Saint Etienne: de retour! + book & chestnut festival

De retour!

And I'm back!  Sorry for the delay, other than settling into my new place and starting school, life has been more or less uneventful.  School started on October 1, and now I'm on vacation for two weeks for "La Toussaint" or All Saints Day, which is just that, a day.  All Saints Day is November 1, but the teachers and students have been working so hard that they must feel this break is well deserved.  I on the other hand, am now left with two weeks off and nothing planned.

However!  This past weekend was rather eventful with a book festival here in the city of Saint Etienne, and a chestnut festival just up north.  This was the 30th anniversary of the "fête du livre" or book festival, and the idea is to get people to read more.  There were tents set up all around the city center with local, national and international authors and comic book artists and the like.  

 You could buy books from vendors who set up tents like the first photo, and they were all run by book stores from in or around Saint Etienne.  You could even buy really old books, which (nerd alert) I thought was really cool.

I had to read these books (not all, thank goodness) in school, and it was really neat to see these beautiful bound copies of the classics.

This was a live reading of The Odyssey by Homer, mostly done by this man fully dressed in Greek clothing, but you could volunteer to read passages just by lining up and standing in that little square.  I happened to pass by when little kids were reading and couldn't resist the photo op.  Little kids, reading The Odyssey?  My mind was blown.  This only happens in France. 

On to the chestnut festival or La fête de la châtaigne in French.  It was in a small town about an hour outside of the city center, and when I say small town, I mean very small town.  The nearest bus stop, which I went to with 3 other girls, was over 1 mile away.  Luckily the weather was nice, and the walk wasn't too bad.  I don't have many pictures of actual chestnuts, and it was my first time eating them.  You could buy them roasted, which was how I ate them, or there were crêpes made with chestnut flour, chestnut beignets and chestnut butters and jellies.  I never knew there were so many ways to eat a chestnut.  

A view from the top of the city called La Tour-en-Jarez.  It really was a gorgeous day.

I somehow always seem to find myself amongst medieval festivities.

A look at some of the vendors on our way to the top.  That blue tent was the "drinks" tent, with beer and warm wine for 1 euro!  The warm wine went perfectly with the warm chestnuts.

Myself + Lizzie (another American assistant from Milwaukee) and two other assistants from the Czech Republic and Cyprus.

I will hopefully find things to keep myself busy over these next two weeks, it won't be so long until you hear from me again, I promise!  

Aloha et ciao!