Celebrating St. Lucia, Visiting St. Malo, and Being Grateful to the Saints for Efficient Bureaucracy.

This is going to be pretty quick, as I am in the midst of packing for my Christmas adventures which (fingers crossed) involve me leaving tomorrow and going to Wales. The Eurostar had a nice little breakdown earlier this week due to a snow storm (one serious to actually let some snow stick in Rennes!), but it seems as if it’ll be back to normal tomorrow.

Last Tuesday I went into Rennes for one of the other assistant’s St. Lucia’s day celebration. I was a big fan of this plan, both because Kirsten was my favorite American Girl Doll in my youth and she celebrated St. Lucia’s day and because I like to ignore the 75% of my heritage that is German and instead focus on the small bit of Scandinavian in me. We drank apple cider and ate sweet rolls (reminded me of all my boller in Norway!) and chatted about the upcoming holidays. It was a lovely holiday gathering!

Friday was a very exciting day, as I finally (FINALLY) finished up the last of my requirements for my French Visa to be official. I’m now legally allowed to leave the country and come back, which is excellent timing as I’ll be leaving the country in just a few days. I had to go to the Office of Immigration and Integration for a medical visit. All of us in Brittany are lucky, as people in other academies had to go to several offices, while we only had one stop. I was expecting that this would be a full days outing with lots of complications and many missing forms and great confusion. In anticipation for this, I arrived almost an hour early, although I didn’t actually expect them to do anything with me that early. Much to my surprise, they only needed four things from me (my letter that gave my appointment time, my passport, a copy of my lease, and a passport photo), and they started with me about five minutes after I arrived. They checked to make sure I’d gotten all my shots, made sure I wasn’t going too overboard with the bread and cheese, gave me my height in meters (1.76, I think it was), and then shuttled me off to another area for my chest x-ray. I’d also heard horror stories about how you had to walk down a hall practically naked for this chest x-ray (which would not surprise me at all), but this was not the case. You went from the changing room to the x-ray room, where there was just a doctor, and you even got to keep your jeans on. After that, I actually had to wait about five minutes for my personal visit with the doctor, and that was the longest I’d had to wait all day. The doctor informed me that I did not have tuberculosis (which is good, because if I DID, I’ve already exposed hundreds of French students to it), listened to me breathe, took my blood pressure, and then sent me back to the main desk, where I got a nifty little paper and sticker to put in my passport. Voila! The whole process took less than an hour. It was efficient by US standards, which is absolutely amazing for French standards.

I had decided it was time for a day trip this weekend, especially since I had four days with nothing to do before my departure to the UK. So on Saturday I headed for Saint-Malo with Lauren. Saint-Malo is a coastal town north of Rennes, and it was absolutely beautiful. The region got a bunch (read: two inches) of snow on Friday, so everything looked very Christmassy. We took the train up and then walked to the old city (the new city is outside the walls, as they discovered that walls are not conducive to cars), which is still walled. Unlike Avignon’s walls, you can walk on top of Saint-Malo’s and look at the ocean. It’s a very popular place in the summer as the city is surrounded by nice beaches. We spent the day walking around the walls, wandering the streets, eating a DELICIOUS lunch of a chèvre salad, lamb with mashed potatoes, and a chocolate crêpe for dessert, and stopping in at several cafés and any cute shops. They also had a Marché de Noël just outside the walls, and we had some mulled wine there while browsing. We stumbled across Père Noël, who was handing out candy to the kids. There was also a group of Guadeloupians (or at least, I assumed they were Guadeloupians as they had sashes that said Guadeloupe on them) dancing, singing, and playing the drums hanging around. It was a lovely day, and while I’d love to go into more details, it is currently 8:33PM, I have to hop on a bus at 7:12AM tomorrow, and no, I’m not done packing yet. So, I leave you with a picture of the lovely Saint-Malo, and I’ll be back after Christmas with a hopefully more substantial update.

Joyeux Noël!