Monday, May 10
The morning started off with a visit to the Gendarmerie. The Gendarmerie, a police force in France, started in the 1200’s, but it wasn’t until the 1700’s that it was called the Gendarmerie. They are separate from military and civilian forces and are overseen and paid for by the military of defense as opposed to civilian police forces which work for the mayor and localities. National police also exist in France but they are civilian and are funded by the national government.
Our host was Capitaine Didier Poissonnier, a well spoken captain in the Gendarmerie, that had worked in Kosovo and French Guiana. He mentioned that in Kosovo, over 26 countries were located there and the one language they had in common was English. In total the Gendarmerie has 80,000 officers and 25% are officers. It was an interesting visit and I have never seen anything quite like it.
Following lunch we each became out own Picaso. Well, maybe not quite that but it was a blast to learn about the “collage” method that involves taking newspaper, gluing it down to a matte and painting over it to create a beautiful piece of art. The owner Katherine Walmsley, was a fantastic teacher and we were lucky to have her as our guide. I’m hoping to take my painting back to the us and here’s a mental reminder to use an acrylic spray on it once we are back in the states.
We ended the night with a visit to a neighbor of the Rotarian which was putting up Christina and Teresa (pictured below with some of his art works) followed by a relaxing enjoyable dinner with Remie, Sylvie, and Dave.
