Some Things I've Seen

Because this is a blog primarily for those who want to read about the intricacies of my life abroad, I decided to post some bits and pieces of my daily writing here. Everyday of my life here is not packed full of things to blog home about, but going abroad does make my mind more observant, interested, and creative. It is this, and the overall poetic nature of living in La Rochelle, that makes even my most simple days something to jot down notes about...

I wanted to give you more scenes from La Rochelle, but these pictures are not from today. Today I only saw the sun through gray clouds. Perhaps I will always live in a gray city? At least the gray here doesn't threaten to break into rain the second you walk out the door.

A very old man carries a tiny sleeping baby in a pouch on his chest. He sings softly, though not just for the baby. I pass him three times as I wander through the Wednesday market. While I walk aimlessly back and forth between the stands, each selling a similar selection of fruits and vegetables, it seems this man is walking to walk and not looking for anything.

Charred beets sit in piles on tables at the market. Just today I realize that they are beets. I looked in awe the other weeks, for I thought they were some kind of tropical fruit, roughly textured and sweating. I buy one for lunch and read the sign. They have been roasted in a charcoal fire. They are deep red and their skin is bubbly. I eat one for lunch with bread and two hardboiled eggs.

A teenage girl offers a warm, hopeful “coucou” to another teenage girl in the crowded courtyard of Lycée Josue Valin. The girl's salutation is met with a snide, empty glare and a calculated brush on the shoulder. Both girls stand up straighter, and the first shrugs and walks on, hurt. They both wear heeled boots like every other French highschooler seems to wear,.

A dreadlocked boy with a stickered megaphone stands on the concrete flower bed, shouting to the crowd of students in front of the school. After each sentence, the students cheer. We watch from the window of the teacher's lounge. “It is a meeting to say that there is another meeting tomorrow?” one of the English teachers asks, laughing. The teachers seem to chide the student strikes, but they have many their own. Unfortunately I missed the blockade the next day.

Louna sticks her head in my room and chimes “ça va?” when she gets home this afternoon. Her face glows. She had the same look when we drove away from L'Ile de Ré a few weekends ago after she spent all of dinner roaming around the port with Theo. She waved at him out the car window as we drove away and then became really quiet and snapped at her mom when she asked about him. I remember that she was going to hang out with him today. Some teenagers are cute and not mean.

An older man with a notably symmetrical body carries two full cloth shopping bags home from the market. The look on his face is firm but pleasant, and you can see his thick yellow teeth through the crack between his lips. He is determined and perfectly balanced, as if he walks exactly like this every Wednesday morning. I step out of his way. Later, I walk home in a similar fashion, with no symmetry at all, the bags tugging on my fingers and the top-heavy stalks of my Swiss chard threatening to tip everything onto the sidewalk.

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