Wednesday, March 8, 2017

Les Aventures de Madame Beaubien: Ride the French Train




If you want an experience of public transportation, you can't miss the French trains. Look at this sleek machine!!  Beautiful, clean, smooth ride, efficient....and they run all times of the day. The French train is NOTHING like Amtrak. I love Amtrak as I love trains, especially when they crisscross the country. But Amtrak is limited by poor tracks and it is secondary to the freight trains. Just one more thing that makes America NOT great. 

I met, Henrik, a young German college student who is traveling in France to visit a friend who is in his "gap year" between high school and college. This young man (sorry I didn't take a photo of him :( ) is studying geography and politics. He conducted a research project in college through the Erasmus Program (European Region Action Scheme for the Mobility of University Students), a European Union (EU) student exchange program established in 1987 for education, training, youth and sports.

Henrik is preparing himself for professional leadership positions that will have a global focus. He seems to be a very serious student aware of the importance of climate change and peace among nations. It is young people like him who will make the transition into the future of a new world that Baby Boomers can't even conceive. Henrik reminds me of the fine young people I worked with at Kalamazoo College and Western Michigan University. 

~ ~ ~ ~ ~


Patty and I left LePuy on Saturday to head for Lyon where we will take 4 weeks of classes at Inflexyon, a language school. Line drove us to the train station and took our picture--two happy women on their way to French language nivana, the ultimate purpose of this trip to France. We will live im separate convents where the sisters do NOT speak English. The advantage to this arrangement is that we will not be tempted to speak English to one another and we will be forced to communicate in French. This is, really, the only way to learn French--or any language.

Friday, March 3, 2017

Les Aventures de Madame Beaubien -- Helicopter Rendez-vous


(I am going by my code name, Madame Beaubien, because it sounds more French than my name. Besides, I like being called Madame!)




Patty and I were just casually wending our way to the old city of LePuy when a helicopter began flying overhead. It was working on Chapelle St. Michel d'Aiguilhe (St. Michael's Chapel of Aiguilhe). Apparently, every once in a while they have to shore up the sides of the rock so the church doesn't come tumbling down. Whew!

Chapelle St. Michel d'Aiguilhe sits on top of an extinct volcano and was built in the 10th-11th century. To get to it you must climb 268 steps. I haven't done it yet, but word has it that the view is fantastique





Here it is from the view of my bedroom window sans helicopter. It's the church on the far right. The church on the left, also on an extinct volcano, is Cathédrale Notre-Dame du Puy, which dates back as far as the first half of the 12th century. That's the Blessed Mother sitting on top of the cathedral.



Les Aventures de Madame Beaubien -- Cooking Day


(I am going by my code name, Madame Beaubien, because it sounds more French than my name. Besides, I like being called Madame!)


I prepared homemade spaghetti for the sisters on Friday--Sicilian style (with raisins, almonds, cinnamon as well as onions, garlic and tomato paste) and they liked it. However, I was so busy trying to coordinate the main course of pasta with the salad course, the cheese course, and the dessert course, that I didn't get any other photos. I also have to learn how to slow down my pace in serving: wait until everyone is finished with each course and then wait a bit more. After all, it takes us about 1.5 hours to share a meal.

While I'm on the subject of food, here is yesterday's meal, which will give you an idea of how we eat. 

First of all, we eat the main meal at 12:30, which consists of a meat or vegetable dish, vegetables, salad, cheese plate, and dessert.
At the dinner meal, we eat at 7 p.m. and have soup and something else light like a sandwich or vegetable dish.


Here is Line preparing the soup for dinner. First, she cooked vegetables in a crock pot and then used a mixer to thicken the soup in just water--no cream. Delicious! Healthy! No calories!

The cook usually serves the main dish or the soup. Of course, we drink a glass of wine with each meal. You can see the wine bottle in the center of the table in the photo below--a prominent position for something so good, so important, and so healthy, too.



In the second course, we help ourselves to salad and something else that sits on the next table. Tonight's something else was some delicious eggplant parmesan. The greens we had I've never eaten or seen before. They look like large four-leaf clovers but are called mache.

 
Et, voilá!!
la service complet....
c'est comme un restaurant chic!



Wednesday, March 1, 2017

Les Aventures de Madame Beaubien -- Ash Wednesday

Mercredi des Cendres
We celebrated Ash Wednesday by starting out at 8:30 a.m. with Mass at St. Pierre des Carmes, a church in downtown LePuy that was started in 1341 and completed in the 19th century. We walked about 25 minutes to get there. At times, there was only room on the sidewalk for one person at a time, so we resembled ducks or goats who follow each other single file. 

Walking is the common European way of going places--and the spaces that you traverse are often beautiful like the curve in the road above. Bicycle and public transportation are other ways of getting around. LePuy is a small city of about 19,000 Ponots (what its inhabitants are called), so you can move about very easily on foot (à pied). Besides, finding places to park the car is difficult.

 

I found this sign during our walk. Sebastian is my father's name. In the photo below is the street (chemin).

