{"id":5229,"date":"2015-06-17T12:05:52","date_gmt":"2015-06-17T10:05:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lagiraudiere.com\/blog\/?p=5229"},"modified":"2023-02-18T18:46:35","modified_gmt":"2023-02-18T17:46:35","slug":"celebrating-at-a-village-fete-volunteers-in-southwest-france-dance-the-night-away","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lagiraudiere.com\/blog\/celebrating-at-a-village-fete-volunteers-in-southwest-france-dance-the-night-away\/","title":{"rendered":"Celebrating at a Village Fete, Volunteers in Southwest France Dance The\u00a0Night Away"},"content":{"rendered":"

Volunteers in Southwest France learn to mix and mingle at a local village fete\u00a0celebrating St. Joan of Arc.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Volunteers<\/a>

Celebrating Joan of Arc, volunteers in Southwest France light Chinese lanterns at village fete.<\/p><\/div>\n

The fete, or French festival,celebrates religion, historical stories, art, wine, and food, as well as music\u00a0and\u00a0film.\u00a0It\u00a0is a wonderful opportunity to sample regional\u00a0food and cultural ties.<\/p>\n

Ubiquitous throughout the year, one can participate in a fete\u00a0all over France, in the large\u00a0cities as well as in\u00a0rural towns and villages.\u00a0After spying a poster for a fete celebrating Jeanne d’Arc or Joan of Arc, our fearless leader and La Giraudiere host, Paul Rice<\/a>, phoned in reservations for seven curious volunteers<\/a> to participate in the local fete.<\/p>\n

Like many small hamlets in Southwest France, the village of Passirac\u00a0holds any number of fetes during the warm months, which not only brings the community together, but brings much needed funds\u00a0into the village\u00a0coffers.<\/p>\n

The delightfully\u00a0warm evening started out with\u00a0formal\u00a0introductions to the French locals as well as some English\u00a0expats. While I\u00a0observed that all the locals greeted each other with “les\u00a0bisous” or kisses, we simply shared a friendly handshake and smile. Introductions were quickly followed by ap\u00e9ritifs, which was an opportunity to work our\u00a0narrow\u00a0language skills. I however, quickly realized that the real challenge\u00a0was to come, that of mixing and \u00a0mingling with the locals,\u00a0and the art of small talk.<\/p>\n

I found that the\u00a0best tactic was to use as much body language and lively facial expressions as possible, in order to\u00a0supplement my limited French. This seemed to work very well and got me\u00a0past\u00a0a number of bonjours without the embarrassing silence that can often follow. While the village only charges\u00a01 – 1.50 euro\u00a0per drink, this is where they make their money, so the ap\u00e9ritif\u00a0hour was pretty long. We all however, made it through to the diner hour happy, hungry, and with a lighter heart.<\/p>\n

We rounded the evening\u00a0with a bonfire symbolizing the burning of Joan of arc, followed by\u00a0the lighting of Chinese lanterns\u00a0and lively dancing back in the hall. Everyone, both young\u00a0and\u00a0old, locals and visitors, as well as the shy and gregarious, danced the night away in honor of St.Joan of Arc.<\/p>\n

As we said our bonjours, I knew we had made inroads into the community when a few\u00a0of us received\u00a0bisous\u00a0upon our departure.<\/p>\n

Join us this Summer at La Giraudiere<\/a> and experience\u00a0true cultural immersion in SouthWest France.<\/p>\n

\"Volunteers<\/a><\/p>\n

As we said our bonjours, I knew we had made inroads into the community when a few\u00a0of us received\u00a0bisous\u00a0upon our departure.<\/p>\n

France.<\/p>\n

\u00e0 bient\u00f4t,<\/p>\n

Mayra Pena \ud83d\ude42\u00a0(Volunteer)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Volunteers in Southwest France learn to mix and mingle at a local village fete\u00a0celebrating St. Joan of Arc. The fete, or French festival,celebrates religion, historical stories, art, wine, and food, as well as music\u00a0and\u00a0film.\u00a0It\u00a0is a wonderful opportunity to sample regional\u00a0food … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[103],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5229","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-volunteering"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lagiraudiere.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5229","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lagiraudiere.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lagiraudiere.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lagiraudiere.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lagiraudiere.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5229"}],"version-history":[{"count":80,"href":"https:\/\/www.lagiraudiere.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5229\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10589,"href":"https:\/\/www.lagiraudiere.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5229\/revisions\/10589"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lagiraudiere.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5229"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lagiraudiere.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5229"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lagiraudiere.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5229"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}