Blogging Blitz, Part 1: Little town, it's a quiet village

Okay, here it is, the post where I swallow my pride, concede defeat with my attempt at daily updates, and just get people up to speed with a synopsis of the past few days.

For three days, I stayed with the Léon family in Chartrettes and, for the most part, my time here was occupied by familial domesticity. Chartrettes is a small town about half an hour outside Paris by train and, as far as I could tell, there is not much that one comes to Chartrettes to do. Its sole purpose seems to be as a residential center and, from what I saw, the commercial offerings of the town are those strictly tailored to this purpose. This is not to say that I was bored during my stay, just to clarify that, for the first time this trip, my days were far more defined by the question of who than by the matters of where.

And so, to summarize my stay in Chartrettes, I offer a brief introduction to the seven members of the Léon family.

The first member of the family that I met was, Jean, Valentin’s father, who came to meet me at the train station. I wasn’t to see much more of him, as the very next day was his first day back at work after the summer holiday. He did, however, return to the house each evening, where he satisfied admirably the all important role as family chef, each night providing delicious, and axiomatically French, cuisine.

Bernadette was an incredibly gracious hostess. Like her husband, she too began work the day after I arrived. Monday was her first day teaching at a nearby middle school, a transition coming after many years as a high school teacher. Whether it was due to her teacherly experience or some other quality, she did an excellent job of making me feel welcome, striving diligently to ignite dinner conversation en anglais, though this might have been as much for her own children’s benefit as for mine. I got the distinct impression that Bernadette was the driving force behind all of the Léon children learning English. This emphasis on bilingualism was evident, not only in the family’s conversation skills, but also in little items around the house, such as the English word-a-day calendar sitting in the kitchen (Were it not for the empirical evidence of the Anglophonic children, I would have seriously doubted the pedagogical value of this calendar, as the September 1 page defining “arm” read simply, “Humans have two arms,” a sentence which would seem to in no way distinguish arms from the many other anatomical pairs we humans possess).

Bartholomy, Val’s slightly older brother, assumed most of the hosting responsibilities while his brother was away. At 21, Bart (or is it “Barth?” – I’m miserable with French spelling), is actually the closest in age to me of the five Léon children, though he and Val are only separated by 14 months. My first night at the Léons’ I tagged along with Bart to an end-of-holidays get together with his friends, before they all scattered to their various universities. The evening provided confirmation of how similar the lives of French college students are to my own, although I did have an enlightening conversation with Bart’s friend, Lucas, in which we calculated that my college education is roughly 10,000 times more expensive than his.

My first day in Chartrettes, I also met the two youngest Léons: Nathan and Noé. Noé, the younger of the two, is in middle school and seemingly full of energy. He communicated with me in comically exaggerated gestures, compensating for the fact that his English, as yet, only extended to a few simple phrases (this also included song lyrics, as there was one day when he paraded around the house impishly singing “We all live in a yellow sub-machine” at the top of his lungs). Nathan was the complete opposite of his younger brother. He was quiet and reserved and made himself scarce most of the time I was there. I saw him primarily at meals and the few times when, in Valentin’s absence, he was called upon to act as translator, being fresh off a summer in the States, and the most proficient in English after Val.

Val arrived sometime Sunday night, and was up and about by the time I woke on Monday. Despite not having hung out in a long time, it’s been a lot of fun visiting him. He’s been a great host, especially considering the fact that I popped into his life for the few days he had at home after working at a sailing camp in Brittany all summer. We went to the Castle of Fountainebleau and went for a walk around the gardens. We also took a trip to the Fountainebleau Equestrian Center, which is apparently kind of a big deal for those in the know (Joker?). Val informed me that if Paris ever gets the summer Olympics, Fountainebleau will play host to the equestrian competition. For the most part, though, my days in Chartrettes were spent lounging around the house, hanging out with Val, reading, or simply learning the French ways of life (like how to use a fork lefthanded). The nights, too, were for the most part spent in quiet relaxation, usually watching movies. In my stay at the Léons’ I got to enjoy both La Legende de Bagger Vance and Harry Potter et l’Ordre du Fenix.

The final family member, Adélaïde, the middle child and lone girl in the Léon family, didn’t arrive in Chartrettes until Wednesday (like Val, she had been away for the summer, working) and so I didn’t see her much while I was there. However, she did come along on the next stage of my journey, when Val invited me to join him in Banyuls-sur-Mer, a small French town along the Mediterranean coast.