L'accueil

One of those words that doesn't have a very good translation~  L'accueil is one of the more difficult French words, hard to pronounce, hard to translate.  Yet it is quickly becoming one of my favorites.  One can use it in many contexts... it describes the home page of a website, the reception desk at an office or tourist destination, and my host family, "la famille d'accueil," among other things, including "greeting."  So yes, I am in love with my "greeting family."  They have given me an excellent welcome to their beautiful house and my "studio" as they call it, an apartment attached to the house.  Besides struggling a bit with the keys (I have four keys and an electric opener for the door to the apartment complex that I go through to reach the house...), I am finding the apartment better than I ever could have imagined.  It is larger than my room at home, and I have my own shower and toilet.  I will try to use and respect this space to its fullest, but given the amount of time I expect to spend in the main house, I may use it less than one may think.  Why?  For one, my host parents are kind and interesting, if a bit distant sometimes (but I think that is just their French culture coming out).  But much more than that, they have three young daughters- Alix (10 years), Sixtine (8 years), and Brune (3 years).  It is true that a foreigner is a bit like a child-- I feel most comfortable with Brune, who I can understand almost all the time.  But tonight, Sixtine asked me to read her a story, and I ended up reading her two.  The first was a book teaching animal onomatopoeia: "mooo" in English, which is "meuhhh," in French, etc., etc.  And the second, was the story of a goat who leaves the farmer who loves her and proceeds to be eaten by a wolf.  Sixtine continuously corrected my pronunciation and honestly was more helpful than any adult has been.  I worry a bit about Brune though, because she is still in the stage where she is mimicking adults, and I don't want her to ever copy my less than perfect French language skills.  Nonetheless, my "famille d'accueil" as fantastic, and I cannot wait to stop feeling like the visitor and to begin feeling like an older sister and a daughter.
          Speaking of receptions, our welcome to France outside of Paris was the elegant Chartres cathedral, as our British guide, Malcolm Miller, said, the "Notre Dame" that was just that long before the one in Paris was built.  Monsieur Miller is an expert on the cathedral, capable of describing each window as a book and the cathedral as a library.  He had several points of note to share with us but not many as an hour is not nearly enough time to read all the books in a library.  The first was his observation on the window that juxtaposes the story of Adam and Eve with that of the good samaritan.  He states that this theological commentary tells the entire story of the cathedral, the fall from grace and Christ who came for us while we were in the ditch, took us to a safe place, and will return to settle any debts that remain.  The second was the presence of astrological symbols in a Catholic cathedral, with Jesus, the "time ruler," sitting at the top of the cyclic passage of time, outside of it and presiding over it.  I feel like I can better understand cyclic time at the moment, what with the whirlwind of time changes and travel.
          But we are finally in Rennes, feeling more like freshmen than ever before, but I love it.  The university has a library for nearly every subject, and as always, I want to explore them all.  The beautiful aspect of that desire is that it is united by the common thread of French, for to know religion or history or Breton (the "local" language) or anything else in France, one must first know the language.

the half-timbered houses of the "centre-ville" of Rennes

          Bretagne is known for the love of learning, and we will "officially" begin classes on September 13th.  Need I say more?  I am this region's "jumelle" (twin).  Now I must learn its language... Bonne nuit!