La route ne tue pas toujours

So, probably one of the most awesome things I have seen on this trip so far has been this road sign, which says "la route ne tue pas toujours" and has a handicap symbol below it. It is so delightfully morbid that I have decided to name this blog after it. I'm also a little bit confused about what the purpose of the sign is really, besides to remind people that they can be forever condemned to a wheelchair after and auto accident, and also to imply (it seems to me) that this might be worse than death? The signs don't say anything else about drinking or speeding, they just seem to be there to remind you of all the spinal damage/loss of limbs/brain function that you might suffer every time you enter a car. Lovely. This is why I love France.

I've spent the last week getting over jetlag and traveling around Brittany with my mom, who came with me for the first two weeks because she is on vacation. As a result, I haven't actually gotten to Mayenne yet or seen the high school and middle school I will be teaching at (this happens tomorrow), but I have seen lots of other cool things...

Starting with the Techo Parade! The day we arrived in Paris we were wandering around the city and heard this booming bass line coming from somewhere around a corner. Naturally, we followed said bass line to the source and found a gigantic line of truck booming techno followed by thousand of drugged out teenagers. It was excellent. People even climbed up on to bus stops and public toilets to dance and rock out.

Besides that the only real highlight to Paris was me leaving my brand new cell phone in the hotel, which, although not surprising, was supremely irritating.

Other than that we have been all over Brittany, which is some of the most beautiful countryside I have ever seen. I have been in castles and churches and wandered around villages that still have buildings standing from the 1500s. We visited Carnac, which is known for having a lot of megatlithic sites--like Stonehenge--except there it was fields and fields of big-ass rocks (technical term: menhirs) standing in rows. There were also dolmens, which is where the "menhirs" are stacked on top of each other to make a hut-like things, and a tumulus (which sounds like a vaguely naughty word to me), which was a giant human constructed hill often used as a tomb and that was also made out of menhirs. It makes me wonder about early humans and their obsession with large rocks (there are so many examples: stonehenge, carnac, pyramids, there are probably more examples...)

Anyhow, things have been generally nice, but it will be a relief to get to Mayenne and finally settle in a little. Although I'm terrified at the thought of teaching...