YA-2: discovering Fécamp and crashing a farewell party!

Bonjour! I’ve now been in Normandy for a whole month, where has time gone? Here is what I’ve been up to over the last fortnight…

I’ve now joined a fitness class on Monday mornings at 9am. Each time I have to wake up early to go to it I feel like maybe I should’ve joined a later one… But then the exercise gets me active and I have the whole morning free to do other things instead of staying in bed #lazylife Anyway, I was aching with sore muscles the whole week after the first class, but I really enjoyed it. The coach is really nice and I am learning to use equipment which I’d never done before. Time to get fit! Another thing that I’ve been meaning to do is to go out for runs but a) I have no force of will to get out of bed in the morning and plunge into the cold and b) I am lacking some proper equipment (it’s not as warm round here as back home…). I have indeed done some running over the past few weeks, but certainly not as much as I would have liked. And with a marathon against cancer looming over next week, I think I’m going to do a lot of walking the marathon rather than running the marathon…

I’ve been doing a lot of house chores, lesson planning, cooking… that take up quite some time over the week. Plus, now that I live in a cold and rainy place again (although the weather has been really nice lately, not going to lie), I have to use the launderette again. Tumble drier for life despite it being annoying to have to drag the wet clothes all the way to the Laundromat. And, to compensate for the uninteresting chores, I have watched a couple of films too. ‘The Lady in the Van’ was a surprise, I definitely did not expect the plot to be what it is and it made me sad and happy at the same time. Definitely recommend; with Maggie Smith playing a sassy lady yet again, what could go wrong? I also watched ‘The Bridget Jones’ Diary’ which I had never seen before. Definitely a feel-good movie which I would have enjoyed more if the Internet connection hadn’t made it freeze every five minutes… And, finally, ‘Love & Other Drugs’ - again, one whose plot surprised me; I really enjoyed it.

Following my neck issue on my second week here, I went to the doctor to get a check-up and certificate for my fitness class. I am fortunately now recovered but my neck is always tense and so is my back so I also went to the physiotherapist. First time over there but it was good, she cracked my back and sent me home.

But, hang on. What adventures did I get up to these past two weeks you might ask? Well, a couple. We attempted to find the American students on exchange here and drove all the way to their apartments in the outskirts of Fécamp. They live in an apartment complex with an automatic gate so we had no way to get in since the doorbells did not work. We managed to slide in when a car rolled by and opened the garage door. Next, finding their apartment. We knew which one it was (or has been the past years) but the thing was, nobody was home. And we had no way of leaving them a note because we didn’t have anything to write. Fantastic. And, to top it off, we couldn’t get out either because we didn’t have the remote for the garage… We resorted to ringing at people’s houses until we found a guy who answered but apparently he didn’t have the remote either. After planning our escape and even thinking of calling for a ladder, the same car that had driven in appeared but to leave this time, so we managed to get out! It was a really funny situation, but still no news from the Americans!

On Friday the 30^th it was my day off so I planned a couple of things apart from the usual like cooking and going to the supermarket. The day was fortunately sunny so I walked around quite a lot. Early in the morning I decided to look for the Marché aux Poissons or fish market in the harbour. Fate had it that the route I’d chosen was cut short by road works so I had to detour and take a longer path but on the way I stumbled upon the Fontaine du Précieux Sang. Apparently, legend has it that a fig branch carrying the blood of Jesus washed up on the shore of Fécamp and the reliquary was used to be housed in this place, where a natural spring flowed. The building is now closed, but up until in the 19^th century many pilgrims came and they even set some rail tracks to transport the masses to and from the Fontaine! The more you know! The market was good, it was quite small and there were all sorts of fish. It reminded me of the fish counter back at home, oh I love fresh fish! After that I ran some errands in town before lunch and Skyped Lara while I cooked.

