On Friday and Saturday, July 3 and 4, I’ll be either in the air or nursing my milk-white knuckles in San Diego, Toronto or Paris. Confusing itinerary, I know, but that’s how it is when you go overseas. Then it’s 5½ hours by train to my final stop. That trip seems like a little peanut compared with all that time in the sky. Might as well walk. What the dill. Except for if I did that, I’d miss the chance to talk with dyed-in-the-wool internationals like myself, maybe even with somebody who’s visited my destination before. Southwest France’s La Giraudière is the kind of place that fuels that kind of conversation. Its sense of global oneness and grass-roots purpose have beckoned more than one of us for another visit, and its rural environ – Brossac, population 528 and an hour north of Bordeaux – ensures peace and quiet as we recast an orphaned 16th-century farmhouse into the baddest-ass French-based learning and community center in the history of the universe. “We” are the dedicated itinerants (from as near as the rest of France and as far as New Zealand) whose contributions to the cause are encouraged without condition. Anybody is welcome to work at La Giraudière in whatever capacity he or she chooses for whatever reason. Some go for scholastic credit as volunteers and interns; others (like me) go to whet an insanely large appetite for France and French culture and language. Company owner Paul Rice, who opened the farmhouse doors in 2007 on the heels of the property’s hideous decay, believes the project provides a unique global experience through an exchange of common knowledge. Pretty cool, huh? As for me, I’ll be there until Tuesday, July 28, working the land and writing blogs about the project and stuff. I’ll also file a few stories for San Diego Community Newspaper Group, whose papers include Beach & Bay Press, The Peninsula Beacon and this one. The project is about 70 percent complete and features the workers’ room and board as well as three small apartments for travelers not associated with the program. Woodlands, vineyards and a windswept lake straddle the grounds, with Poitou-Charente province’s rolling hills in the immediate distance. Anything remotely connected with nature (even a llama farm) is an open door away, including the stables I’ve pledged to visit in an all-out attack on my lifelong fear of horses. Bambi may have won the battle in 1960 when she threw me flat on my face, but I’m about to win the war. But the primary purpose is to fuel the cross-cultural experience, in which France has gained colossal expertise since Paris emerged in the early 13th century as a world capital. Some discussion on last January’s horrific Charlie Hebdo killings is therefore probably inevitable during my trip – France’s 9/11 sent almost 4 million people into the streets of Paris in an almost unimaginable show of national unity, and its residual vigor isn’t likely to die anytime soon. On every level, this trip promises a series of life-altering outcomes, its casual exchanges the flashpoints for fresh and positive outlooks on the human experience. Then again, there’s the downside. My return heralds a momentary bout of abject poverty, and I won’t have seen such a pile of dirty laundry since Huggies opened its own landfill. Who cares? I’m going to France! Martin Jones Westlin is editor of La Jolla Village News.
