March is Visitors' Month

This post is written jointly, just for your information and, of course, reading pleasure.

David and Lily in the rain at Fougères.

David, learning all about the history
of Fougères through the children's
information sites.

Much of March was spent hosting visitors, whom we were very grateful to have. First, Lisa's brother David and his girlfriend Lily came for about four days (plus another two and a half in Paris). We showed them around Cesson-Sévigné and Lisa took them to Fougères. This time, the castle was open and they got to go in, but it was cold and horribly rainy! Lily and David also went on their own to Mont-Saint-Michel one day (it helped that Lily speaks French!). It was very nice to have them here and to show them a little bit of Brittany. We made them the traditional dinner of cider, galettes, salad, a cheese course, soup, and baked apples, and by the end we all had eaten too much!  After their days here, Lily and David went to Paris for a few days where they enjoyed picnics in the park and art museums as well as venturing up the Eiffel tower.  It was good to have family time even if that involved what was sadly typical weather.

Fougères intramuros and seen from across the moat.

The next week, my (Aaron writing here) cousin Sarah came and stayed for about ten days. She did an awful lot on her own, too, largely because Lisa and I had to work (obviously) and couldn't accompany her everywhere. She went to Mont-Saint-Michel by herself as well as the Paimpont Forest west of Rennes which is supposed to be the legendary forest of Brocéliande where Merlin is buried. Lisa took her to Vitré one day and I went with her to Fougères so that I, too, could see the castle and the little late medieval church next to it. It was a pretty impressive site and still mostly intact. We also visited a more recent church, St. Leonard, in the upper town which was nice, too. As Sarah said, she was on the "church tour of France" while she was here!

Rennes cathedral, interior.

Saint Amand.  Sarah wanted to know why he was giving
us the finger.

Lisa and I also did a couple things with Sarah in Rennes that we hadn't done before. We went to the cathedral here which is a 19th-century construction done more in an Italian basilica style than a French Gothic style. It's a beautiful space and we also got to see the tomb of one of the first bishops of Rennes, from the sixth century. That week, Andrew (our friend/colleague/son), invited us over for a dinner of traditional galettes and lots of conviviality.  He is a delightful host, and it was a good way to spend time together and to introduce Sarah to French cuisine.

Parliament of Brétagne.

Original entrance hall, Parliament.

The next week, we all took a tour of the Parliament of Brittany building. It was built in the 17th century to house the court of appeals for Brittany as well as offices for tax assessors (the regional court of appeals still meets there). In 1994, the building caught on fire as part of a strike and had to be largely restored and rebuilt. On the tour, we only saw five or six rooms, but they're all decorated with ornate wall and ceiling paintings and one has several tapestries (which we were created after the fire based on the original designs). It's a great building and I'm glad we did the tour, although it was all in French, so Sarah didn't understand any of it and I only understood parts of it! The guide barely took a breath, so there wasn't much time for Lisa to translate. We also had a very strange young man on the tour. When we entered the parliament building, we had to empty our pockets and go through a metal detector. He had TONS of stuff in his pockets and it was all odd things, like a tennis ball, some rope, and a few books. He also consistently lagged behind the rest of the tour, being the last one out of a room as we walked and he even pulled out a newspaper to read during one stop on the tour. We were vaguely concerned that he was looking to case the building for some not-so-peaceful purpose. It was very strange.

Ceiling, Parliament.

Modern furniture in an old-fashioned room, Parliament.

Aaron with window from Chartres for scale.

On the weekend, we went back to Chartres and this time we got to see the stained glass museum, which turned out to be about a lot of windows and a very out-of-date exhibit in the basement that was supposed to stop running two years before.  It was still interesting and gave us the chance to see reproductions of the Chartres windows that were too high to be accurately read from inside the sanctuary.  Our hotel was very cool, as it was an old monastery and had a book sale, where we over-indulged on Old French and Latin books.  It seemed like all the octogenarians had emptied out their shelves for this sale, and we were grateful!  The other cool thing about the hotel was that the year prior, an American group of pilgrims had built a labyrinth out back to mimic the one that was inside the church and which is almost always covered with chairs.  We got to end our visit there with a nice walk through that.

