First Impressions

Well, we've been in France more than a whole month now!  We're getting a feel for life here and how to fit in.

When we arrived here we were worn out.  With only one night's sleep in 48 hours of travel, we were running on pure adrenaline.

As the van pulled into the Ark, Christiane (chris-ti-AHN) and Robert (roe-BEAR), one of the founding couples of the Ark at Guenvez came over quickly to warmly welcome us.  "The Americans are here!" Robert laughed, "You are a mystery to us.  Everyone says, 'What's the news of the Americans this week?'  They think you are a phantom, but now you are here!"

Elisabeth welcomed us into the middle apartment of a "triplex", the same apartment where we stayed 2 years ago when we visited for a week.  There we found the two large rolly suitcases we had sent in August, full of all the winter items we thought we wouldn't need for a while.  HA!  We had no idea in August that we wouldn't meet up with the suitcases again until chilly mid-November.

Reading the community
schedule and rules!

The first two nights we went to bed at 8pm and woke up tired at 9:30am the next morning!  We all took turns waking in the middle of the night for an hour or two, but even the kids just shuffled around and eventually went back to sleep.  Our bodies were so confused!

We spent Friday through Sunday shifting our bodies' schedules and setting up our little nest.  We moved furniture around and unpacked the bags we had mailed to find our favorite clothes again.  We hung indoor laundry lines and cleaned out cob webs.  Our house began to feel like a home!

And so, we find ourselves in the French countryside, eating food grown in gardens we can see from our window and cheese from cows we visit in the back pasture.  We have easy access to three different types of long-fermented sourdough bread, baked fresh twice weekly in a beautiful stone oven where we can visit anytime to see what new process Nico is learning.  Water flows to a tap in our apartment directly from the source: a spring on the farm.

A heavy dew falls at night and, through our large back windows, we watch each new morning unfold as the rising sun burns the dew off plants and dries the mist from the air.  Our little apartment is super insulated and almost air-tight, with the added benefit of being "insulated" by other apartments on two sides. The aforementioned large south-facing windows give us the gift of free, natural solar heat that we dont have to work for.  We have a wood heat stove, but even with nights down to the 40's F we haven't had to fire it up often.

Here's what we will do with any photos you send us! :)

Monday through Saturday, a bell rings at 9:30am and everyone stops what they're doing and meets on a porch behind the main barn.  We sit on wooden benches and look out over a field as the sun rises over the tree line, or watch the rain fall in waves over the great expanse of the field.  We sit in silence, read scripture, sing, and recite the liturgy together.  On our first day joining this worshipful gathering, I didn't know what to expect.  After a short silence allowing everyone to arrive and settle in, Benoit began singing, "Allelujah".  The other voices joined in and shifted together between unison and harmony.  The sights surrounding us and the sounds of their voices were all so beautiful!  I found out later that the song was The Magnificat, and they gave me permission to record them singing!

Several members of the community singing the "Cantique de Marie",
which we sing every morning at the 9:30am prayers.
This is the view we have, on a (rare) sunny winter day!

Did I make it all sound pretty good?  :)

Of course, there are some other realities to mix in.  We don't have a bathroom or hot water in our apartment.  (The composting outhouse is very close and well-taken-care of... it really doesn't stink!  We use a mixture of bran and sawdust to hide the sights and smells of what lies within.  A hot water heater is housed in the barn where the shower lives... whew!)

Sweet people!

One of our most difficult challenges is found in the long-standing community schedule.  Monday through Thursday the community meal is at 1pm.  At this time I would hope to be in the midst of our naptime routine!  But, as I have a tendency to "hermit" away, I have really tried to push myself to figure out how we can fit into this rhythm.  I feel like I have to fight the boys to sleep by 2:30pm and then fight them awake at 4pm so we can have a reasonable bedtime at 8pm.  They easily and naturally sleep for around 2 hours, so I'd prefer to put them down by 1:30pm so they'd naturally wake up by 4pm without the fights.  In addition, the "mother break" I've gotten used to is nearly cut in half!  This all makes me very sad.

The sun's got a regular ol' desk job here: rising shortly after 9am and setting around 5pm.  Neither Nico nor I have ever lived this far north of the Equator, and it's really different!  We can go stargazing at 7am!  We just passed the winer solstace, so beginning now, we'll eventually go from needing candlelight at our 8am breakfast to our alarms sounding well after the 4am sunrise, and from candlelit dinners at 6pm to the bedtime routine finishing long before the post-10pm sunset.

