this is the story of my first 1 and a half weeks in the country, photos will be uploaded tomorrow. (maybe).
So, I didn't end up asking Papi to take me to Oudon the next day like I said I was going to, because it was freezing cold and raining and I just felt like laying in my bed and watching the life aquatic with steve zissou. (which didn't work by the way so then I had to watch 500 days of summer. depression)
The next 2 days followed suit. Freezing cold outside, no heat inside and nothing but rain as far as the eye could see. I read an entire book; the Marriage Plot, it wasn't that good, but I still continued to read it because when it rains in the country, what else do you have to do?
That sunday, it was finally sunny and papi told me that we had to go take the boys to meet up with their other grandpa who was taking them for a week. Leaving mami, papi and i with H and her 13 year old cousin E who flew in the night before. I agreed to go on this adventure because what else was I doing besides sitting on the porch staring at the sun because I hadn't seen it in 4 days.
We get into his little car (when I say little I don't actually mean it. He drives a Mercedes, but don't worry- he made sure I knew that he once owned a Ford and talked at great length about the American auto-industry and he nodded approvingly when he found out I drive a Chevy) and we proceed to drive southwest and we get to a little parking lot of a big old stone building. We get out and the boys are running around and goofing off, I am literally just standing in the sunlight trying to warm myself like a reptile when A tells me he has to go pee and B tells me he has to go poo. I sigh and papi laughs. The boys still have an hour in the car ahead of them, so we search out a bathroom. Once we find a public bathroom, A has decided he no longer has to go pee, but B is still in need so he opens the stall door and what does he find, but a Turk. I am unaware of the fact until he comes out and says, I think I'll hold it. I ask why and he says, that's not a real toilet. I go examine for myself and just burst out laughing.
I finally tell him that he has a whole hour in the car ahead of him and he really probably should use the bathroom and he looks at me with a look of absolute horror and he just says, how do I use that thing? I then have to talk him through using the Turk, proper foot placement, correct shorts on the leg placement and everything. In the middle of doing his business he shouts, Amanda, how do you know so much about this toilet? And my response is, I have one of those at home, bro. (He thinks it's funny when I call him bro) he shouts from the stall "IN AMERICA?!" and I respond, no in Paris!
I explain how to flush, he flushes and comes out of the bathroom and looks at me and says, I don't believe you have one of those in Paris. and I can think of nothing else to say to him but... neither do I.
Anyway, their other Papi (papi de mon papa, as A has been calling him) shows up and the boys go and they give me bisous to last for a whole week (by this I mean they basically tackled me to the ground and kissed my forehead off) and then they get into the car and off they go. Papi then tells me that we are standing next to an abbey that was built in the time of Charlemagne and would I like to go inside and look around? Um, yes. thats freaking cool.
So we went inside, papi paid my whole 1.50 euro ticket price, what a gent, and it is soooo cool. There are parts of it that date back to Charlemagne and then you can see the other parts where other architectural design played a part in the building of it, roman influences, gothic structures and medieval elements too. It was super neat, I totally geeked out. I'm casually looking at stuff and papi is next to me talking my ear off and telling me things that I probably wouldn't understand in English about the history of France but he is speaking in French so I just go with it. I take some pictures, I pretend to read some signs, I just kinda explore around. All in all it was pretty neat. I bought some post cards from the gift shop and then we made our way back to Oudon.
The next week is ultra calm with just the two girls, one barely a teen and one is a tween so all they do is watch tv, listen to music and paint their nails. Monday I decide to walk into the town of Oudon (we live on the outskirts) its like a 45 minute walk but I google map it, so I figured I was good. Mami offered me a backpack, an umbrella and a bottle of water and then said she hoped I make it back for dinner, not like a suggestion on time but a suggestion of ability. I thought I would be like, walking along a road, no no, I legit took a trail through the woods and through someones back yard and finally came to a road that I walked on for a while until I eventually found the cutest little park with a lake in the middle. This is called the Plan D'Eau and it is on the outside of the town. I walk through it, and walk by the little swimming beach and then into the town, everything is closed. What the what? It's monday at like 2pm why is everything closed? This is when I remember Mami telling me that everything is closed Sunday afternoons and Monday all day. Lovely.
I sit on a bench on the side of the Hauvre which is a teeny little offshoot of the Loire River, and I just chill for a while, trying to figure out how on earth I'm going to walk back and tell Mami and Papi that I didn't do anything because I forgot that everything was closed. I get up and I walk the length of the Hauvre all the way until I get to a private farm and have to turn around and I walk all the way back. When I get back, I realize that the castle is open! So I march myself up to the castle of Oudon and I buy a ticket and I go inside.
This is where I have realized that I need to own a castle. Glamorous and not at all practical, I need one, end of story. So I hope to learn interesting things about the people who live here in this castle, but come to find out that it basically just is a museum about the Loire river (found out that over 300,000 people were drowned in it as public execution site. lovely little detail) I make it all the way to the top and I wander around, take some photos and then I get a little terrified when I realize how high up I actually am and so I go back down. I then find a sign that says "passage interdit" why is it that whenever someone posts a sign that says you can't go somewhere, you just want to go so much more badly. I have no idea what is at the bottom of that spiral staircase and it will haunt me forever.
Then I start walking away from the castle and I see people carrying baguettes. SOMETHING IS OPEN! At this point I am starving so I just walk in the direction that the people were leaving and by the grace of god I found a bakery that was open and I walk in, order a pain au chocolat avec des amandes (bread with chocolate and almonds, side note: my name basically means almond here) and I eat that on my way back to mami and papi's. I slept so well that night it was absolutely unreal, Papi calculated the distance I walked, about 9 km. BOOM.
The next day, papi asked me if I had anything to do and I said no, so he invited me to go with him, mami and the girls to the farm to pick fruit. We drive to a little "you pick" farm where they show me off to all of their little french countryside friends. Apparently it is ultra-chic to have an American Au Pair and all the french people like to stare at me like I'm a wild animal. Papi grabs a wheelbarrow and tells me that its called a brouette. He then asks me several times throughout the trip, "qu'est que c'est?" "what is this?" to see if I remember. I never did. He and mami then spend the next hour trying to teach me the names of different fruits and vegetables, some of which I didn't know what they were in English so when we finally got the french-english dictionary we were all surprised. Chards? What is that?
Papi's favorite word of the day was "zucchini" he must have said it a million times and then he would just giggle to himself. I guess zucchini is more fun to say than corgette. I picked red and white currants, mami picked green beans, papi picked strawberries and the girls picked raspberries. We then all piled in the car and I went back to bed because my brain hurt from all the new words that I was busy not remembering.
this is ultra long. I will finish the rest tomorrow.
ps. cheese is way better in the country than in Paris. Augusta tells me she thinks it is because the goats are closer in the countryside. this makes perfect sense to me.
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