Way back on June 4th, I went kayaking with 11 of my colleagues from the collège. I'd never even seen - let alone spoken to - a couple of them, but by the end of the day I felt like I was out with my family. This was also my first time kayaking, and honestly I have to give the people who do it in whitewater some serious credit. It isn't nearly as easy as you'd think. Fortunately for me, yet unfortunately for France, it hasn't rained in a while and there are water restrictions; meaning that the water level in the river wasn't as high as it should be. This definitely made things a bit easier for me, since navigating underneath 30 meter long bridges in the dark and over rapids while trying to go straight aren't exactly my strong suits. By the end of the day though, I'd finally gotten the hang of it, just in time to find out that the trip was over.
Afterwards we headed back to Gaël's for an apéro (yet another of the countless things I'm going to miss about France), where I had the chance to sample some of the wine and honey beer from his cave. After performing all the obligatory bises I hitched a ride back into Louviers with the Spanish teacher, Marina and the prof de sport, Antony.
The day before, I had a picnic with some of my students. On the last day that I had them in class, together with their teacher they tried to organize an outing for all of us so that we could celebrate the end of the year and have a going away party for me. The date, however, got changed twice, once because the kids had mock exams and then again because their teacher had a training day to go to. When I spoke to her earlier in the week, she had only one confirmation, which made me think it wasn't exactly going to be the sendoff that I'd imagined. On Friday though, five of them ended up showing, and honestly I have to give them a lot of credit for that. They didn't have to come to school Monday through Wednesday and they were off Thursday, so the fact that they were even there at all was really nice. In an effort to try and incorporate English into our picnic, we went to the tourist office to pick up some information to guide us through an English tour of Louviers. I actually did learn some things that I never knew about my tiny town, and discovered some new streets that I'd overlooked before. Once the teacher had left to go back to class, I stayed with the students for a bit and we continued to munch on the food that they'd prepared (one of the many perks of having students who train in the culinary arts).
In my post-picnic high I walked to the collège to clean out my classroom, hand in my keys, and say goodbye to the Administrators. On the way over, I was spotted by a group of my 6ème on their way back from a PE trip and was treated to a bevy of excited 10 year olds shouting my name and waving. I'm going to miss not having the same celebrity status back in America. Here in France, more times than I can count I've had students see me in the supermarket and they come up and say "hello." At home - and I'm sure everyone has done this - most of the time we're in too much of a hurry to start a conversation with someone we know so we just act like we didn't see them and go about our business.
Later that week, I took my final voyage down to Lyon to see some of the sights that I hadn't been able to see the first time around thanks to the grève way back in October. I'd planned to go out with a bang, but because of my bank account, that bang wasn't exactly what I wanted it to be. The fact, though, that I was working with less than 100 € reminded me of just how much I had done already. So after researching train ticket prices for day trips to Grenoble, Aix-en-Provence, Beaune, Dijon, Annecy, and Perouges, I ultimately decided that Annecy would be the place to embody my last hurrah for a bit here in southeastern France.
I certainly can't say that I didn't make a good choice; Annecy, home to Europe's purest body of water, was spectacular. After a picnic on the shore of the lake, I took a three hour walk around the lake (and didn't cover nearly as much ground as I thought). As I was walking and just looking around, I thought to myself, I genuinely can't understand why people would ever want to take drugs or how they could be depressed when things as beautiful as this place exist in the world. I realize that not everyone is as fortunate as me, and I've had weeks where I've seen more than some people will in an entire lifetime, but I feel that overall, a lot of people have lost the ability to appreciate the little things in life, which is certainly a gift that I've been given thanks to this experience.
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| Not a bad view for a picnic huh? |
The next morning I headed back up to Normandy because I had a barbecue to go to chez one of my teachers later that evening. In typical French fashion, I made sure I was ready to get picked up 15 minutes later than when I was told (my ride finally arrived five minutes later than that), and headed to Marianne and her husband Fabien's house for the French version of an American summer favorite. Although they did have some trouble lighting the grill - a vacuum was out at one point for some reason, not sure what exactly for - the food that came off of it was amazing: merguez, kabobs, chicken, etc. I had to leave around 1.00, just as the party was getting started because my ride had an 18 month old that was ready for bed. I was exhausted as well, after traveling all day, so it was a welcomed exit.
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