La Rochelle, city by the sea

Right now I'm in La Rochelle staying at the home of our family friends. La Rochelle is a beautiful port city, with a beach and a marina. But even more than the scenery, I'm enjoying living with French people and working on my French skills! The boys, Robin (13) and Lucas (11) are a lot of fun. (Their names sound so much better in French than in English...actually almost everyone's does!) They don't speak any English, so they're patient with my limited French skills and correct me when I'm wrong, and teach me a lot too. I'm managing pretty well with my high school French - there's a mistake in every sentence but I can carry on a conversation, and even sometimes understand when Robin and Lucas babble to each other. They don't make fun of me when I speak incorrectly in French, but Robin has taken to calling me "Schtroumpfette," the French word for a smurf (smurfette?), because I wore a blue dress with a blue zip-up hoodie the other day. Apparently I have quite a few items of blue clothing because he's been able to call me that every day since!

Two days ago we went to the small beach town called La-Faute-sur-mer, where Robin and Lucas' grandparents have a summer home. Unfortunately it was cloudy and drizzly that day so we couldn't go swimming, but we went to the beach and played a version of dodgeball. There were a few members of their family at La Faute who don't speak any English so again I got to exercise my French skills. We had a very elaborate lunch that day - the midday meal is the big event in Europe - with fresh vegetables from the garden in La Faute and delicious mussels, and Pineau that Kada, the boys' grandfather, made himself!

The following day was another new experience for me - my first (and second) motorcycle ride! Robin and Lucas' father, Stéphane, owns a motorcycle, and when we all went out to dinner, he gave me a ride on his motorcycle while everyone else followed in the car. It was beautiful being on the highway at sunset, riding past fields and ending up at the beach where the restaurant was. But the ride back home was beautiful too, because you could see the stars! I promised Stéphane I wouldn't tell how fast we were going (and I don't know the conversion into miles anyway) but it was pretty fast. Très cool.

Yesterday my mom left for Paris, where her flight flew out of this morning. Yesterday evening, Yannick and Stéphane took me and Pamela on a bike ride through some little back roads all the way to the sea. It was magnificent! The late-day sunlight was perfect; we passed a big field, and behind the field were little white houses with reddish brown roofs, and behind the houses you could glimpse the sea. When we got to the sea, it was low tide. That particular coast is rocky, not sandy, and you could see the 2.9km-long bridge leading to the island of Île-de-Ré in the distance. And last night, instead of dinner, Pamela and I took the boys biking into town for some ice cream by the harbor.

I'll leave you with this: Robin and Lucas say that we speak to each other very fast in English, so I asked them what they hear when we talk, and Lucas said "blah blah blee bloo," and I told them that I hear French as "jjjjohh johnh," that very nasal sound. That conversation made me think of this clip from Family Guy, which I then showed to the boys. (Full credit to Lael for finding it.) Hopefully I'll have more success than that in Italy!