Merc'her Mecredi : Shipwreck edition.

Mr. O is out of town for the next few weeks working alongside a team of French and American sailors looking for a very important shipwreck (cray, right??). I know I'm probably not supposed to be surprised anymore at the strong relationship between the U.S. and France, but every now and then something comes up and I'm just in awe at how long these two countries have been allies.

During the American Revolutionary War a naval fighter named John Paul Jones (aka the father of the U.S. Navy) set sail for France "with orders to assist the American cause however possible". King Louis XVI was gracious enough to place an old merchant ship at the disposal of John Paul Jones who then outfitted the older vessel and called it the Bonhomme Richard.

 source

In 1779 the Bonhomme Richard with four other ships set off for Ireland to provide a diversion for a large French and Spanish naval fleet approaching England. The British Royal Navy chased after the small squadron of ships, but the Bonhomme Richard was able to sail around Scotland and into the North Sea. The Royal Navy eventually caught up with the squadron off the coast of Flamborough Head and was excited to engage its brand new warship, the H.M.S. Serapis, into battle.

The Serapis being faster and having more guns than the Bonhomme Richard quickly out powered the older vessel. After two cannons on the Bonhomme Richard burst, killing several crew members, the British captain laughed and asked if they would like to surrender. John Paul Jones famously replied, "Sir, I have not yet begun to fight" and continued to attack eventually overtaking the Serapis and winning the Battle of Flamborough Head (he actually latched his ship onto the Serapis stopping its maneuvering and fatal shooting). Unfortunately, the Bonhomme Richard was severely damaged in the battle and sunk off the coast of England.

The possibility of finding the shipwreck would be great for France and the United States, but . . . it's a pretty old ship that's been buried at the bottom of the North Sea for a couple hundred years. Several different teams have searched for this shipwreck for a number of years without any luck. Each year they make progress, but I think the real progress is the enduring relationship between these two countries (on the ships and in port calls, no better way to bond than over a beer).

As a side note, all of this shipwreck talk has made me really want to watch this terrible movie:

I know, I KNOW. I'm just gonna have to make do with our dvd of How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days . . .

Potluck Problems.

FFF (France's Freshman Fifteen) has arrived. I've tried my best for months to get my sweat on indoors despite the bad weather, but with recent guests in town I've fallen off the wagon. We've all been there. You visit a new place, you're forced to eat out 3-4 times a day, and when you come back home suddenly that extra glass of wine or afternoon saucisson plate doesn't seem like a big deal. I've tried to be better about my eating habits and the one thing I know can go is late night wine and cake with the pottery ladies after class (and you know they're all heavy handed pourers).

Instead of telling them I'm on a diet, which elicits all sorts of reactions, I lied and told them I had too many margaritas the night before (weekend after our Cinco de Mayo party). The next week I told them the same thing and by the third week they brought it up on their own. One lady said she had never had a margarita and asked if I could make some for the end of year potluck. Well, all right.

The next week the ladies started getting serious about who was bringing what to the potluck. The leader of the group started assigning dishes. She started off shouting a number of plates I had no idea what they were, so I waited for her to name something I recognized to sign up and bring a dish:

It's Awards Season!

This crazy site has recently received two blog awards! Two?!! Well, to be honest I didn't exactly receive both awards at the same time . . . or even recently. In February, the lovely Lady Lancelot aka Kristen@un homme et une femme presented me the Liebster Blog award and this week artsy-craftsy Abby@J'Adore Ma Vie gave me the Versatile Blogger Award.

Both of these ladies arrived in France around the same time I did and have been an inspiration for not only adjusting to life in France, but thriving in it.  Kristen just launched a new initiative, The Kale Project, to try and bring kale to France (right now the focus is Paris, but Brittany is a huge agricultural area so it's bound to come here next). Abby has ditched the 9-5 lifestyle to work at her family-in-law's bed and breakfast and came up with the brilliant idea to cook up and offer delicious Tex Mex cuisine to those lucky residents and visitors in central France. To think they even read my blog just makes me feel special and gooey inside. 

These two awards have some qualities in common (being that one has a rule and the other has several) so I've decided to get crazy and combine them into one big award ceremony post.

Le Drame Continues.

Remember that theater class I signed up for to improve my french? Well, I haven't been talking about it much, because there hasn't been any class. One week the teacher can't make it, the next there's a holiday, the next an "assemblée générale", after that another holiday, and another holiday, and pretty soon it's been almost 2 months since we've had class.

To be honest, I've reeeeeally wanted to quit. The.class.is.frustrating. It's comprised of all levels of french with all different nationalities and one week we'll rehearse a piece and the next we have to repeat it all over again, because someone forgot where to go or what to do because they didn't write it down. To top it all off we haven't had one single class with the entire group (there's only six of us) and there's less than a month till the show! 

Poster for our show.

Merc'her Mai : A Lesson on Cinco de Mayo in France.

I promise my neglect of this blog was not because of my depression after our friends returned to the states. You see we've had about 3 or 4 glorious day in Brittany with real, semi warm sunshine (albeit mixed with rain) and I've been taking full advantage of the good weather. More than that, last week we also had to prepare for a Cinco de Mayo party and 30 homemade tortillas do not make themselves in one night.

As one of the few, if not only, American couples in Brest we often feel like it's our duty to introduce the French to our American celebrations and culture. Being from Texas that often entails forcing foreigners to consume large quantities of Tex-Mex and then telling me how superior my cooking is to the two wannabe Tex-Mex restaurants in our city. However, since no other day makes me crave margaritas with chips and salsa than Cinco de Mayo (and homemade enchiladas take a lot of work so I only break out the recipe once in a blue super moon) we took the opportunity of a well timed 5th of May to host a dinner party and acquaint our French friends with this lovely cultural celebration.

One of the things I've learned about sharing our traditions with the French is to always have a history lesson ready. We learned this the hard way when I sent Mr. O off to work with a big batch of these bad boys. I'm sure the IT department at his work gave him a second look after multiple hits on "history behind the Irish car bomb" kept popping up from his computer. The French love learning the numbers, facts and nitty gritty about all our strange customs.