Sarah and Aaron in the labyrinth at our hotel.

Crypt, Notre Dame de la Couture.

Notre Dame de la Couture,
Le Mans.

On the return trip, we had a long enough layover in Le Mans that we finally got to see a bit of that city where we've spent collective hours, but only minutes at a time.  The church we visited was actually quite beautiful, with no aisles.  It felt very open as a result.  We ran into the sexton and complimented him on the church, at which point he offered to light up the crypt for us, which was very old, much older than we expected.  We can now officially say we've been to Le Mans!

Stay tuned for Sarah and Lisa's Visit to Paris.

Bonus Picture: Sarah and Lisa's favorite moment from the Parliament tour.
Dog Sees Pigeon, Boy sees Dog, Mom sees Boy.  On your mark, get set, go!

Winter in Cesson-Sévigné

Snow in our parking lot.

We haven't traveled since Jimmy and Jenny's visit for several reasons. First, we're going on several longer trips this term than last (one to the UK next week, one across northern France, Belgium, and western Germany over Easter weekend, and a week-long trip to Greece in May) so we need to save our money for those. Second, Lisa has been invited to give a paper at Cambridge University next week so she's been hard at work on that on weekends. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, Europe (as you may have heard) has been suffering through an awful cold spell since January 25th. It stays below freezing most of the day and it's been rather windy much of the time, too. The newspaper last week said it's the worst cold snap in France since 1985 (although it's unclear how they calculate worst - coldest? longest-lasting? affecting the most people?). Last Monday, France set a new record for the most one-day electricity consumption because most people in France have electric heat, not gas heat as in the US. We even had a couple inches of snow the first weekend of February! So all of this has reduced our desire to leave our house and travel on weekends. Fortunately, though, this sub-freezing weather seems to be ending and we should be warming up nicely this week.

Our Saturday market runs year-round, despite the cold. Some of the vendors we got used to seeing in the fall are no longer there, like some people that only sell tomatoes. Most of the produce is now shipped in from Spain and southern France, but the apples we buy are still local and the cheese, meat, and seafood vendors aren't affected by the season much so they're all there. I think we're becoming regulars at many of these places. The cheese vendor actually asked us "How's it going" this week and her husband said good-bye to us when we left, even though he was helping another customer, neither of which have ever happened before. The couple from whom we buy free-range eggs also chatted a bit with us, too, asking us to compare the weather in France with the weather in the US (they learned we were American on one of our first ventures to the market last fall). It's sort of nice to be able to establish something of a rapport with our food-sellers.

Lisa's former student, Nathan, came back for a brief visit at the start of the month. His study-abroad program in Dijon ended so he was traveling around France for a bit before going back to the US. He stayed with us for a Sunday night, went to Mont Saint-Michel the next day to spend the night there, returned to our house on Tuesday, spent the night, then got up very early Wednesday to get a train to Paris for his flight home. I didn't get to spend very much time with him, but I was very glad to meet him and I'm glad we could provide a free place to stay around his visit to Mont Saint-Michel.

We've also gotten to spend time with some American Mormon missionaries whose church is about a mile down the road from our house. Two of them overheard Lisa speaking English on the bus during Nathan's first visit, introduced themselves, and then invited her to their weekly Wednesday night ping-pong games at their church. We've gone a couple of times. They're very friendly people and they promised not to try to convert us. It's actually sort of nice to spend time with some very committed Americans and I think they enjoy being able to speak English to other Americans, too!

Geneviève serving food, Aaron looking anxious.

The highlight of our time since Jimmy and Jenny's visit, though, was probably the party we were invited to by one of our colleagues, Geneviève, and her husband, Jean-Paul, the last Friday in January. Our fellow American lecteur Andrew also came, as did two other Americans and a French person in our department and two of their partners. Geneviève and Jean-Paul live in a wonderful old house in Rennes near Sainte-Anne, although initially we had some difficulty in finding it and tried to walk into someone else's house first! We began with champagne and appetizers in their ground floor sitting area before adjourning upstairs to the dining room for a dinner of quiche, salad, cheese, fois gras and, of course, wine. The dinner also involved quite a bit of lovely singing from Geneviève and Rémy (the partner of our colleague, Nicolas - the ones who invited us to their country house back in the fall). Todd sang Carmen Ohio and I tried to sing with him before realizing that I don't actually know the words, just the melody!

