Meeting the Parents French Style

Hello all, sadly this post will not have any photos (well it will just none that I took myself) because I am a dumbass and left my camera at home!  A couple of weeks ago I went with Julien to his family's house in the middle of nowhere Haute Normandie.  Of course Julien always likes to have a little fun with me so he told me that his family only speaks Cauchois which is a weird form of French with old Norman English influences.  This was only semi-true.  His dad can speak Cauchois but he is the only one and didn't speak it with me, but for a good while I was seriously panicking and Julien was seriously laughing!

France has this really good idea called covoiturage which in English means carpool.  In brief there is a website where you post what kind of car you have and where you are going and people take a ride with you and pay for the trip.  All in all it is pretty cool.  I have used it a lot when travelling around France.  Since the trip is something like 3 hours Julien decided to put his car on covoiturage and pick up some randos to come along with us.  Usually if you are doing a covioturage then you are willing to have conversation while in the car, if not you should just take the train.  The first guy we picked up did not understand this point.  Julien tried to start a coversation with him but it really didn't work.  An hour into the journey we picked up another guy who tried with as much success as us to start a conversation with this douchebag.  We ended up dropping the first guy off and started talking about how lame he was without realizing that the window was open and he was standing next to the car.  Needless to say he didn't end up paying us very much money.  After that it was smooth sailing with conversation, the one I have always since people think apparently that Americans are like aliens so they have a lot of dumb questions to ask me.

We arrived in the town which is so small it isn't even really on the map and Julien proceeded to give me a driving tour of the town which lasted about 30 seconds.  He was like "this is the center of town"I was like where, and he replied back there you missed it.  I am so not a podunk country girl.  The town his parents live in isn't on the coast and is called Yvetot and is actually surprisingly on the map.  They live in this cute country cottage.  His parents are cute and they made a traditional dinner for me (I was worried it was going to be tripes, but thankfully it was not.  Julien had a laugh on my behalf once again) and they of course are French so we drank a lot of wine.  I was the first American that his family has ever met so of course the usual questions were asked, do I eat mcdonalds, do I have an SUV etc etc.  Every time I answered his mom would repeat what I said in my accent and giggle to herself, she thinks it is cute when I talk haha.

Then halfway through dinner I did my wonderful sneeze which cause dinner to come to a hault as everyone except Julien who started laughing and shouting that it was SIX sneezes, just gawked at me!  From then on it became a family game to count my sneezes and to bet on how many sneezes I would do next time.  Exhausted from the adventure we went to sleep when dinner was over around 2 in the morning.  I fell fast asleep only to be woken up with a start by an obnoxious rooster at 6 am.  The dumb rooster did not seem to understand that it was not yet light out and that I was trying to sleep!  They all seemed to think that it was hillarious that the chicken and the horse and the ducks and the sheep all woke me up throughout the morning but that I wasn't woken up by a siren that passed by.  I guess it's the city girl in me!

That morning Julien and I decided to go for a run, and let me tell you it is much easier to go running when you have a beautiful countryside to look at.  However the attack of the animals did not stop in the morning.  As we were running I was accosted by a very loud and worrisome sheep.  Julien was not alarmed at all but I must have jumped 4 feet when it baahhhed at me.  He seemed to think that it was hillarious as well. 

Thankfully we went running when we did because the weather in Normandie is crazy.  One second it is beautiful, the sun is shinning, the birds are singing, and the next minute you are in the middle of a horrible and dark thunderstorm that is pouring rain like a shower.  It is astonshing!  We then had a family lunch which meant a lot of drinking of course and a lot of ketchup for Julien because he eats it like it is water.  I have never seen someone eat so much ketchup in my life.  His family thankfully also thinks that this is as weird as I do so for once we all had a laugh at Julien's expense.

Beach at Yport

It was Julien's younger brother's birthday his 25th to be exact so that night was a big family party at his bother's house.  We all went and I met Julien's sister and his sister-in-law who is pregnant and due at the same time as Trida (which everyone thought was super cool and I got to talk about my little nephew for a while which made me happy).  We then did the usual let's ask the extra terrestrail questions about the homeland game.  They were all pretty interested though I think that his brother thought that I couldn't really speak French because he spoke super slowly to me at first and explained all the slang words to me.  The dinner was actually an apero dinatoire meaning that it was a whole bunch of finger food.  Damien (Julien's brother) took the time to explain to me what a quiche was since I guess no one but French people know this strange mystery food.  It was funny and eventually he realized that I speak French when I made a joke about dinosaurs and handjobs in French. They also thought that is was super funny that I am an American because apparently Julien is known for not liking Americans.  In fact he boycotts American things.  I am sure that I will make him eat his words when he comes to the states this summer.

Etreat, we were on top of this cliff!

We stayed at his brother and sister-in-law's house that night and got to sleep in which was lovely.  We spent the next day seeing all the beauty that Normandie has to offer.  His brother lives in Yport which is right on the coast and is of course beautiful.  It isn't the high tourist season yet so the town was a little dead but I kind of liked it like that.  The beach is absolutely breathtaking and now I know why Julien loves Normandie so much, it really is amazing.  We then went to another town called Etreat.  This is a bigger tourist town but that is because the beach is way more awesome if you can believe it.  We climbed around the cliffs and looked around.  It is a little scary if you don't like heights because France does not believe in safety there are no railings, but that makes for better pictures.  I really didn't want to leave but it was oh so cold so we packed up camp and went to his sister's home in Fécamp, Normandie!

Fécamp

His sister lives in an old fish factory that has been renovated into a modren apartment complex which was really cool and had an awesome view of the port.  I was doing the usual talking about America and his sister's boyfriend pointed out a photo of a US city skyline, he thought it was DC and I didn't think anything of it until I looked closely and realized that it was actually Seattle!  I didn't realize it at first because the Space Needle wasn't in it.  OMG small world right!?  We ended up talking and having dinner late into the night so we didn't get back to Angers until 3am.  I definitely want to go back to Normandie.  Next time with a camera.

More updates to come soon, the next blog post will be about the Croatian and Slovenian adventure!