Shifting Tides

This week I interviewed my close friend, Maggie Sheffield, on her visit to a small French village know as Luc Sur Mer. It is a small coastal town, which borders the English Channel, in North France; about 35 minutes form the larger city of Caen.

(image by Google)

Ms. Maggie went there for a foreign exchange program for school before she entered college. “It was a neat little town,” she said, “It had lots of good sea food! Their scallops were very good, and had this pinkish colored meat inside of them. There was plenty of good music and small markets.”

(Image by Google)

            “The tides there were amazing, they would receded to the length of a football field or pier length!” she described, giving me a vision of one minute there was an ocean at your beach, and then the next nothing but beach. It is because of these tides that a small town attraction and legend of sorts was created. The La maison de la baleine, or “the house of the whale”, is a brick building that holds a sort of tribute and museum of the town and has nice old story. Back in the year of the early 1900’s the great receding tides the town possesses shifted back as usual only this time to reveal a huge dead whale hidden beneath the water. Well, the town’s folk stripped the carcass and used it as best they could and hauled the skeleton up the beach and built a brick house around it to keep it. Today the whale sits just outside its little home and the house and he still stand and serve as a museum of sorts.

(image by Google)

            My friend went on to tell me about the really old cathedral that was there, the Basilica Beatae Mariae de la Delivrande. “It’s not the biggest or grandest as far as cathedrals go, but I thought it was beautiful. There used to be another much larger cathedral in Caen, but it was obliterated during WW2 by the bombs. However in Luc Sur Mer, not but 35 minutes from that location, that church was not touched. Not a single scratch. It did not have to have any renovations or rebuilding to it after the war, so it’s the original church as it was when it was built way back in the day.

(image by Google)

            Maggie then told me about her experience being a foreign exchange student. “It is a small town where everyone knows everyone else, like Ashland (VA) here.” She said. “It was so neat being the ONLY American in that whole town. That’s what I remember the most. They would want to try and talk to me in American, as apposed to just regular English. I had no idea there was a difference.” She said. “They would ask me to say things, say something American and I would ask, ‘like what?’” to which I smartly replied to her, “Howdy Y’all!” she chuckled and continued. “They would say, “describe what you see around you,” and I would, and they would all be fascinated, and all I was doing was describing the sand and little fish,” she smiled, “It made me feel special.” She said. “They all assumed that because I was American that I would have a bad taste in food, that I would not like French cuisine, but in truth I already had loved it, and had had things similar back home. So this at first was a little insulting, but I soon changed their view. I ate everything I was given and loved it all. “This may not be what you are used to” they would say.” Funny how stereotypes can catch up to us all isn’t it? Even to the most well rounded, humbled and educated ones as well like my friend. But the family she stayed with was very good to her and she made friends and forever remembers her stay in this small town.

            So if you are looking for an authentic experience where you will get the greatest stories of all, throw yourself out there, where you can teach and be taught. Be uncomfortable, lost and insulted, because you will soon make the greatest of friends, memories and feel the best about yourself

After I thanked her for her interview she added one last thing, “Oh, and they had big snails…And white cows!” she chuckled. I smiled, “Aww white cows!” we both like cows.

           

(image by Google)