The galette des rois.

After dinner, though, I tried to play Geneviève's piano, but it was difficult without sheet music and after not having played since last May. Nicolas had also written a quiz game for us to play, which, according to Geneviève, is perfectly in keeping with Nicolas' love of teaching.

The main point of the party, however, was the "galette des rois." This is the French version of the king cake traditionally served around Epiphany in many Catholic countries (and in New Orleans during Carnival). It's a puff pastry with a filling of frangipane and containing a small ceramic favor. Whoever gets

Pour qui, Andrew?

the piece with the favor is declared the king of the party and he or she then wears a paper crown for the rest of the night. To make sure that the pieces are randomly distributed, the youngest person at the table climbs under the table, the server asks, "Pour qui?" ("For whom?", although to me it sort of sounded like, "Porky?"), and the person under the table has to name each of the guests in turn. For our party, this meant that Andrew was the person under the table, which was quite enjoyable to watch! In case you're wondering, Rémy found the favor and was named king. He
promptly declared Nicolas to be queen since they have been together now for nearly twenty years.

King Rémy, showing off the favor to Anthony.

It was quite a fun night of good food, good spirits, lots of laughter, lots of French (some of which I understood), and it was a wonderful way to break up the monotony of these cold winter weekends!

A Bit about Rennes

It's been over a month since you've heard from us!  We've been so busy doing things to put on the blog that we haven't had time to do any blogging!  We're starting back with a brief post about Rennes and Cesson-Sévigné themselves since we don't often talk about them and since we have visitors coming soon who might want to know what activities and attractions are nearby.  We are very much looking forward to everyone's visits!

The gathering, with Andrew, our fellow
American teacher in the background.

For starters, here's a picture of our Thanksgiving feast at Todd's house.  He organized a wonderful meal, and we had the opportunity to meet lots of new people.  We didn't have too many extensive conversations with the new people, however, because the dinner table ended up being divided between Americans and French!  We brought dried corn (recipe on Two-Burner Meals), which the French appreciated but didn't love, and which Andrew, our fellow American teacher, said he did.  We also had a Thanksgiving potluck the following week on campus, and I made green bean casserole from scratch.  It was delicious and worth the effort!  Our colleagues from all nations ate every bite!

Marché de Noël at the Place du Parlement in Rennes.

Carousel (I love carousels!)
at the marché!

Most of France does not celebrate Thanksgiving, so that means Christmas decorations and advertisements can begin much earlier than in the US.  The one really fantastic thing about that is the presence of marchés de Noël (Christmas markets)!  There were two in the city center and one in our little town, and we visited them frequently, getting a cup of vin chaud (hot, spiced wine) and walking around admiring all the artisans' wares and selecting gifts for friends and family.  The marché, pictured to the side, in Rennes had lots of international, fair trade items, and the marché in Cesson had all local artisans and artists.  In addition to finding lots of gifts, we bought some fantastic raspberry-chocolate jam and a watercolor of our town to hang when we have a home in the States!  

Après le bain, Louis Henri Nicot.
Medium: marble.

Sculpture from the time
exhibit.

Since we were already in the city center exploring the Christmas festivities, we thought we'd visit the local art museum.  They had some amazing sculpture, a very interesting modern exhibit, and some mediocre paintings.  There were some good Picassos, to be fair.  As for the modern section, it really was very impressive.  Local artists and art students from the humanities side of the Université de Rennes had worked with members of group homes for people with developmental disabilities to create visual art about their perception of time.  Each piece had a totally different feel and a lot of different contributors, but they still came together into fantastic pieces of art.  

Here in France, most of the
Santas wear a long coat and
give candy to children.

