This was intended to be a camping event, and we rented a luxury portapotty, but it rained like crazy, and the traveling families found a hospice in town. There were eight French families represented by one or both parents at some point, and most were not local, but had driven a long way. (I found the list of names!)
I traveled with Schuyler and David Waynforth and their kids, by train and then a rental car, to Baud where Heléne and Leon McNeill (Americans I've known a long time from Albuquerque) were living in an old farmhouse with a modern addition.
The kids played videogames and ran around while the adults talked. I was doing some real-time translation (or google was) by typing while David Waynforth spoke. A coupl of the attendees who didn't understand English were reading over my shoulder as google translate tried to keep up with me. 🙂 That was fun.
from notes at the time: Three days of doing things with several French families, children ranging from five months to fourteen. More conversations were in French than English, some were translated, some were awkwardly half and half. I think it was tiring for everyone. There were twenty kids altogether including McNeills and Waynforths, but never twenty all together in one place.[When Bea Mantovani said she wished she had been there, I responded:] Bea, I wish you could have been too. A woman named Claire had perfect English and accent from having lived in Montreal for ten years, and she was fun, too. She might be the tiredest person of all. There were others who could translate really well too. There were three or four adults who only had French, and most of the children. One boy knew a fair amount of English from video games and movies. |
Leon McNeil's photos are people at the house, first, followed by images from an outing to Hennebont to see a museum and some places his kids and the Waynforths' could run around.
My photos (← click to open a gallery; close with upper-right X)
After the official gathering was over, the neighbors (property owners, living in the newest of the three houses on the same property, the McNeills living in the second oldest, which had also been a ruin before it was remodeled to rent) gave us a tour of their old apple cider press, and basket-making equipment, and I witnessed the potato-digging of the gift of potatoes for one of our meals while I was there. Those are some of the mysteries that might be in my photos and Leon's.
Here is a photo from where we stayed, of the older house (the part that's left) and the new house (built in the mid-20th Century). The kitchen of the oldest house was still fastened to the house we were in, and there was a small door that shows behind the computer the kids were using in some photos, and it was probaby still the kitchen in the 18th and 19th centuries, and maybe early 20th? But it was a shed/barn these days.
First Views of the McNeills' House
The Princess Room! (Sophie's room, where I slept)
