Palates

While I sliced off a piece to have with my bread, I looked up and saw him eating an enormous chunk. Straight up cheese. It had an orange rind, and he described it as “explosive.” His 11-year-old daughter cringed from it. I thought it wasn’t bad, though I had it with bread and chased it with red wine.

I said, “Wow, you’re really just going straight at it.”

He looked up, leaned back a bit with a slight smirk, “Well, you know.”

He looked classy doing it, making me feel almost barbaric in having mine with bread and wine. Must be cause he grew up in Paris. A couple of months back I was cooking dinner with the other English assistant, a Red Coat, me prepping hot dogs and burgers while she fried fish and chips. It was an England vs. America party and we invited a bunch of high school teachers to come eat and play Taboo on either the US or UK team (we killed them).

He came into the kitchen and asked, “Need any help? Or maybe another beer? You know, I brought beer made in Morlaix (a nearby town).”

We smiled, “No thanks. It’ll probably be ready soon.”

“Alright. Well, everything’s looking good.”

“Thanks – it’s nice to have the French approval in the kitchen.”

“Yes, but you see I’m Breton. So I’ll have to give you the Breton approval.”

From our arrival at his house until our departure, he spoke only Breton with his daughter. Her mother’s a Spanish teacher with Caribbean ancestry, and her father’s an English teacher with Breton ancestry. We watched some sections of a Breton dubbed version of “The Untouchables,” in which he does a couple of voice-overs. Notably the guy who gets it between the eyes at the end of the baby carriage stair case scene.

He says he uses only Breton with her so he can help preserve the language. I think he may have mentioned that her mother speaks Creole with her sometimes too. While he took us on a tour of the town, he told me that he and his wife used Spanish as the “secret” language when they didn’t want her to understand what they were saying, but now she’s starting to figure that out as well. During dinner she told me, in English, that she wanted to write a letter to Obama. It was an excellent, jealous evening.