When you wake up, the tip of your nose is cold. You realize that when you drifted off the night before, you’d forgotten to close the window all the way, and the smell of fresh autumn air and damp leaves completely surrounds you. Often in the mornings, you wake up confused about where you are, even after over a month having left the states. I’m in France, you think to yourself, though right now, you’re in your bedroom.
Many of my days in France start this way. Though I often wake up with a slight ache for home, it’s always soothed by the thrill of new experiences and opportunities that each day abroad offers. My mornings are always peaceful, the sound of birds and wind in leaves drifting in through open windows replace the muffled traffic sounds I’m used to back home. I take a quick shower – European households are very conservation conscious – pick out comfortable clothes and walking shoes, and head downstairs for breakfast.
Le petit-dejeuner, or “the little lunch” directly translated, is more of a snack than the continental breakfast Americans might think of. It always consists of toast, whether baguette, brioche, or some other kind of bread, as well as butter, jam, and fruit juice. Breakfast with my host family is often quiet, since we’re all still a little asleep, and we sit around the heavy wood kitchen table on benches, sipping tea and listening to the news on the radio.
When breakfast is over, I make the trip to school. If it’s raining, I get to take the ferry boat. For one euro, you can be whisked across the port, with sea breeze and raindrops in your hair, and look up at two of the historic towers of La Rochelle on your way to school. Most days, though, I get to walk, and it’s even better than that. My walk to school is all ancient architecture, spotting grey mullet in the port waters as they rise and fall with the tide, wide ocean skies painted by the sunrise, and boots on cobblestone.
School itself, while very different from what I’m accustomed to in the US, is delightful. I’ll forgo too many details here, since I hope to write more in-depth about it later, but it’s so satisfying in the mental exertion it requires. By the time I’m done, it’s usually either one o’clock in the afternoon or six o’clock in the evening. If it was only a half day, I might try a new restaurant for lunch, go to the post office, or return and retrieve books from the library. A full day warrants going home so as to be in time for dinner, but there’s time enough to stop and listen to street musicians, or explore a couple of shops, should one catch my interest.
The evening is quiet as the morning, though dinner is lively with conversation. There is time enough for reading, or knitting, or writing a letter before bed. The day has left me so wonderfully exhausted that I just might forget to close my window, and even if I think to close it, I don’t.