In Cesson and in our apartment, we started preparing for Christmas as well.  The Père Noël (Santa) visited our market, and I completed our Christmas tree!  I'd been collecting all the green sections of advertisements that come every week in the mail and taping them together.  Here is the result!  A 4-foot by 6-foot Christmas tree adorning our wall!  We did not get around to decorating it; I only managed part of a paper chain.  We may end up leaving it there all year and decorating it for each holiday, because we really put a lot of effort into it!  If you're visiting us this year, we hope you like creative Christmas the whole year through!

We hope to have some more entries up soon about our time in Normandy, Paris, America, Vitré, and ping-pong with the Mormons.  As always, thanks for reading!

Christmas Tree.  Lisa Bevevino.
Media: advertisements, one roll of scotch tape, and one envelope for the trunk (not shown).

A Welcoming French Weekend

France is a walk in the park.

What's more welcoming than a goat?

Last weekend, we attended two (very different) welcoming events. On Saturday morning, we went to the first (though all the pictures are from the second): a welcome reception for people who have moved to Cesson-Sevigne in the past year sponsored by the mayor's office. It was held in the city's cultural center and there were probably 80 or 100 people there, including some kids. (They even had a kind of "youth director" whose job was to entertain the kids during the reception.) The mayor was at the door to shake our hands and greet us. When we informed him we were Americans, he told us his son is currently living in Austin, Texas, of all places.

Kids here learn to build structures out
of soil and plants.

The welcome reception consisted primarily of a 30- to 40-minute-long presentation by the mayor about all the great things about Cesson - its economic development, its schools, its parks and green space, its transportation network, its opportunities for sports and recreation, and its commitment to preserving the environment. The whole thing was in French (obviously) meaning I didn't understand much of it, but fortunately he was accompanied by a PowerPoint presentation, so I had things to look at and read, which helped my understanding immeasurably! When he finished, he introduced the youth advisory council. This is a group of 12- to 15-year-olds elected by the youth of the city to serve as a kind of junior city council to advise the mayor on various issues. It struck me as being something that probably wouldn't happen in the US, but as Lisa pointed out afterwards, France may not (we don't know) have much in the way of student council and student government at school so, instead, they have a city-wide council for students to be a part of.

There was a really cute little girl
feeding this asinine animal through the
electric fence. Asinine is also a good
adjective for the questions we heard.

After the presentation, the floor was opened to questions, many of which were rather ridiculous things to ask the mayor, among them:

• "I live next to a business that has outside lights on until 7 or 7:30 at night! That's too late! What will you do about it?" (Mayor's response: "That's not really a civic matter, you have to take it up with the business.")
• "The grass outside my house is so long! It hasn't been cut since I moved here several months ago!" (Mayor's response: "We believe in letting our grass grow here because it's healthier for the plants. But you're free to cut it if you want, we won't stop you.")
• "I've noticed that there are a lot of tree roots that are breaking up the sidewalk and making it uneven. Isn't there anything to do about it?" (Mayor's response: "Well, we can really only dig up the sidewalk and cut off the roots, which kills the tree, and we don't want to do that. But don't worry; everything will be fine.")
• "Where can I recycle my glass?" (Curbside recycling in Cesson only picks up plastic and cardboard, not glass. The mayor didn't really have a response to this one, despite the fact that there are numerous drop-off points throughout the city for recycling glass.)
• "I think it's too far to go from my house to the grocery store. What can you do to help build one closer to my neighborhood?" (Mayor's response: "Actually, a grocery store did a feasibility study about putting a store there just last year and they determined that there weren't enough people living in the area to make it profitable.")
  

This makes the mayor sound kind of like a jerk, but really, he was pleasant to all the participants as they assailed him with demands. The questions just kept coming, and unlike presentations I've been to the US, there was no attempt to say, "We'll have one more question and if you still have questions, you can ask me afterwards." Instead, the mayor wanted to answer every question that anyone had. When that was finally over (before noon), we exited to the lobby for some nice hors d'oeuvres and free wine (very French, right?). As we left the cultural center, we found a demonstration going on outside of baking bread using a wood-fired oven. One of the leaders of the demonstration was none other than the real estate agent who rented us our apartment. He apparently lives a double life as a wood-fired-oven-baker!

Canal, with locks.

