Our adventure in la Fôret de Brocéliande was really fun. Let me tell you all about it:
Groups vert and rouge read Le Roi Arthur (King Arthur) in literature class, and it just so happens that the big forest that is featured in the legend is located in Bretagne, extremely close to Rennes. The forest is called Brocéliande and it’s absolutely beautiful, let me tell you. I’ll recount the whole trip.
The trip was on Friday, so we had to go to class in the morning. Friday first we have history, and we took a big test on Colbert, mercantilism, and control of religions. Knock on wood, but I feel really good about it, much better than any of the other tests we took this year in history. We’re hoping for an A (shut up, Arcadia High, you have no idea how hard it is to score 17 over here). Then, we had the best culture class all year, where we had a really cool discussion and debate about religious symbols in school. It’s so interesting to see the difference between French and American points of view. Then, we had art history (disco!), and English in our color group, which was really weird.
Finally, we had lunch and then the buses came and we set off for the forest. It only took about an hour to get there, and the first thing we did was drop off our bags at the youth hostel. Then, it was back in the bus for a mini drive and then we were standing in front of the giant forest ready to set off for our hike.
OK, OK, so they warned us ahead of time…wear boots! But I don’t have rain boots, and unlike Lilly and someone else, I didn’t really feel like rushing out to Aigle during lunch to buy a pair for 100Î, so I was hiking in Converse. I mean, how bad can the mud be? Answer: bad! Long story short, there was a ton of mud, and my Converse came out looking fully brown. Exciting! The hike was really fun though; we were all frolicking through the forest yelling “Oh mon Dieu! Je viens de voir Merlin!” And the mud wasn’t really so bad, actually. Once you accept the fact that your shoes, not to mention socks and probably pants, are going to be caked in mud, it becomes like a weird game of squishiness. I don’t even know how long our hike lasted, but two or three hours, and then we climbed back up the hill to the little, tiny village where our youth hostel is, and we all got ready for dinner.
Maggie, Lucie and I shared the room that was called “Arthur” – it said so on the door. This made us very happy in a ‘ha ha we have the coolest room name’ kind of way, although Lucie pointed out that it was probably cooler to be in Merlin, but quand même, Arthur rocks. As soon as we got our bed sheets from downstairs in a room that smelled of rancid socks, we made our beds and decided that we were literally dying of hunger. So, we got permission from Mme. Emmanuelli to dash across the street to the tiny tiny grocery store, and we went over there and bought much to much food (pain au chocolat, cookies, and Pringles) and then ran back to our room and ate practically all of it within a span of five minutes. Then, we all went to the kitchen to help Mme. Pallicot do the final preparations for dinner.
Cooking was exciting. Me and Maggie peeled pears, and then sliced then into tiny pieces for soup. I also tied ribbons around menus with Mike Deasy, and we made the dining room super festive. Lucie and Maggie discovered the relative difficulty in chopping up pâté, and we stole tiny bites of chicken.
Our dinner was amazing. All (half) of SYA sat at big long tables and ate a medieval feast, in honor of King Arthur. We sat with Danielle, Austin and Lela, and had an interesting meal discussing random stuff and random gossip (they’re kind of SYA’s gossip connection, and I mean that in a good way mostly). We had soupe d’orties (nettle soup), which was green and really good. Then pâté (Pascal gave us tips to avoid the liver bits) with bread, which was very French. Then, duck (yum yum quack!) and then quail (Danielle got kind of freaked out and felt bad, kind of funny) and finally weird cookies. The meal was so good! Mme. Pallicot is amazing.
Finally, we all wandered outside into the dark, following Pascal to a surprise event. (We thought we were going back to the youth hostel, but he suddenly turned us in the other direction saying, “I could have sworn it was over here, right?”) We ended up all sitting around and Pascal and Mme. Emmanuelli read us Breton and Alsacien ghost stories, during which Mr. Brochu fell asleep, much to our amusement. We were all really tired. Finally, the night came to an end at 11:30 and we were all released back to our rooms to sleep. Lucie, Maggie and I were out cold by 12:30.
The next day, we had breakfast of bread and hot chocolate, and then packed up and hopped on the bus for home. On the bus ride back, we listened to Max and Nick Flinn discussing politics, specifically Israel and Palistine, and learned that Max isn’t just cynical, but really a pessimist too. Hahahaha. Anyway, we were back at Fac de Droit before you can say “Oh my god, do you guys realize you argued about this for the whole bus ride?” and then our trip to the forest was sadly over!
I got postcards though, and I’m going to put them on my new postcard wall.
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