So there were crazy French people. And...stuff?

You'll see in a second.

Wednesday:

After school I went over to Lucas's (another AFS student from Brazil) house to work on a presentation for AFS about Tours. Three other students, Peyo, Kazuto and Nuria (from Chile, Japan, and Paraguay) were there as well. We ended up mostly listening to music and playing GuitarHero (which I think is the only video game I can say that I enjoy) for hours on end, and mostly improvising for the presentation. It was quite fun-- I completely lost track of time, which is rare for me (I'm hopelessly neurotic about knowing what time it is). At six thirty I suddenly noticed that I had about five minutes to catch the bus that would get me back downtown, where the last bus to Mettray was leaving in forty-five minutes. I ended up walking the wrong way from the house, so I missed the bus that would have gotten me there with enough time to walk the several blocks between the two stops, but luckily I found the stop just as the bus was arriving. I made it to town with five minutes to get to a stop that's normally ten minutes away walking, so I sprinted the entire way and looked ridiculous because I was trying to hold down my skirt at the same time-- the only time in my life that I voluntarily wear a skirt and of course it's the one day I shouldn't have. But, sweating and panting and coughing (because I still had the tail end of the laryngitis from London), I made it to the stop one minute before the bus was supposed to leave, and then it turned out that it left five minutes later, anyway. 

So that was Wednesday.

Thursday:

I got up half an hour early and Lea's father Paul swung by to pick me up at quarter to seven. I slept on and off during the drive up to Normandy (for some reason, since being sick a couple of weeks ago I've been having less trouble sleeping during the day, even now that I'm better). We arrived around twelve and had lunch with the friends of Paul's that we were staying with-- Gaston and his wife, Beatrice. They were...interesting. Beatrice was notable to me because she was the first French person I've met that's expressed doubts about Obama's leadership capabilities (it seems like everyone I've met here adores Obama, pretty much without question), but she was quite nice and an excellent cook (even if she was very much red-meat-and-potatoes kind of style-- we had mutton twice in a row for lunch and dinner, and then sausage and steak the day after. I was in pain afterwards). It was her husband that was...um...I'll say he was a character? 

He tried to tell me the second day that the US has never had a good army and that the only reason we're a world power at all is because we have strength in numbers...I politely disagreed, because I was too shocked to come up with a better comment. Oh, and he wanted to know why I'd learned French instead of Spanish, because with French "You get France, Quebec, and then nigger Africa. What's the point?" (First thought: wow. Second thought: wow. Third thought: what happened to Belgium and Switzerland? Fourth thought: wow). Even if it was a joke... what else... Ah, so the reason I was able to go to Normandy at all: for a living, Gaston buys and sells old military objects, mostly from WWII, and for the anniversary of D-Day there was a huge informal market in St. Mere-l'Eglise (the first town to be liberated by the Americans). In French, the word for this kind of market is "brocante," and I was asking how long the market lasted on Friday (since no one really gave me many details about what we were doing-- I wasn't even sure that I was going to Normandy at all until Wednesday night). But when I asked, he went on this long rant: "Brocante? Brocante? This is not a brocante! This has nothing to do with the damn things! Brocantes are for old clothes and sets of broken china-- no, this is not a brocante!"...and so on for several minutes. So at the end I asked, "what do you call it, then?" And he was quiet for a minute and finally said, "Marché militaire." For a while I thought that I had legitimately made an error, but when I called it that to my host family, they just sort of looked at me funny and said, "You mean the brocante, right?" So...I believe I've made my point on the guy-- he was weird. (Oh! And he cut his nails with a pocketknife. Now I'm done). But in the end he was actually quite nice-- I helped out a little at the stand as a gesture to thank him for letting me stay at his house and come to the market, etc-- I translated for a couple of English tourists and watched the merchandise when he needed to leave, helped loading and unloading-- and in the end he actually paid me for it (I tried to refuse, several times, but ended up taking it-- his arguments were: "I have relatives that I specifically ask to come up and help me out, and you did more today than they ever do," and "you should never refuse money at your age.").

So, the market and the town itself:

St. Mere-l'Eglise is a charming little town, I'm sure, when there aren't so many tourists that you can barely cross the streets. Once you visit the church and the Airborne Museum there isn't much to do, so I spent a lot of time sitting in a little square away from the main plaza, listening to an audiobook and watching WWII-era planes go by overhead (some sort of cargo plane, I've deduced from describing them to my dad, but once I put the pictures up I'll get confirmation on what they actually were). All in all, very pleasant, and the Norman landscape is simply gorgeous (even though Gaston and Paul don't agree. They think the wind turbines ruin it). I'm hoping to go back before I leave to see Coleville and the beaches and perhaps Cherbourg, this time with Camille and Lea as reinforcements.

And that...actually covers Friday, to be honest, so I'll skip to Saturday tomorrow. But it's late and I have class (last week of school!), but I'm getting out early tomorrow and should have time to catch up. So until then!