Tag: Adam

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Le Tour de France

One of the coolest things that we’ve had the privilege of experiencing during our time here, occurred last month when le Tour de France, often referred to simply as le Tour, made a stop through Albertville.

For those not familiar with le Tour, it is perhaps the most infamous bike race in the world which takes place every July in France. The cyclists spend three weeks traversing the French countryside. Parts of the route, called stages, vary each year while others remain the same. This year the route totaled almost 2,100 miles over the 21 stages, which means the cyclists averaged roughly 100 miles per day, and this includes several extremely intense climbs through the mountains. Each year the race ends going up Champs-Élysées Avenue, the most famous avenue in Paris.

While listening to a French Duolingo podcast the other day, I learned that the race was actually started in 1903 by a sports newspaper which was trying to create extra content to cover during the slower summer months (talk about knocking it out of the park). The race quickly caught on and now attracts the best cyclists from around the world. Historically, the race has been exclusively for men, but this summer the first women’s edition to le Tour took place as well.

The race is hugely popular here and therefore to serve as a host city is a big deal, bringing with it a lot of publicity and visitors. Le Tour is sponsored by big corporations and a parade of corporate-sponsored vehicles, called la caravane du Tour de France, usually drives ahead of the cyclists and throws out cadeaux (presents) to the spectators who are waiting on the sides of the road.

This year Albertville served as the starting location for stage 11. On the morning of the race we went down to the race route to check out la caravane. Now if you are like us, when you hear the word parade you probably think of high school marching bands, local business floats pulled by trucks and local politicians putzing down the road while throwing out candy and interacting with the spectators. Well don’t tell this to those participating in la caravane. The floats that participate in la caravane are actually vehicles themselves and they fly down the road at more than 25mph, many while blasting music and throwing out goodies such as t-shirts, key chains, hats, pencils, product samples, bags of crackers, etc. (see videos below). It was an absolutely wild experience to witness this!

After the parade we went and checked out the large plaza area where the cyclists would eventually start from. Here there was a large stage where cyclists were being introduced as well as tons more vendors giving out free stuff including temporary tattoos, stickers, snap bracelets and shots of espresso (obviously this was our favorite).

About two hours after the parade, it was time for the race to begin. We left the plaza and went and found a spot along the race route to watch the cyclists go by, which took all of about 20 seconds (see video below). I should mention that for about the first mile of their ride through Albertville, they were not actually racing. The cyclists were only casually biking through the city as more of a show for the spectators. This stage of the race began once they got out into the mountain roads. All in all, this was a really cool experience and one that we will not soon forget!

– Adam

In this video you can hear the woman ask “Est-ce que vous voulez des cadeaux Albertville?” which means “Do you want some presents Albertville?”. To our surprise, many of the adults along the route were just as excited as the kids when racing to grab the goodies thrown from la caravane.
These floats belong to Senseo, the official coffee sponsor of le Tour. You can also see in this video that everyone on the floats has to be harnessed in because of how quickly they are moving.
This was our favorite float…simply a huge bottle of laundry detergent flying down the street!
When the floats are moving so fast, so are the goodies they throw out. My tip for you: make sure you have a good grip on your phone!
Here are the roughly 180 cyclists making their way through town.

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Bike Trip!

France is well known for its bike culture, especially for its world-renowned race, Le Tour de France. Unlike many French stereotypes which we’ve found don’t actually check out (think berets and black and white striped shirts), the French really do love biking! And about a month ago I had the opportunity to benefit from this love of biking!

About 30 miles from Albertville, there is a beautiful city called Annecy which is situated on the northern end of Lake Annecy. There is a nice bike bath that runs almost the entire way between Albertville and Annecy so two friends and I decided we would try and make the trip there and back.

We left on a Saturday morning around 8am and we had an absolutely gorgeous day for biking. There were hardly any clouds in the sky and the temperature was in the low 80s. The first twentyish miles went by rather smoothly so when we hit the southern tip of the lake, we decided to take a turn to the east so that we could do a lap around the lake which we knew would include some hills. The hills were quite tough, but the view on the top of the lake was gorgeous! Also, the next couple of miles coasting down the slope was amazing! We stopped in Annecy for lunch and ice cream (they are known for their ice cream) before heading back.

We ended up doing the ride in about 4.5 hours and it was a really fun experience, especially since it isn’t one that I expected to have before coming to France. While on the trail, we must have seen a couple hundred other bikers, most of which travelled in groups of 10 – 20. I will say that we definitely stood out as foreigners as we rode our mountain bikes and wore normal athletic clothes while pretty much everyone else was on road bikes and wearing full racing uniforms.

To add to this, in a just a few days, Le Tour de France will actually come through Albertville. The 11th stage of the race starts in Albertville and we plan to go down with the kids to check it out. Stay tuned for another blog post on this experience!

– Adam

See below for some pictures and videos of this trip.

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Fun Facts About France!

We have now been living in France for over five months, which means we are nearly to the halfway point of our time here. We have really been enjoying Albertville and thought it might be fun to share some of the more bizarre or comical things we’ve come across in French culture and in the French language.

We’ll start with the language:

  1. The French word « avocat » means both attorney and avocado. This was very comical to us when we first arrived here and, only knowing the avocado translation, were seeing signs around town for what appeared to be an office for avocados. 

2. Rollercoasters in French are called “montagnes russes” which literally translates to “Russian mountains”. 

3. They have two different words for twins: one if they are twin boys and one if they are twin girls. The word for twin girls is “jumelles” which is also the word for binoculars. 

4. The French name for a magic wand is a “baguette magique” which as you can you probably tell is literally just a magical baguette. 

