicate to my host family. Maxime and Charlotte are battling each other over what American dessert I will make this Sunday: American apple pie (Maxime) or chocolate chip cookies (Charlotte). I'll keep you posted on the winner.