The other welcoming event occurred on Sunday. One of the other English teachers in our department, Nicolas, invited us and several other people to the country house that belongs to his partner's mother for an afternoon barbecue. Among those in attendance was our American colleague and former OSU student Todd and his partner Anthony, meaning he could drive us out to the country (after we successfully navigated our way into Rennes and to his apartment around a massive half-marathon that was happening on Sunday morning) - thanks Todd! The house was about a 20- or 30-minute drive outside of Rennes in a very rural area, complete with a corn field and cow pasture behind the house (the field and cows didn't belong to Nicolas and Remy, by the way). We sat around in the backyard eating various hors d'oeuvres, grilled sausages wrapped in galettes (the local Breton variation on crepes--made with buckwheat flour instead of wheat), salads, and a delicious apple tarte tatin - not to mention drinking several glasses of wine. Almost all of the conversation took place in French, but I'm proud to say I understood about 20-30% of it (although unfortunately, I was unable to fully form any sentences in French to respond to anyone).

Nicolas, Todd, Aaron, collecting chestnuts.

Afterwards, we all went for a leisurely walk along the Canal d'Ile-et-Rance which wasn't far from the house. The canal was built in the early 19th-century to link Rennes and Saint-Malo. It was a lovely fall afternoon and there were a number of people walking along the canal, making it all very pleasant. Upon returning to the house, Nicolas offered us some chestnuts and apples from his trees. Lisa made applesauce out of the apples and boiled the chestnuts that decorated our dining room table for the past week since we were there. (Nicolas said that chestnuts are often used in stuffing and that's what we'll probably do with them.) In the end, we spent about six hours in the country and we ate so much that we didn't even need to eat dinner when we got home. It was a very traditional French Sunday in the country and it was welcoming in a much more intimate (and, to me, much nicer) way than the Saturday morning welcome to Cesson.

If you thought life in a small town was boring...

That little path on the right is my
running trail.  It goes for miles and is
filled with other runners all day.

think again!  We had an adventurous day in Cesson-Sévigné yesterday, starting off with a run on the trail by the river for me and then a walk around town.  We did some boring things like buying envelopes and going to the post office and grocery store.  Then we explored a local park, full of blackberries and walking/running trails, a field, and a lake.  I think we've found our perfect picnic spot.  On the way to this park is an organic supermarket: Scarabée Biocoop.  It is a LOT like a very small Whole Foods--smells lovely and fresh, has very limited merchandise, prices most of the products at lest 1.5 times more than they should be, but then prices some more cheaply than you can find them anywhere else.  I'll never understand supermarket pricing.

Parc de la Monniais, which we are
dubbing Blackberry Park.

What they did have was very important!  They had all different grades of flour, maple syrup, molasses, and TWO kinds of brown sugar in the bulk section.  This brown sugar was moist, dark, and smelled of light molasses.  Perfection.  We purchased the molasses to transform what we already bought into a better version of brown sugar instead of just accumulating more and more types of sugar.  They also sell LOTS of cookbooks, including a blank one!  That might be my first frivolous purchase in France come next month.  This little market will also be perfect for picking up picnic goods on the way to Blackberry Park.

Twix 10+2=1 dozen Twix bars!

What other sorts of adventures did we have?  We went to Carrefour (much like Walmart) to pick up some cinnamon because I made my first pumpkin custard here with a fresh local pumpkin yesterday.  It was delicious.  The recipe is on the new "Two-Burner Meals" page for recipes (which Aaron titled!).  Now, to the right, you'll see an image of a GIANT pack of Twix bars, so if you were thinking that everything in the US is bigger than everything in France, you just have to go to Carrefour to learn differently!  (No, we didn't buy it).