5. The French language loves their vowels which leads to words like “jouaient” which has five consecutive vowels. Not to be confused with jouer, jouais, jouait, joué, or jouai which are all different forms of this same verb that all have the same exact pronunciation. I also just came across “créée” this week which is fairly unique with its three consecutive e’s.

6. Counting in French is the absolute weirdest. Things are fairly normal from 1-69 and you are feeling pretty good about yourself. But then you hit 70 and instead of having a new word like seventy in English, they call 70 soixante-dix which is literally « sixty-ten ». This continues with sixty-eleven (71), sixty-twelve (72) until they drop another bomb on you at 80 which is quatre-vingt which is literally « four-twenty ». Ninety? Yeah that’s « quatre-vingt-dix » which is literally « four-twenty-ten ». With these naming conventions they’ve turned simple counting into a mental math exercise.

In terms of French culture, here are a few things we’ve found interesting / funny / surprising. 

  1. Peeing in public is legal here. It’s not uncommon to walk up to the grocery store and there will be a guy peeing in the grass on the edge of the parking lot. 
  2. A cup of coffee isn’t really a thing in French culture. If you order a “café” which is the word for coffee, it will be an espresso. However, they do love their espressos and most restaurants offer them for after your meal. We have had no problem adjusting to this. 
  3. Food is a huge aspect of French culture and they place a lot of value on where it comes from, with a huge emphasis on local production. This means that restaurants and bakeries change their menu frequently to match what ingredients are in season. They also vary their prices based on the specific ingredients. For example, in the grocery store there may be three or four types of hummus of the same brand but each of them will be priced differently. 
  4. Lunch is a big deal here! We get a 2+ hour lunch break as does Mia in the public school system. It’s very common for many small, local stores to close for a couple of hours in the afternoon for a lunch break. 
  5. Most restaurants that are open for lunch will close for several hours before opening again for dinner. The French eat a much later dinner so often restaurants won’t open up again until 6:30 or 7. This makes having dinner out as a family very difficult since our kids usually go to bed at 7 and become pumpkins by 8. 
  6. College in France is nearly free for most students—free as in there is little to no tuition paid out of pocket. Now taxes on the other hand…

It’s been a lot of fun to learn about and experience a new culture, even if we are just here for a year. It has left us all the more excited for this same learning process in Senegal! 

– Adam

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Goûter

A couple of weeks into being here in France, I met the dad (I will call him Henry) of one of Mia’s classmates while waiting to pick her up from school. Thankfully, he spoke a good amount of English so our conversation could last longer than a minute or two :D. Before I knew it, he was inviting our family over to his house that weekend for a “goûter” (pronounced GOO-TAY). I accepted the invite (without knowing what a goûter was) as I was just thrilled to have received an invitation to a French family’s home.

As I would come to learn, goûter is an afternoon snack meant for children, usually around 4 of 4:30pm. Two important things to note. First, French families don’t usually eat dinner until 7 or 8pm so the goûter tides the kids over since they usually eat lunch around noon. Second, this is typically the only snack French children get during the day, so it is very precious to them. This was very shocking to us, as our kids pretty much snack continuously throughout the day.

After having to cancel two weeks in a row due to sick kids, we were finally able to head to this family’s house for goûter last weekend, although it was only Mia and I that went since Desmond had another fever. This was a really neat experience as it was our first time inside a French home and it was Mia’s first play date with someone from school. They served crepes with Nutella, coconut flakes, honey or jam as toppings. Much to my delight, I was also invited to eat. We ended up spending about three and half hours there and it was a really fun time to get to know Henry and his family better. It was also excellent French practice for me as Henry’s wife doesn’t speak any English.

We plan to have this family over to our house for a meal sometime soon and to visit a local pool with them during our two week break from school (2/12 – 2/27). Watch out for another post about our French pool experience!

-Adam

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The Chief End of Man

Earlier this month we put on our first ever garage sale. As someone who is not very sentimental, I was in my element going through our house room by room and putting things into our sell pile. I was loving clearing up space in our home and making progress towards eventually getting rid of most of our things when we move to France.

One evening leading up to the sale I was going through some of Mia and Desmond’s toys. At one point Mia came over to me and started playing with one of her old toys which I had already put into the sell pile. I had a conversation with her about how she could play with the toy a little longer but then we were going to sell it. Over the next couple of days Mia repeatedly came up to me asking if we were going to sell some of her favorite toys. With each of these questions I felt a bit of sadness and guilt that we were making her part with toys that she still enjoyed and played with.

Thankfully, God brought to mind a passage from a book on parenting that I’m currently reading. In this passage the author is talking about the objectives we have for our kids. The passage goes like this, “If your objectives are anything other than ‘Man’s chief end is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever,’ you teach your children to function in the culture on its terms. How do we do this? We pander to their desires and wishes. We teach them to find their soul’s delight in going places and doing things. We attempt to satisfy their lust for excitement. We fill their young lives with distractions from God. We give them material things and take delight in their delight in possessions. Then we hope that somewhere down the line they will see that a life worth living is found only in knowing and serving God.”

I realized that I was taking delight in Mia’s and Desmond’s delight in their toys. On a basic level, I think this is natural and it’s good to give gifts to our kids that they will enjoy. But I also realized that I was missing a golden opportunity to point them to Jesus; to communicate to them that their toys will not satisfy them. The only thing that satisfies us is God and, therefore, the only true path to joy is seeking our Creator, rather than created things. I suspect I will be having many conversations like this over the coming months as well as over the coming years. It’s a truth I regularly need to be reminded of myself. Thankfully we serve an incredibly patient and gracious God.

– Adam