Un Week-end à Brive

So, just as predicted, when I added a photo and a video, the post didn't publish. So, my readers, you are just going to have to live with boring, text-only posts until I figure this out. So sorry.

Ok, I am going to type this blog post in Word first and copy and paste so I don’t have a disaster like last time and lose everything.

So, because of a transportation strike this weekend in reaction to the government’s proposal to raise the retirement age, I decided to stay in Brive this weekend. But it was truly lovely, despite this being a small town.

What did I do?

Saturday morning I went to the marché which, I cannot emphasize enough, is a treasure, a complete adventures for the senses. In France they say that the experience of eating is threefold: First you eat with your eyes (and thus why the French place so much emphasis on the presentation of their food), then you eat with your nose, and then finally with your mouth. The marché is a perfect place to do that; you go from vendor to vendor, admiring the beauty of their goods and smelling the amazing flavors until you are offered a free sample or buy something and can then finally taste it for yourself.

This time around I bought a Suisse, which is a type of sweet bread that can come with raisins (note on French vocab: raisin is grape and raisin sec is raisin), chocolate chips, or nothing (as far as I have seen). I also had an apple and then to top it off, a very French delicacy: the macaron.

Here’s a picture of 2 of the 3 macarons I bought. These ones are actually about double (or even triple) the size of most macarons you’ll normally find (and their price reflected that! Definitely a one-time buy). I bought salted caramel, chocolate orange, and coconut. Oh my God.

After the marché, I went to the library and picked out some more books and DVDs to enjoy for the weekend. I’ve been able to indulge in pleasure reading here and have already read “The Music of Chance” by Paul Auster and “A Thousand Splendid Suns” by Khaled Hosseini. Both books were wonderful, but the latter deserves so much eloquency and time that I can give it right now, so a book review will have to come later. But let’s just say that if you ever had any doubt that women and men were not equal, read the book and then rethink your prejudices. Inequality is an incredibly cruel and dangerous thing.

From the library I also got a DVD called “Brasileirinho,” (little Brazil) which tells the story of a Brazilian musical genre called “choro” (cry) which I, embarrassingly, had never heard of, even though supposedly it’s the precursor to all of the other musical traditions that most people associate with Brazil, such as samba. It’s really lovely and well, once again, here in a tiny town in France, I’m becoming more educated about my origins.

Saturday evening I went out with some students, all of whom happened to be Moroccan, and had a lovely evening exploring the Moroccan parts of Brive. We went out to dinner at a Moroccan restaurant, went bowling (not Moroccan at all – very American actually, with the names all in English), and then to a hookah bar (which, in Arabic, is chicha). I feel a certain kinship with those students because they, like me, are not in their homeland, and with that comes a certain – empathy, I guess.

Today began with a walk through Brive to a patisserie/boulangerie to buy some lovely pastries for breakfast and bread for lunch and dinner.

I also went to mass today. There is something truly awe-inspiring about the Catholic Church, because it does not matter where you go in the world, Catholic mass is the same (with slight variations). Thus, although it was all in French, I was able to follow very easily.

I had mentioned in an earlier post how sad it is that France is teeming with gorgeous churches and few faithful, and being at mass today confirmed that for me. It is a truly a generational thing: the median age was probably 50+, unlike going to church in the US or Brazil, where a lot of kids and teenagers tend to be present.

In addition, the priest wasn’t French, but was instead from Benin, following a similar trend we see in the United States with fewer and fewer Caucasian men wanting to be priests, and thus an increase in priests from Africa and South America in churches throughout the US and Europe. He spent the homily sharing some facts about his homeland, emphasizing the unfortunate paucity of educational opportunities there and the common illiteracy that goes hand in hand with such a situation.

And now I’m back in my room, catching up on things, and realizing that I need to start planning lessons for tomorrow, as I am meeting with 5 groups.