Les Trottoirs de Villamblard

I love the French word for sidewalks. It makes me think of pigs trotting down the side of the road, doing errands and visiting like those old Uncle Wiggly stories. And even more than the word, I love the trottoirs here in the village. Imagine how much time they took to make! And doesn't it make you wish concrete had never been invented?


The other side of the street does not fare so well, but it makes me smile to myself every time I walk there because it is so utterly un-American. Maybe it's because my father is a lawyer, or maybe it's simply because I've lived in the US for most of my life -- but when I make my way down the west side of the street, I can't help imagining the towering piles of lawsuits brought for sprained ankles and the broken hips of little old ladies.

The little old ladies in Villamblard seem to negotiate the trottoirs without problems. They simply walk slowly and look where they're going. Last week I was trotting through the church parking lot, which in my defense is somewhat pebbly and not perfectly flat, and was turning around to look at the flowers blooming around the statue of the Madonna, when suddenly -- boom! -- I was on the ground. I brushed myself off and looked furtively around to see if any of the old ladies had seen me, but the streets were deserted and possibly my dignity is not in tatters. 

Halfhearted work has begun on the most dilapidated parts of the trottoir, so that in the future it will be at least solid if not flat. I'm making a vow that before we leave, I'm going to strike up a conversation with one of the little old ladies to see if I can find out how old those beautiful stone trottoirs are, where the stones came from, and whatever else she can tell me. And in our remaining three months I plan to walk slowly and look where I'm going.

Language Learning III

(Hard to photograph this, but see the colombage on the top half of the building? In Bergerac.)

One of the best moments in France so far was last week, when Nellie invited a French girl over to play, the bespectacled gangly Pauline, and the two of them were in her room playing with stuffed animals and Playmobil, chattering away in French. I was eavesdropping from my room, and honestly could not tell which voice was which. As far as learning the language goes, the seven year old has the rest of us beat by a mile.

Chris and I have been reading French books and French newspapers. We try, with varying success, to speak mostly French to each other and the children. But even after seven months, we are unable to follow a conversation in which French people are talking to each other, which is kind of depressing. 

A few days ago, Nellie and I snuggled in to watch Astérix Chez Les Bretons, in which our heroes go to England to help an English cousin. One of the best parts of the movie is that the English characters speak French with a hilarious English accent. I was chuckling away until Nellie asked me to translate what they were saying, and I saw that we had opposite problems -- she could understand the French fine, but the English-accented French threw her. For me, the opposite. 

I realized that all the reading has been improving my French quite a lot, and that the thing I am lacking is not grammar, or vocabulary, or even idioms -- it's rhythm and intonation. The English-accented French in Astérix is funny partly because the words are pronounced wrong, but also because the flow of the sentences is utterly non-French. And to my ear, the words become comprehensible because the English rhythm is familiar. 

So instead of spending this rainy morning reading more Harry Potter et La Coupe de Feu, I'm going to go watch TV instead, even though I resist it because it is so much more difficult. And Julian? He falls somewhere between Nellie and the tone-deaf adults. His accent is better than ours, his comprehension is much better, but we don't get to hear him speak much. I hope before we leave I'll have a chance to eavesdrop on him too.

Carnaval

Saturday was carnaval, which meant for starters that Nellie was dressed up as a frog in a decorated green trash bag with a mask that had a long pink rolled-up tongue, ready to perform a few songs with her schoolmates at the old folks' home across the street. It would have been considerably more festive if the skies hadn't opened moments before, so that everyone was soggily packed inside, but nonetheless it's always good to see children in costumes. And according to Julian, if there's cake, the event is a success. 

The plan (or so we think) was to visit the old folks, and then to have a parade around the village. The notice sent home from school asked us not to throw wheat or eggs. But the rain kept us even from having the chance, the parade was postponed (or so we think), so we'll see what develops this weekend. 

I was unsure what to wear to Le Bal. Le Bal sounds fancy, n'est-ce pas? Costumes, yes or no? I asked one woman, "What do we wear tonight?" And she replied, "Nothing." Completely deadpan. So I said, "Oh, we come naked?" "Yes," she answered, not cracking even the tiniest smile. 

We wore our Venetian masks with non-fancy clothes, which turned out to be sort of right. I drank several kirs, and the children tore around in a pack, among Spiderman and cheerleaders and mummies. We chatted with our English friends and a bit with our French friends. The plat was frites and duck, with rosé and an apple tart. All delicious. Chris is now adept at French ways of doing things so that he was unfazed by the handful of different-colored tickets with which to order our dinners and soon had a woman behind the counter looking out for him.

After dinner, the lights started flashing and pulsing, the DJ put on the macarena, and le bal began. Children were copying the adults, drunk old men were dancing with toddlers, a woman in a wheelchair was twirling to the beat, and soon the dance floor was packed with much of Villamblard moving and grooving under the multicolored strobes. I'm not sure why, but there is something deeply amusing about the odd disjunction of French life and American pop, and every time a new song started, Chris and I were cracking up. The Village People's "YMCA"! A techno remix of "Oh, What A Night"! 

I love it here.

Nothing is better than crumbling grandeur

We made a mistake on our way to Venice, and bought tickets for the water bus to get in from the airport instead of paying more for a private water taxi, which meant that we spent a long time waiting in the cold on the pier, and even longer on the somewhat creepy slow ride through the darkness, where small, abandoned-looking islands would loom up and slide past, illuminated by a construction light or two. So we didn't get to the city until around 10:30 at night. I was having intermittent sciatica attacks and could barely carry my handbag. Nellie was too tired to stand and Chris was carrying her on his back. It was very cold. Julian was announcing every three minutes that he had not had any dinner.

And yet. The four of us stumbled off the boat and into an alleyway, Chris and I peering at the map, wondering how we would find our hotel, and just like that, our traveler's misery evaporated -- the staggering beauty of Venice changed everything. The narrow streets were empty and spooky and indescribably interesting to look at and to walk in. There was a low murmur of voices in many languages, and the sound of lapping water, punctuated by cackling laughs and shouts. You can feel something like the pressure of history as you pass old palaces and cross bridge after bridge. 

We went out for a late pizza, and walked from dark alleys into a lighted up square, with plenty of happy tourists still out despite the cold, and Asleep at the Wheel's Route 66 playing from somewhere.

I had thought that a treeless place overrun with tourists would not be the place for me. But I was utterly and completely wrong.