End of the first week

June 19, 2022

Is it really just our tenth day? The time goes really quickly, and we have done so much.

Tuesday and Thursday are our sports days, and Thursday was a beautiful day. We did classes during the morning as usual, then went down to lunch. (One of the offerings were mussels steamed in garlic butter. Harmon, for one, really enjoyed them.) We decided to skip the gym and went to a park overlooking the port of Brest. It was a beautiful setting.

There was volleyball, badminton, frisbee and soccer. There was also drawing, writing, knitting/crocheting and chatting, which I’m pretty sure are not technically sports. But everyone had fun and got some fresh air.

Friday was the hottest day of the year here in Brest. It got up to 89 degrees. Not bad, but there was no wind, which is unusual here. It really was all people could talk about. There were articles in the papers about the heatwave and a very hot summer to come.

Being from Indiana, we weren’t really phased. After activities, I was walking through the city (visiting newspaper offices and the TV station with invitations to the Mayor’s reception) when I came across a group of our girls.

It’s so funny that they were so excited to see me, when they had literally seen me just an hour before. We stood and had a ten-minute conversation. Maybe it’s something about being in a foreign city and seeing a familiar face. This will become more frequent as they get to know more people through their families.

Although Brest is a city of 140,000 people, it kind of has a small town feel. Unlike Paris or Nice, strangers will (sometimes) smile and speak to you. People say, “Excuse me” if they bump into you on the sidewalk. Two ladies started a conversation with me at the tram stop this morning. It’s just that kind of place.

On Saturday, we were all prepared for a warm day as we set out for a visit to Île de Batz. Well, the weather people were wrong. It seems that the heatwave was short-lived. Most of us we dressed in shorts and t-shirts as we assembled at the bus station for our two-hour trip to the city of Roscoff, on the English Channel (La manche, in French). It was cool (50s) and blustery in Brest.

Roscoff is the town where we caught the boat to the island. It wasn’t much better there. But as we landed after our 15-minute boat ride, the sun broke through the clouds. It was still windy but the temperature climbed into the mid-60s. And we walked a lot.

This was an optional excursion. 18 stagiaires and we three teachers made the trip. On the island, we met Daniela and Charbie and the Cochonnec family who spent the day with us. I think Harmon attended a wedding with the host family.

To make tour of the entire island is a 12-kilometer walk. Some of our group did that. At first, we walked together up a big hill to a boulangerie to get lunch for those of us who didn’t have any. Then we walked to the Jardin George Delaselle, a unique garden created in the first half of the 20^th Century by a Parisian bureaucrat.

Some of our group preferred to take their lunch on the beach just below the garden. Some preferred to wander through this exotic garden. Some really adventurous stagiaires went with Corentin to the opposite end of the island to the lighthouse. We were on a tight schedule to make the boat back to the mainland, but we all got aboard.

On the trip both ways, we were treated to the site of dolphins playing in the water. We arrived at high tide and left at low tide. The difference can be as much as 20’!

We did have a bit of a wait for the bus back to Brest, so we walked around a bit of the center of Roscoff, a quaint seaside town. The chocolate shop was a hit, and oddly enough the small grocery store, I guess because it is different. There were Bueno Bars and Petit Écolier cookies purchased.

Two hours plus later, we were back in Brest. The rain had almost stopped, but the wind was blowing at 20+ miles an hour. I think everyone was glad to get home. According to my Fitbit, I walked 7.5 miles. That group that went to the lighthouse had to have walked ten at least. I’m sure we all slept well.

I don’t know what the stagiaires are doing today, but I imagine they are snug with their families. It has rained all day, it’s windy and 55 degrees. Heatwave? What heatwave?