Marché

One of my favorite things to do in France is to go to the market. I love the social interaction and real lifeness of it. The vendors are usually so friendly and fun to talk to. It's a great place to practice language (like THIS TIME) and culture (like THIS TIME) and have sweet little moments that help me remember why I love living here (like THIS TIME).

For the last five or six months, I haven't been able to go to the market while in Bes, because I had class during the hours it was open. So sad. Well, one day last month, a teacher interrupted our class in a bit of a panic. She explained that she'd sent her beginner's level class off to the market with a scavenger hunt list of things to find in order to learn vocabulary...and had lost two of her students in the process. (It was a little amusing that she was so worried about two students who don't speak French being lost in Bes...it's such a small little town, surrounded by a river, and the school is on the river. Most of us figured her "lost" students weren't lost, but in a café, which is what most of us do when our teachers send us out with a "speak to people on the street" assignment.)

The Brazilian's eyes lit up and she asked if our class could go to the market one day for class too. Teacher thought for a minute, (after all, we already know all our vocabulary words that one would learn at the market), and decided she could still make a lesson out of it. So for my last day of class at the school...we went shopping.

We wandered around for a bit, and then suddenly I saw some large eggs. They were the biggest eggs I've ever seen in my life! We asked the vendor what kind of eggs they were, but she responded with a word I didn't know. (So much for "we already know all our vocabulary words that one would learn at the market"...!) The Brazilian understood, and of course Prof understood, and they began asking the woman all sorts of questions of how to prepare the eggs and what to serve with them...the whole while I was listening in hoping for a clue that help me figure out what kind of egg it was. After five minutes, I was still lost.

I whispered to Prof that I still didn't understand what kind of egg it was. She said the word again, and feeling a little ashamed at how clueless I was being at the moment, explained that I didn't know what that word meant. You know the song, "I just haven't met you yet" by Michael Buble? Language is sort of like that...you can't know/understand a word that you haven't learned yet. (I got that analogy from a fellow classmate at school...)

The wheels quickly turned in Prof's head as she tried to decide whether to explain a description of the bird until I figured it out, or to just cheat and tell me the English word. For once, she went with the easier option and said, "Goose!"

Goose eggs! Oh! Then I was able to explain that a goose egg means zero in English, or a big bump on your head. It's amazing all you can say when you know a simple vocabulary word. So...before notpoems asks, goose in French is une oie. Prof bought two eggs to make into an omelet. I didn't buy any since I was having dinner at a friend's house that night and leaving for Marseille the next day...but if I ever see them again, I will certainly buy one so I can know what a goose egg omelet tastes like!

I also saw two typical French eats: frog legs and escargot.

For more photos from the market, click HERE.