Aaaand We're Back

Home Sweet Home.

Rennes in Fall!!

After a 6 hour train ride Lindsay and I arrived back to Rennes. Starving we headed right to the grocery store to pick up some provisions for the week (cough cheese and wine cough) and got ready to head into Rennes for the night. We went to La Phoenician, a Lebonese restaurant in the city (where the owner knows me, if that doesn't say something about what I've been doing since I've been here (eating) I don't know what does ...). We had an incredible meal of different mezze plates and finished it off with delicious honey desserts. We headed to our favorite bar Le Saint Michel, that we use to go to when we studied here. It was the same bartender who remembered us and he was really sweet and bought us drinks as we waited for him to get off work. Our original plan of heading home or going somewhere else failed when he invited us to a party he knew of down the road - and thought "when in Rennes." It ended up being incredible - some underground battle of the DJs. Strobe lights, bouncers, huge speakers and all the three of us danced with tons of other Frenchies to original beats by a male and female DJ until the wee hours of the morning. It was so so much fun and very surreal. The next day we slept in, made a nice brunch, and headed into town for a conference that was taking place in town on Feminism. There is a group in Rennes called "Mix Cité" and they have counterparts in Nantes, Paris, and Toulouse. Sunday there was lunch/discussion that we sat in on and while I barely participated it was so interesting to hear their interests and topics of discussion. I have been back to the regular meetings since and I'm very interested in continuing to learn about what they are doing in the community and in France. (In case anyone is interested, you can learn more here http://mixcite.rennes.free.fr/).  Sunday night we celebrated Halloween - yay American holidays ... - at one of the American assistants apartments, very fun - lots of costumes and too much candy - Halloween à la francais. (For lack of creativity, I went as Jackie O and Linds went as a French man ... très original).

Monday was Toussaint, "All Saints Day" in France, a huge holiday. We headed to Lindsay's old host family's house for lunch around noon and left at 7 pm ... talk about an epic lunch. It was so great to see them and her host mom is SO nice and an incredible cook. Tuesday we walked around Rennes, met some English assistants for galettes in town, met Fabienne (the German assistant I work with) for hot chocolate at Haricot Rouge (no joke, best hot chocolate I've ever had) and they played tourist as we wandered inside the Cathedral and visited some of the oldest parts of Rennes. Lindsay had to leave pretty early the next morning so we made dinner at home and met the assistants in town again for some Breton beer on tap before returning home for a good night's sleep.

It was so nice to have Lindsay here! It was almost like she never left Rennes and I am going to see her at the metro station in the morning for school. Both playing hostess worked out great and was so easy. We will see each other for New Years in Paris - I can't wait!!