My Sincerest Apologies

    To those who felt cheated by that last entry, I apologize.  But at the same time, it is my blog and I will do with it as I please!!  It's probably the reason why I will have the outline of 15 different stories and never fully finish anything.  I get bored with it and then I have no desire to finish.  I get distracted.  It's the disease of my entire generation; we seek instant gratification.  This kind of satisfaction is easily achieved with a language like English.  The big difference between French and English is this: English loves implicit logic whereas French is very literal and direct.  Our first translation teacher summed it up as this in his posh British accent, "English is a dense language.  French is long, flowery, and direct."  His example was that this: "I'm locked out of the car."  To say this in French, you have to describe how your car is locked, how you are still outside the car, and how the keys are inside the car.  Nothing exists for "locked out." 
    I never had a great appreciation for the English language.  I speak it, I write it, and I understand it (in 90% of cases including ESLs and Scots.)  Therefore, I found nothing really special about English.  Until I got to France and I had to recite the epic tale of me being locked out of my house to my host mom. 
    There is no translation for "Awkward" in the French language.  Maybe the French have always been smooth and such situations that can only be described as awkward have never come to pass.  Similarly, there is no translation of "creeper," the French-English dictionary only references - plants (in jungle).  That certainly needs to be sorted out on the French urban dictionary. 
    Last, but not least, is everyones favorite curse word.  Dropping the F-Bomb is rarely ever as satisfying as it is after being restricted by French peculiarities.  It is the King of Curses for the simplicity of its pronunciation and the versitility of its meaning.  It is a noun, verb, adjective, and adverb; and is useful for many English speakers prone to using hyperbole.  There is no word in the French language quite like Fuck.
     Was that a better fucking ending? bisous bisous

The Week of the Cartoon Characters

Do you ever meet someone that just seems too much to be real? Yes, now I will explain how I encountered just this genre of person.  It was a peaceful Sunday afternoon in the Bretagne compagne where the wind was just strong enough to carry the smell of pig farm across my nostrils.  For those who can't handle the smell of cows, never ever let that the myth of pigs as cleanly animals fool you.  They smell like the underbelly of a port-o-john.  But with the shift of the wind, the toxic stench is no more and you can continue appreciating the beauty of the countryside.  This is where we find Chantal's cousin's house, the site of this years Cousinade.  The Cousinade is a reunion of all of Chantals cousins away from the prying eyes of Papi and Mémé.  I had been warned several times about Didier and his crude humor but I assured Chantal and Bertrand that I could be offended in no way by what he said (i left out the part where i wouldnt know if it was offensive in the first place).  Didier, with both the appearance and mannerisms of a comic book character, greets me with bisous, holds me at arms length and says "Adorable."  He has a weathered, tan face and the countenance of a bassett hound.  He rolled his own cigarettes and walked around with the unlit stem at the corner of his mouth, able to say or do just about anything without having to move it. Pure skill.  He also had a dog with a wicked snaggletooth that just made her look like one of the gargoyle men from Sleeping Beauty.
   To make this entry a whole lot shorter, we ate lunch for 4 hours, took a tour of the farm and garden, ate dinner for another couple hours, and drove back home.  We arrived at noon and left at 9:30.  Thats how they do it in Bretagne.

Outside Rennes, It's Still Bretagne

One thing to make perfectly clear about where I am in France, something that I didn't fully understand until my arrival, is that the people here are Breton first, French second.  Bretagne (Brittany for you anglophones), up until the 1700's was a territory completely separate from France with a language and culture that values family, food, and good hard cider.  I've decided to audit a Breton language course at the university for fun and every français that hears of this choice laughs, claps me on the shoulder, and says, "good luck with that."  We will see on Thursday whether or not this discouraging response has any merit.
Last weekend my host parents drove me out to the coast for an overnight getaway to Ile de Batz (Eel-duh-Bah) where the winter population of 80 swells to over 500 during the summer vacations with families taking advantage of the beaches for the kids, and fresh seafood and produce from the island for the adults.  Cars aren't allowed on the island except for those who live there year round; bikes and tractors are the most popular forms of transportation. That night, we went to a traditional Festnoz where twice a month the entire island comes to the community center to dance and play traditional music à la Bretagne. Breton is closely tied to Celtic so at first it sounds like you walked into an Irish bar as the music is so similar and fast.
The firsts for this week are as follows: eating shrimp that still has the head on (they have to be stripped and decapitated before safe to eat, a fairly violent process), running into a pole at Sainte-Anne (they are used to keep cars from parking on the sidewalk), watching a horse race (I bet two euros on a horse named Pony Express that promptly lost his jockey on the first loop of the course), finding Harry Potter in French at the book market (Hogwarts is called Poudlard and Severus Snape is now Severus Rogue and the houses are Gryffondor, Poufsouffle, Serdaigle, and Serpentard), and finally, having to break out my fake name and do bisous with a rando on Rue de la Soif (first, it was Thursday night which is the night to go out for the university kids and second, my new fake name is Marie after realizing that Heidi, although foolproof in the states, doesn't translate well with a french accent).
To end, I saw the lovely Mary Claire Chao today at the book market with the one and only David Chao.  Still waiting for the last Ole to arrive!

Une Semaine à Rennes

This title should rhyme if you are pronouncing it correctly.  I apologize for the tardiness of this post but since arriving in Rennes there has hardly been time to really sit down and write about it.  My host parents are Chantal and Bertrand and they are awesome.  Bertrand is incredibly sarcastic (like most of the french, who have very dry humor) and Chantal is a wonderful (the only adjective i could come up with after yummm) cook.  I eat dinner with them every night at 7:30, by which time I am dying of hunger because I am forbidden to snack during the day.  Careful distinction: I am not allowed to snack on food things but beverage things, i.e. café and half pints after classes is fully allowed if not expected.  There is a large plaza that plays host to more than 15 different bars and cafés called Place Sainte-Anne.  One would think that at 3 on a weekday afternoon that such a place would be a calm, inviting place to grab a coffee and look french; this is indeed the case, but Sainte-Anne is far from calme.  As 4 o'clock rolls around, the space is crawling with people (mostly between the ages of 15 and 25 as Rennes is a very young city) who just want a place to sit, talk, and drink.  Whatever your poison, espresso or beer, you are welcome, for less than 3 euros, to sit as long as you like with your drink of choice.  One thing I will definately be doing more of when I get bqck to the US is nothing.  Absolutely nothing but watching the people go by.  Sounds good, doesn't it?