 

 
Here is the church both inside (my shot) and out (Google images). 







 




Here we are after Mass proudly showing off the ashes on our foreheads. Sr. Simone (far left) joined us at Mass and then afterward for dinner back at the Centre. Sr. Line is taking the photo.
Sr. Simone, Sr. Anita, Sr. Patty, Sr. Eluiza, and me
 The Mass was nice and, of course, I'm familiar with each of its parts. I can't yet understand full sentences in French, but I can hear the individual words and verb conjugations and pick up many nouns so that I have an idea of what is going on. In other words, it's not a jumble of babbling sounds. So I just looked around the church and appreciated its architecture--Gothic, I think.



On Tuesday afternoon after our main meal, Patty and I walked on this path along the La Borne River. La Borne is a tributary to the Loire River. The Loire is the longest river in France flowing north and west 634 miles and emptying into the Atlantic Ocean just south of the Brittany peninsula.

Tuesday, February 28, 2017

Les Aventures de Madame Beaubien -- Second Day


(I am going by my code name, Madame Beaubien, because it sounds more French than my name. Besides, I like being called Madame!)

Here are the sisters that I am staying with this week in LePuy. Left to right is Sr. Line (pronounced Lynn) from Maine, Sr. Patty from St. Louis, Sr. Anita from way south in Brazil and Sr. Eluiza from Sao Paulo, Brazil. 


We had a delicious main meal at 1 p.m. today that included meat balls, pasta with tomatoes, green beans (haricots verts in English and in French) and baguette. 

For the second course we had cheese (le fromage), cake (du gateau), fruit, and finally, coffee or tea. Of course, we had red wine with our meal. Eluiza was our cook.



This is a photo of the International Centre of the Sisters of St. Joseph. There are members of the community foundation in this area of France (Le Puy and Chambery) that are missioned all over the world. The Centre is one place where they can come for programs and retreats--at the source of their creation.
 There are 21 rooms at the Centre. Here is mine.


It's been a little difficult at first to adjust to such small places after living in a condo with 3 floors, but I'll adjust. Below is a view from the window in my room. I have to keep the drapes closed when I'm on the computer because the sun makes it difficult to see the screen. I also learned today that the sun is out almost every day. Coming from one of the cloudiest places on earth (due to the lake effect), I appreciate the sun, but will have to adjust to it when I'm on the computer.


Here's another view from my window of the two extinct volcanoes where they built a cathedral on the top of each one. The statue is the Blessed Mother holding the Baby Jesus. There is a garden in the cathedral where pilgrims who make the El Camino de Santiago de Compostela (The Way of St. James) begin their journey. They meet together informally and are given a glass of wine for good luck. Nice touch.


The Camino is a centuries-old walking pilgrimage across the top of Spain, although you can start from Lisbon, Portugal, or from Seville, Spain, both southern routes leading to Santiago de Compostela. Even popes have walked the trail. The route is marked by a shell.

 
 


Monday, February 27, 2017

Les Aventures de Madame Beaubien -- Regardez la Niege


(I am going by my code name, Madame Beaubien, because it sounds more French than my name. Besides, I like being called Madame!)


We had snow (la niege) today, which is rather unusual for LePuy even in the winter. Nevertheless, you can see that it didn't stick. Now this is my kind of snow!


Les Aventures de "Madame Beaubien" -- Day of Arrival

(I am going by my code name, Madame Beaubien, because it sounds more French than my name. Besides, I like being called Madame!)
the incredible modern Saint Exupery Airport in Lyon

I arrived with my friend, Patty, in France (Paris) Monday, February 27 at 7 a.m. and then flew 50 minutes to Lyon (south central France) in time to take the express train from the airport to the very large Station Part Dieu to pick up the SCNF train to LePuy.

Le Station Part Dieu in Lyon
We made all of our connections but were running fast to catch them. When we arrived in LePuy, Sister Line (pronounced Lynn) picked us up.

We were greeted by Sisters Line, Eluiza and Anita, who live here now.

They treated us to a delicious lunch of salad and quiche at 3 p.m. when we arrived and then at 630 had our main meal of chicken, mixed vegetables, potatoes, cheese, wine and cookies.

We're very tired now but I wanted to let you know I arrived safely--and I'm speaking French!!

Tuesday is a free day to recover from jet lag--and to celebrate the Mardi Gras--the last day before the start of Lent.  
Next Monday Patty and I go to Lyon (2.5 hours by train) to start French classes for 4 weeks. We will stay with sisters but in different convents. My convent is a 31-minute walk to the school while Patty's is a 50-minute walk. There is also a bus to take.

The climate here is moderate and there is no snow on the ground. The temperature is about 45 degrees. That's my kind of winter!!. There are cold crops growing in gardens and although the trees are not yet in bloom, some of the ground is green already--even pansies have been planted! They tell me that it doesn't usually snow in the winter but it gets cold.

Olga (a.k.a. Madame Beaubien)