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!