That afternoon I headed into town and passed a philatélie shop in the town centre. I always stop by the crowded window to look at all the quirky stuff they sell there and this time it was open, so I purchased a 1792 check! Such a great buy! The man was really nice and bizarre looking, just as you’d imagine, short with glasses and long white hair. I chatted to him a bit (from the door because there was literally no space to go inside because the space was taken up by mountains of papers and medals and coins…) and popped in later in the week to buy a République Française medal. He definitely recognized me and I am for sure taking Dad over.

After that I headed to the Library which has quite strange opening times. I read the newspapers and inspected the collection – they have quite a good range of books to be fair! Thing is, I can’t borrow any because I can’t sing up without a proof of residence… Regular trips to the Library it is then… On my way back I stopped to read about the hospitals set up in Fécamp during the Great War near the Monument to the Fallen. It was very interesting!

The following day was the opening of the Rigisse’s photo exhibition at the Mill, so Moni and I went to help serve drinks and food and Liam played the clarinet. It was a lovely evening – so many people came over and Rigisse sold quite a lot of photographs. The punch was a hit and we didn’t have a single moment to ourselves the whole evening. We met a lot of people and finished the night sharing pizzas with friends and family and even some guitar and clarinet duet playing. It was great!

We also spent the Sunday at the Mill, this time preparing hot drinks and biscuits to sell to the visitors since the Mill was open for guided tours throughout the day. The biscuit selling was a bit of a failure, but we did speak some French, sorted out the timetables and explored the Mill ourselves and, despite not making much money, we did have a good time together. After leaving the Mill we headed for the beach and had some chips while the sun set. Strange way to spend our Sunday but it was nice nonetheless!

On Tuesday night I met Liam to go to the avant-prémiere of ‘Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children’. The film was amazing; Tim Burton never disappoints! Definitely not for young children but I really liked it. And I also managed to follow through the whole two hours of French dubbed movie successfully!

On Friday, again free day, I did some chores in the morning and then headed out in the afternoon. I visited the Hotel du Grand Cerf which I thought was some sort of exhibition place but it turns out it holds the Archives and has a small information centre. I then went into town to visit a small secluded garden in the middle of the centre-ville (flooded with pre-teens too by the way) and did some shopping in town – got myself a nice black bag and a microfiber blanket and fleece hoodie to keep me warm, yay! 

In the evening I went to the Speed Meeting organized by the Centre. The idea was that, like speed dating, we had 5-10’ conversations in English in pairs before swapping around. It was a lovely event and I met quite a few people, mostly English speakers from the area. We also met Lara who is our age and lives around here so hopefully will be meeting her over the weekend to visit one of the nearby towns! We had some pizzas after the event and, right before we were packing up, our host said he’d been invited to someone’s farewell party and asked if Moni and I would like to come. Of course, we agreed! So we crashed the farewell party of this guy who I’d spoken to for five minutes and Moni didn’t even know. It was quite awkward at the start because we didn’t know anybody and we had been literally thrown in the deep end with everybody talking super quick in French. But, we stuck together, asked to be spoken to slower and made it through the awkward first hour. Everybody turned out to be super-nice and we finally met some young people with whom to hang out! So after some wine drinking (so cliché, but wine and cigarettes are so French), pet snake feeding show, jokes about someone’s traditional French shirt and singing along to a guitar, we went back home at 2:30am.

On Saturday Moni and I were exhausted after the late night the previous day but we had work and pretty much chilled at home the rest of the day. Sunday was similar, I did some work in the morning and after lunch we went on a guided tour around the Abbatiale, Palais Ducal and Mur about William the Conqueror. It was pretty cold and the guide loved to talk and was prone to tangents but I find it very interesting to hear the French point of view on the Battle of Hastings, so it was worth it.

Next week proves to be quite interesting with Moni’s birthday tomorrow and a couple of meet-ups with the people we met at the party. In addition to that, there is the Weekend en Rose with different events and, of course, the marathon! I will keep you posted!