Marion & Perrine

On December 18 I became an aunt to Perrine (left) and Marion (right)!!!

X-Mas Cocooning

La der'

Emil Nolde - Haute Mer

Aujourd'hui la Jeanne est partie pour son dernier périple. Cette ville de métal que j'ai appris à connaître abrite en ce moment même des centaines de visages qui me sont familiers. La coque se heurte à des creux de 6 mètres: ils sont dans le golfe de Gascogne. Ceux qui sont de quart - mais qui vont passer la relève d'ici 20 minutes à l'heure où j'écris - sont aux aguets, les autres sont peut-être entrain d'essayer de dormir, ou bien de calculer la probabilité pour que l'ordinateur posé sur le bureau reste à sa place jusqu'au matin.
Pour les moins anciens, demain une partie de la journée sera assurément consacrée au ramassage, tri, rangement de documents, réparation de classeurs, consolidation de placards et tiroirs!

Bon vent et bonne mer les amis!

Heartwarming traditions

Tomorrow I'm buying decorations for our Christmas tree.

My fiancé and I have spent the last two Christmases (does that plural work?) away from home and family, so we're particularly excited about this one...

Dimanche au placard

Ceci n'est pas mon dressing.

Aujourd'hui c'est dimanche, le ciel est couvert.
Je me suis fixé comme objectif de mettre de l'ordre dans le dressing, où règne actuellement un chaos de plus en plus mal dissimulé.

Il s'agit d'abord de se rendre à l'évidence: l'été des tongs, maillots de bains, paréos, débardeurs, est FINI. Le panier de l'été n'ira pas à la cave, qui est pleine comme un oeuf, mais tout en haut du dressing, là où je pourrais l'oublier facilement, comme j'avais oublié le panier de l'hiver, me demandant pendant une semaine ou deux en octobre où mes pulls pouvaient bien être stockés. Je ne suis pas seulement petite, j'ai aussi une tête de linotte. J'ai fini par descendre le panier de l'hiver, avec l'impression de retrouver de vieux amis, en dépit du fait que je l'avais placé là seulement 2 mois plus tôt.

J'ai dans l'idée de confectionner de discrètes étiquettes pour pallier mes déficiences neuronales.

Instinctively self vs. other...

La proue devant Abu Dhabi

During the two trips, we called at 20 different places, on 6 different continents, each time spending an average of 3 days ashore. Each crossing lasted 7 to 15 days.

Désert du Grand Barra - Djibouti

Traveling that way - very slowly, with most of our time spent within our own community, in a restricted space - gave me a whole new conception of geography.
In a car, a plane, a train, you can only think of yourself as being in a transitory state, going from A to B. Most of the time, B is the only reason why you left A.

For us [except for the public relations staff] it was different, since the whole point of the trip lay in the work we accomplished during the crossings. Ports of call were only the most wonderful recess I'd ever had, and the notion of destination was insignificant, since our trip was a loop.

Fort Cochin - Inde

It took us days and days to go from one place to the next, so in a way every place seemed extremely remote, but during the crossings I was either busy indoor or outside staring at the vast ocean, so my mind started dividing space in 2: everything familiar on one side, everything unfamiliar on the other. In the former was the ocean, the ship, the crew, my work. In the latter were all the places we visited and all the people we met, on terra firma. In a word, the former was SELF and the latter was OTHER.

La Khazneh - Petra - Jordanie

The consequence is that even if you notice differences between each country, and each culture, your mind will still file them in the same category, whether you want it or not, because in each new place you also can't help noticing how different it is from your community. In the long run, you picture your home on one side of the world, and all those other countries together on the other side of the world, you and your ship somewhere in between, and that's the only vague and subjective notion of distance you're left with.

Dans le Wadi Rum - Jordanie

Of course I did not understand that before the end of the second trip.

Now, I can't help thinking that the frame of mind of European colonizers must have been somewhat similar to the one I was left with after two 6-month-long navigations...

De retour au port base

Back on Earth

Well, here I am!
A lot has happened in my life during the last years, including two long trips (6 and 5 months) as a member of the crew of a navy ship. As you probably guessed I am not personnally allowed to publish any detail about what we did, but there is an official blog with lots of pictures:

http://jdb.marine.defense.gouv.fr/batiment/jda

I'll still be appointed on the ship until the end of my contract in the fall.
This experience is nearing an end, but its impact on my life and on my personality will last indefinitely.

:)