My friend Nikki asked me to occasionally mention things that are not completely fabulous, to help her avoid feeling jealous, so I’ve wracked my brain (because we are having an excellent time) and come up with a few. So, Nikki, especially for you . . . .

Living here does occasionally require, well, intestinal fortitude. Or maybe gumption. Whatever the mot juste, I can assure you  it’s not always easy or perfect.

Strong arms are required to live without a car, and having to schlep everything all the time, no matter how good it is for our fitness, is just not that fun. In addition to groceries, water, wine, etc., often there’s my school bag and/or my camera bag as well. Sometimes I can get David to act as my sherpa, and he certainly carries the vast majority of the groceries, but I draw the line at asking him to carry my girly-looking bags. So, tired arms and aching shoulders, not to mention . . .

My poor feet. Sometimes I can almost hear them demanding, “Seriously?!? Sit. Down.” Oddly, the most comfortable shoes for all this walking have been my OrthaHeel sandals, which are really just fancy flip-flops. You should see the looks I get. Feet-face-feet again. Could be the fab plastic jewels, but more likely the slap-slap sound. The looks I get are not admiring. They’re either stone-faced or slightly confused. It may change as the weather continues to warm up, but at the moment I may be the only person in La Rochelle, besides the occasional 20-something guy, wearing flip-flops.

Next, strong nerves are required when you find yourself on a narrow sidewalk with a wall on one side and cars screaming around bends, practically on two wheels, on the other side. And I mean, Right There Next To You. So close your hair practically blows back. Yikes. Cardio workout anyone? Let me catch my breath.

You also need adapability for the unexpected. The first time I walked into the rather posh restroom of the Café de la Paix and realized a gentleman was coming in with me, I was, to say the least, startled. Each person does have his or her own little compartment, but I felt just awkward enough that–I confess–I hid in mine until I heard him leave.

Certainly strong self-esteem is required–or at least a willingness to laugh at yourself–because making stupid mistakes in French is a daily event. Every. Day. Multiple. Times. I’ve lost count of the times I’ve asked for 6 or 8 planches (which means planks or shelves or boards) of bacon fumé instead of 6 or 8 tranches (slices).

Then Wednesday, instead of explaining I was fatiguée (tired) after my little illness, I told the receptionist at school I was fatigante, which is likely true, since it means tiring or annoying, but was not what I meant to say. Everyone, whether vendor, server, friend or teacher, has been unfailingly kind and helpful, correcting the gender I’ve used and/or my pronunciation (un pain ordinaire, pas trop cuit*, with no T sound, but une baguette, pas trop cuite*, with the T sound). I’m still not too great at saying le moelleux, but since that’s a delicious warm chocolate lava cake with a melt-y center, I’m not going to quit ordering it!  

Sometimes you even need a strong stomach, since there are a great number of, how shall I put it, souvenirs des chiens on the sidewalks. They are easy to avoid, but are not pretty. This is in spite of the signs requesting a ville propre (clean city), complete with a rendering of how exactly one cleans up after one’s dog, since it’s such a foreign concept. (I know, right? I so wanted to include a photo of the sign, but I’m afraid David vetoed it for the Good to Know post, so I probably shouldn’t put it here either.)

And if you happen to walk through the central outdoor market area just after it finishes for the day, but before the debris has all been swept up, beurk!*  But your timing has to be spectacularly bad, as ours somehow usually is, because the clean-up is thorough and immediate. David loves offering me items from the gutter as we pass by, as if he were a waiter. “A little fish today, maybe?” as we pass a particularly odiferous leftover. “Or perhaps a squashed tomato?” Dégoûtant!*

*Vocabulary:   Pas trop cuit(e) = not too cooked (browned)       Beurk! = roughly, yuck / Dégoûtant! = Disgusting  

So . . .  helpful? It’s surely not news that there is no perfect place on earth, or perfect people for that matter. We all make do the best we can. It brings to mind this: “He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” Micah 6:8 Seems like an excellent goal, wherever you are.

This weekend David and I both had the opportunity to experience adventures in ill-health while abroad! Yippee. Saturday evening David developed some sort of stomach bug, complete with fever and chills, and was just sick enough for me to start freaking out about my lack of preparedness for health issues while here.  Neither of us is prone to sickness, so I didn’t really think I had to have that all figured out. We have international health insurance because it was required for the long-stay visa, but other than knowing where to find a few pharmacies, I felt pretty ill-equipped. I do know 911 is useless here. Instead, you call 15 for medical emergencies, 17 for the police, and 18 (or 112–don’t ask me, I have no idea) for the fire department.

Fortunately, no emergency services were required, and David is on the mend. But just when he was starting to feel better yesterday, I started feeling unwell–I’ll spare you the details–and became increasing convinced that I’d have to miss my first day back at school and would somehow need to find a doctor and get myself there, since antibiotics would be required to get me back to health.  I remembered the welcome packet for school (yes, I’m one of those people who read things like that) had a page of emergency contact information, so I was able to find a clinic half an hour’s walk from the house. It’s just around the corner from here (below):

I was still in a bit of a panic, since although my French is definitely improving, I’m not great at talking on the phone, but I felt I should call the school to let them know I could not return today, and then I had to call to get an appointment with a doctor. I managed both, in a rather bumbling, incoherent way, admittedly, but . . . yay . . . gold star for me.

