Normandy

Hello from Normandy, from a quaint little house about 50 feet from the beach where the troops landed 50-someodd years ago. We left Paris this afternoon around 3:30, after planning to leave around 1, and after two stops to pick up forgotten items, a sandwich stop, a long detour to avoid the traffic from the presidential inauguration, traffic traffic traffic, a stop in Caen to pick up M. Beguin, and two stops in search of dinner, we arrived at the house around 7. The town is absolutely adorable, right out of a picture book. It’s small and quaint and filled with green wildlife and little houses and cute stores. Right before we arrived at the house someone realized we needed dinner, and in a situation where almost any American family would have gone straight to the house and cooked up some pasta, we drove to three markets in search of fresh seafood. We finally stopped at some man’s house who brought us into his garage where he had tanks of freshly fished crabs and lobsters. He pulled a few kilos of crabs out of the tank for us, and I got to ride home with live crustaceans on my feet. And then we had to stop for bread, because what would dinner be without fresh bread.

When we arrived at the house, the baby began to cry hysterically, so Marie and I took a short walk along the beach and through the neighborhood with him. She showed me the houses of her childhood friends, and people she’s still friends with, and relatives. She also told me that Julien, her boyfriend/father of her child has a house here, and apparently they’ve known each other since childhood. She then proceeded to point out the house of the boy she dated for almost ten years, another childhood friend of both her and Julien, and said that it was a little awkward between the three of them when she and Julien started dating. I also discovered that Julien’s parents, like the Beguins, met here as children. As did other Beguin relatives. Apparently Normandy is the place to go to meet future spouses.

After our walk we all sat down in front of the fireplace (cute but also very practical b/c there is no heat and it was freezing) and watched lots and lots of news. Today was the presidential inauguration, and I have seen the clips of Sarko and Chirac shaking hands, Sarko kissing his somewhat estranged wife, and Sarko embracing Angela Merkel at least four times. Sarko had the whole family assembled for the big day…his two sons from his first marriage, his wife’s two daughters from her first marriage, and their 10-year-old son. The French reporters kept repeating over and over, “Wow look at the blended family.” They are all very pretty and smiled nice for the camera. The funniest part, which Marie pointed out to me, was when he reached over to stroke the wife’s cheek and she half turned her head away. I feel so American commenting on the personal life of the nouveau prez instead of his politics, but there’s not much to say there and his personal life is quite interesting. Mme. Beguin spent the whole time gushing about how she thinks he’ll be such a competent, great president. Then the whole family kept laughing imagining if Segolene and Francois Hollande were doing the inauguration scene. It would have been funny to see a first man up there, but also very cool.

After news/politics hour(s), we made it to dinner. Somehow it didn’t quite strike me when the man pulled the crabs out of the water, that they would later be sitting in front of me lifeless and waiting to be pulled apart. I was a little intimidated. Luckily M. Beguin was being absolutely adorable tonight and he picked up a crab and showed me step-by-step how to pull it apart and eat it, and then proceeded to undo a crab for me. It was very cute and fatherly, and somehow I made it through the entire meal without having to break the whole thing apart myself. It was a very interesting experience, though I must admit that it’s way to much work for me for the tiny little bit of meat that you get. I really enjoyed the salad and asparagus. It was a very entertaining meal overall. M. Beguin was in fine form tonight and Julien wasn’t very argumentative and Marie is slightly crazy, probably because of the baby, and it was a great show for me. I miss half of what they’re saying and the jokes mostly go over my head (I think there were some sexual ones at some point…something to do with Mme. Beguin and her yoga instructor twisting her in weird positions…all I heard was that Kristen doesn’t understand…which I didn’t). I’m looking forward to the next few days of Beguin family entertainment.