It rains a ton here, often while the sun is still shining.  I think part of each day is dedicated to precipatation, so much so that Nico likened this climate to a rain forest.  Humidity is often quite thick, and to prove it, one night I hung clothes on the line in our house.  We had a hearty fire, which, per my previous six years of experience, I assumed would dry the clothes in a few hours.  However, in the morning we awoke to still-damp, sour smelling clothing on the lines!  Did I mention the house is nearly air-tight?  New systems and understandings must be formed!  Any suggestions, Johnstons?  :)

Since we're surrounded by healthy gardens, we're also surrounded by healthy spiders.  They manage to pop up anywhere, dead or alive, and seem to easily grow hand-sized.  (Well, Moisés' hand.)  My childhood training included developing a mix of fear and disgust of such helpful little creatures, which I've begun overcoming in the past several years when I lived in my basement on Madison Street and as I work in gardens.

The hand-sized fellows come in two categories: wispy house spiders and thick, chunky, muscly-looking ones that you're sure just want to jump on your face.  Now, I don't want a house full of the wispy ones, but I can get over them pretty quick.  It's the chunky ones that require some serous inner work.  When I see one, we usually both groan that each other exist, then we look at each other straight in the eyes, all of our eyes, and attempt a friendly "hello".

I met eight-legged Sir Alaric in the outhouse our first day here.  (If you know where his name comes from I will put a slice of raw, stinky cheese in an envelope and mail it to you.)*  Every so often I glance at him when I enter the tiny space to remind myself that we're friends and he hunches low, threatening to gnaw off my ears.  Now Frida, on the other hand, I didn't meet right away.

Frida lives in the shower, which I haven't yet confirmed, but I'm pretty sure they purchased off the movie set of one of the Saw films.  Hand-sized wispy spiders line every corner where two walls meet, or where a wall touches the ceiling.  Disclaimer for the community: The shower is not being kept up well at this point because it was always meant to be temporary.  In the next few weeks they'll finish building a new, beautiful, red pine shower room that looks as if it's jumped out of a spa magazine.

Long about my third or fourth shower, I walked to the uninsulated barn while the morning was still dark.  I noted how beautiful the frost sparkled on the grass in the light of my headlamp, then shivered as I realized I'd be showering in frost conditions.  I entered the shower stall cringing, as usual, and Frida and I immediately caught a glimpse of each other and gasped, having to get over each other's existance.  She acted as though she was not bothered by me for a little while as she pretended to repair her web, but she eventually grumbled her way to the wall behind the shower curtain.

"She's probably been here every time," I told myself, nonchalantly, "She doesn't want to hang out with me either.  All my other showers have been just fine with her hiding there behind that curtain."  I went on verbally encouraging myself until I realized that if anyone else was in the barn they could probably hear me talking to myself through the plywood and foamboard walls, and as I was still new here, I should probably quit.

So, I hope I've given good evidence that we're in a pretty even mixture of paradise and challanges.  I would like to share one final story to give a joyful picture of the sweet community here.

On December 6th, we had a surprise special guest at lunch.  Marion, one of the short-term folks here with a year-long commitment, appeared at the door to the community kitchen in a red suit with white trim, a bushy white beard, and a red bishop's miter.  Looking like a cross between Santa and the pope, it was Saint Nicholas!  I learned later that day that Santa Claus doesn't exist here as I know of him, and that Saint Nicholas comes on the 6th with little goodies for the children: simple sweets and an orange.  Christmas day is reserved for family gift exchange without the additional gifts that have passed through the chimney.

Marion has had past acting experience and had the French-speakers rolling with laughter as she sifted through a large old book, looking for the names of the children in the community to give them each a witty message of encouragement and a light-hearted challenge, specific to each person.  Saint Nicholas spoke in some kind of accented-French to each child, beginning with the oldest.  My boys watched every other person get a comedic speech and a goody bag until their turn, and they were delighted to be included in the festivities.  Yanni, the youngest and therefore the last one, didn't really know what was going on, but was squealling and bouncing with joy and anticipation until it was finally his turn, which filled all the rest of us with laughter and joy.

We know it is hard for our families (and Malakai and Philo Wettig) to not be able to see Yanni at this stage of life, but you can all be sure that he's being thoroughly enjoyed here, as a little squishy mascot should be.  :)
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*Just kidding.