What is that I'm hearing echoing across the Atlantic?  "Lisa, you implied that life in your small town isn't boring..."  Well, never fear!  We are at the good stuff!  Right in the parking lot of Carrefour, what did we see?  Camels!  Llamas!  Donkeys!  Oh my!  That's right!  You don't need to go to Africa to see a camel; you can find three right in Cesson-Sévigné!  Why were they there?  The Zavatta Circus has come to town with the yellow trucks, blaring music, and exotic animals for the week.  This is the second circus in our little town in the three weeks we've been here.  We're beginning to wonder if it's the favorite stop of the animals or just some sort of September thing for small towns.  We're not sure if we'll attend of not; I don't like clowns, and I hate seeing the one with all the big cats in the cages.  Aaron just thinks they don't seem like very much fun.  We were hoping they would let the lions out in the parking lot, but no such (un)luck.

Mr. Camel in front of the now-defunct
French Home Depot.

Most of the ads for Zavatta
actually include pictures of
the big yellow trucks in the
background.

"Hmm...should I buy the pink
lampshade or the blue one?  Oh dear,
it seems the store isn't open anymore,"
thinks Mrs. Camel.

Our Apartment--with Furniture!

Aaron at the dining room table/our
 desk before we hung pictures.

Where I write.  Quite comfy.

As of Thursday, we have a furnished apartment!  As of Friday, we even have a bed and kitchen table!  It took three trips to Ikea and one delivery truck, but it's finally all here.  (The third trip was for the kitchen table top and the bed slats which were sold out when we purchased things for delivery.  Have we told you this already?  I'm feeling repetitive.)  This means that I can sit on our loveseat with my feet up on the coffee table (how couth of me) while writing the blog entries!

Our little terrasse and a
glimpse of the laundry.

Now, if we've had furniture since Thursday, why are you only seeing it now?  Well, we'd been doing laundry, and we had lines of laundry EVERYwhere--one outside, one outside coming in, one from the kitchen window to the bathroom doorknob, and two in the bedroom!  That made it difficult to move around, much less take representative pictures of our living space.  So here you are, finally, with pictures of an apartment furnished by Ikea and some things we bought from Heidi, who was a lecturer here last year.  Todd is letting us use the television set for the year, and we turned it on last night to see what there is to watch--lots of French shows, plus Friends and Cougar Town.  The French must like Courteney Cox.

Starring the dining table in
its secondary role: desk.

We've decided to leave decorative items to a minimum because we'd rather get meaningful souvenirs during our travels around Europe than get shoddy attempts at objects conforming to our tastes from Ikea.  We brought maps and have put them on the walls to aid us in travel-planning and to provide some decoration.  We are planning on hanging maps of places we visit while we're here in the bedroom.  Besides that, we have some pictures from home, wedding pictures, a Beloit College calendar, and a towel representing Pennsylvania (part of our wedding gift from my cousin Adam and his wife Christine). The throws on the couch are also from home and can double as scarves for me.

Where breakfast and lunch happen.  

Where deliciousness happens.

When we first moved in, we thought we wouldn't need curtains because French apartments all seem to come with shutters (generally resembling the sort that stores pull down after hours in malls).  They keep the light out quite efficiently at night, and they provide good insulation.  They do not, however, provide a middle ground; they're either all the way shut or all the way open (well, I suppose they can be halfway up, but there's not much point to that).  After a few days of making eye contact with neighbors every time they walked to their cars, we decided we should add some light filtration.  We ended up getting just one pair of curtains from Ikea to cover five windows!  Thank goodness for iron-on hemming for cut-to-length curtains.  Now we just have to get to that ironing...

The bedroom, obviously.  Where the
 day ends, so where this entry ends.

Stay tuned for our next entry on making Nestle Tollhouse Chocolate Chip Cookies abroad and perchance a rant about why I don't know enough html code to be able to lay out a blog entry with pictures in an aesthetically pleasing way.

The Perils of French Suburbia

For starters, I'll say that we do NOT live in French suburbia, so this is not an entry about how we chose a bad place to live.  Outside of our town, things are a little different than what you might imagine the ideal France to be...

On Monday, after going to the university (where the buildings are ugly, but the campus is beautiful), we returned to French suburbia for round number 2 of Ikea.  Sadly, it was not our last visit--even this week.  We went back for the base to the table and the chairs you saw in a picture in a previous entry.  Ikea delivered the other furniture we purchased Thursday morning, but they were out of the bed slats and tabletop, so we went again Friday.  (We'll do a separate entry to show you our fabulously furnished apartment).  Ikea is set up in EXACTLY the same layout as in the States, so no surprises there.  

