paying a little visit to westport

we spent the weekend at camp dudley in westport catching up with some very dear friends. i usually return from weekends away exhausted and wanting to take a snooze. but not this time.

thought i would share a quote which was included in the sunday chapel sermon, delivered by a man i truly admire!

"This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.

I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community, and as long as I live it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can.

I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no “brief candle” for me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations." 

-George Bernard Shaw

saturday market in sainte-foy-le-grande

we were lucky enough to have a few hours to spend at the weekly market in the town of sainte-foy-le-grande during our bike trip in bordeaux. the market is a huge part of the local economy--and the place where most of the people in surrounding rural towns buy their food for the week. the beautiful town is right on the dordogne river, and is one of the oldest bastille towns in france. don't bother asking me what that means, because i don't know--i wasn't paying attention during our tour.

i've been to quite a few open markets in my travels, and this was one of the best i have ever seen. the most fresh, beautiful veggies and fruits, fresh meat and fish, and also, the most expensive gummy bears that i have ever tasted. notably, related to my last post, i noticed that the meat in the marked actually looked like the animal it came from! and contrary to the idea that the french are unfriendly, some of the warmest, most friendly people we met during our trip. we had so much fun poking around. here are some of my favorite shots!

some of the oysters were opened to give customers an idea of what's inside!

we loved the look of these tomates

might have been ripped off b/c we looked like biking tourons, but 15 euro for a small bag of candy!

les animaux de aquitaine

as many of you know, i became a vegetarian (well, to be perfectly clear, a pescatarian-i'm still good on eating fish for now) last november. part of the reason for my decision was the realization that as americans, we are simply too far away from the food products we eat. we often don't internalize the fact that our cheeseburgers come from cows, our bacon comes from pigs, and our chicken nuggets come from....well, chickens. i had been cutting meat out of my life for some time, but after really considering the fact that meat comes from animals, i decided that i'm not interested in eating it any more. this might change in the future, but it is where i am now.

of course, like many other things, this mentality is very different in the rest of the world. i noticed that in rural france, people are very close to the animals they eat and use for milk and other animal-based products. in the US, our obsession with the idea that we need meat at every meal for "protien" has lead to the growth of commercial farming and poor treatment and living conditions for domestic animals. in france, the domesticated animals that we came across live with quite a bit more dignity than our animals do. here are just a few shots of les animaux from rural france! some were for food, and others were not, but were just plain cute.