I’ve read somewhere that doctor’s appointments in France are rather different than those in the states. Don’t know if this is true or not, but I’ve read that you have to take off all your clothes and sit there, awkward and freezing, on the examining table without so much a tissue: no gown, no drape, naked as the day you were born. And while it is true that things were rather different–no nurse checking my blood pressure, taking my pulse, making me stand on the scale, no nurse at all, in fact, and best of all, ZERO paperwork–I’m happy to report, no nudity was required. The doctor was the one to fetch me from the waiting room, and we walked through a little courtyard to a small exam room, but he sat at a little desk and I sat in a chair on the other side and we had a conversation–flipping between English and French as either of us lacked the necessary vocabulary. Then he explained the prescription he was giving me–three pills, take one a day, avoid the sun, drink LOTS of water–then asked me for 23 euros, shook my hand and showed me out.

I retrieved David from a bench in Place de Verdun and we went to the pharmacy where I turned in my prescription and was immediately given the packet of pills–cost 13 euros 56 centimes. Done and done in about 20 minutes and for about 40 bucks USD. Love it. We, however, did not feel quite well enough for lunch here:

And while I certainly would have preferred that neither of us get sick, it was one more fear conquered–okay, two–the phone AND the doctor. Here’s hoping your fears can be conquered without the need for ill-health.

No, we’re not actually in Oz. We’re still in La Rochelle, which we love, but sometimes Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz springs to mind, as in, “Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.” Here we see things we would not ordinarily see in Fort Collins, Colorado. Like this:

Well, maybe we do see things like that occasionally in Fort Collins, but only on Tour de Fat Saturday!

Don’t see these, though:

Or these:

Or toddlers sporting fabulous scarves:

Or man-bags:

Or Converse worn quite this way:

Or women of all ages enjoying fashion quite this much:

How about this one?

None of the above are isolated random sightings–well except the dude in pink. Converse, man-bags, beautifully wound scarves on children, and even stylish seniors in mini-skirts and boots are everywhere. We can’t get enough. We walk and look or sit and watch (and sneak furtive photos with a long lens) every chance we get.

Finally, check out this little piece of the vieux port. Can you imagine a drop-off like this in the states with no railing? And yet, we all manage to walk along it every day with no mishaps. Well, few. There was a bike at the bottom you could see at low tide the other day, and be sure to scroll down to note my hat’s new home.

Sunday my best new hat was stolen from my head by a strong gust of wind and dropped down into the silt of low tide, as you can see above. Of course the port area is always thronged with pedestrians and café-sitters, so there was a sympathetic chorus of Oh! Là! Là! Là! Là! (It was more than a two Là! catastrophe, but not quite a six. “Oh! Là! Là!” is used for any surprise, whether positive or negative. The more “là” is repeated, the more likely it is to be negative.) I could possibly have climbed down the ancient iron ladder affixed to the wall and then squished across eight or ten feet of muck in an effort to retrieve it, but decided to let it go, rather than attempt it with such a large audience. Later when we came back that way, the tide had come up a bit, but it was still visible and was providing quite the conversation starter. I overheard no fewer than five separate groups of people, “Blah, blah, blah, un chapeau . . . .” One man in a hat was leaning over and looking without holding on to his own hat, so I felt compelled to warn him. “Ah, attention à votre chapeau, monsieur! C’est mon chapeau là-bas!” (“Be careful of your hat, sir! That’s my hat down there!”) Guess that was my fifteen minutes of fame—kind of lame. Yesterday I went back to La Chapellerie and bought another one, but David has made me promise to hold onto it when near the water.

Once we’ve had enough people-watching for the day, we head back home,  and although Colorado is certainly very beautiful,  I can assure you we’ve never glanced down a random side street in Fort Collins and seen anything like this:

What a treat for the eyes this place is.

Les portes de La Rochelle make me want to paint with watercolors.

But first I have to photograph them, because I’m not even CLOSE to ready to have anyone see me attempting a watercolor. Besides, the French are rather private people and would not be likely to appreciate me camped outside their door, no matter how artsy I looked. So instead I took a gazillion photos (as quickly as possible).

I love all the colors against the soft buff and cool grey of the stone. Maybe I will actually get out my paints. I’ll let you know. But if you do first, send me a photo!

Postscript: I know I posted all of the above only half an hour ago, but David helped me realize that the visual metaphor pictured above may be too obscure, and a few words may be in order. I’m ending this post with the photo of an open door with something beautiful behind it, because that’s what this whole experience feels like to us. Between the challenges of the logistics and the language barrier, it really did seem sometimes that it would be impossible to take this journey, yet here we are, and it’s amazing. It feels like we’ve stepped through the back of the wardrobe into Narnia — a completely different kind of place in some ways — with all the essentials of life more richly appreciated, because we’re out of our routine: the refreshment of a perfect little garden in the midst of a stone city, the sensory treat of glowing produce piled in abundance at the outdoor markets, the ambiance of cozy little restaurants in tiny side streets, the laughter of children, the delight of a smile shared.

We are profoundly grateful for this opportunity and hope you enjoy sharing a bit of it with us. Better yet, we wish you your own open door with beauty behind it. We’d love to hear all about it. And don’t forget to send photos!