Tuesday we went to Carrefour, which is a lot like Walmart, even in terms of the clientele.  It's definitely not our favorite place, but they do have a lot of useful products, so we will probably go there on occasion.  We went even deeper into French suburbia on Wednesday when we needed to go to Leroy Merlin (pronounced LUH WAH MARE LAH, but we prefer to think of it as "Leroy Merlin's") and But (pronounced something like BEW, but Aaron calls it "butt") to find a telephone (which neither had) and a piece to mount the shower head to the wall (which Leroy had).  For pictures of French suburbia, please visit your local Lowe’s, Home Depot, Walmart, McDonald’s, or other generic establishments.  You’ll get a very similar feel.  Perhaps our title of this entry was a little over-the-top; we really didn't face any perils.  It was just a lot of wading through huge box stores and masses of people clambering for the cheapest products shipped directly from China.

Our Town, Cesson-Sévigné

Now, onto the past week in Cesson-Sévigné and the surrounding area.  As you know, we moved here last Saturday from Le Magenta hotel in the city.  We started off by going to the farmers' market (or marché) and buying apples, bread, vegetables, and cheese.  We even saw a wedding party coming out of the church on our way there!  We went to the marché again this morning, and we had a much better idea of what we would need for a week.

We found some more of the Elstar apples mentioned earlier (2.5 kilos this time!), and the vendor threw in a royal Anjou apple to try for free.  It was fabulous--tart and a bit tender.  We also got some cured sausage (saucisson) for Aaron made in the "old style" which means that before forming it into links, you cook the pork meat and fat in wine from the Loire valley.  Aaron thought it was excellent; I'm taking his word for it.  We're looking forward to making more of the mini artichokes and some tomato sauce for eggplant and mushrooms.  The local cheese vendor had us try some "Cherista" which is a blend of goat's milk and sheep's milk cheese.  Rather mild, and of a similar texture to mozzarella.  It is quite tasty.  For a picture of how these ingredients go together for a typical lunch, click here.

On Sunday we explored our little town a bit more and saw the kayak and canoe rental place across from where we live.  They even have white water kayaking here!  I think Aaron might even be willing to take a kayak ride in the calm waters.  We’ve been told that Cesson-Sévigné won the award for the city that offers its residents the most activities in all of France.  There was a circus this weekend, and we may go tomorrow.  In addition to the Saturday market, there is an organic market on Wednesdays and a fish and crêpe market on Fridays.  I am hoping to explore the area some more while running once we stop taking 5-mile daily walks around Rennes to find things we need to have a comfortable apartment and yummy dinners.  There are some Roman ruins that we read about and want to know where they are.  

A view into Cesson-Sévigné.  You can see the Catholic church steeple, which
is how I find my way back from wherever I am.  The water is an offshoot
of the Vilaine river, which comes complete with graceful white swans!

We visited the local bakery (boulangerie-pâtisserie) when we ran out of bread from the farmers' market.  It was even more delicious!  They also have GIANT meringues, which I resisted.  I don't need to develop that addiction just yet.  Of course, I did NOT resist the salty caramel lollipop.  Mmmm.  We attempted to go to the meat shop (charcuterie) to find something for Aaron's lunch, but it turns out they are only open on Saturdays.  And while I'm writing of not being open, everything is closed on the lunch hour, and most places choose one other day of the week to be closed (besides Sunday of course, because even French Walmart is closed then.  For nonreligious people, they take their sabbath VERY seriously).

A view from our apartment into town.  Viveco on the left,
and La Boucherie on the right.

Here's one last picture for you.  We live right by a food and wine convenience store, Viveco—the only place open 7 days a week!  La Boucherie is a chain where I ate once with a group on an excursion when I was living in Poitiers, and it wasn’t bad.  I think the highlight here is really the phenomenal sky, a common occurrence at least once daily (which means that gray skies and rain are also common occurrences).  Next time we'll let you see what our furnished place looks like and perhaps even some pictures at our attempt to make chocolate chip cookies on French soil!