Proud Heritage

As I'm sure that I have told you before, we live in the city of Vannes, in the department (like county) of Morbihan, and in the region of Brittany (like state). Our region is extremely proud of it's heritage and of it's people. Brittany was settled by Celtic people and even existed independently as a Duchy until the 1532 when it was incorporated into France. The incorporation occurred due to the marriage of Anne of Brittany to two successive kings of France. Because of it's Celtic heritage, Brittany even had it's own language, called Breton. To this day, about one quarter of the population can speak Breton and almost all street signs are written in both French and Breton. At Max's birthday party, after singing Happy Birthday in both French and English, one child offered to also sing it in Breton. There is a school in Vannes that is taught in a bilingual format, French and Breton. We have been told that the Breton language is regaining in popularity after drastically diminishing in our generation. Today, I was on a quest to find a French flag. I found any number of Brittany (Bretagne) flags but not a single French flag.

This immediately reminded me of our days of living in Texas. Texas was always much more proud of being Texas than it was of being American. While running my errands, I again noticed how many houses have small plaques on them with the word "Ty" followed by a name. Now, my first thought when I see the word "Ty" is always of Ty Pennington from Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. A show that I have dearly missed since moving here....

(My niece took this picture of Ty while the show was being filmed in her neighborhood last summer). But, I didn't really thinking that people all over Brittany were naming their houses after Ty Pennington, so today, I looked it up. "Ty" is actually the Breton word for "house". So, as in the example of this house, the little plaque says Ty Juliette so it must be Juliette's house.

I love this! Why don't we name our houses?
Max has started writing a book. He does this in a small journal when he has free time at school and in the evenings. He informed me last night that he is writing in French however as it is much easier for him to write in French and he knows how to spell all of the words.