My first weeks of living in Brittany, France, brought me to this waterless harbor in Binic, a small town not far from my teaching post in St-Brieuc. It was one of the strangest sights I’d ever seen: sailboats abandoned and left to sag in the empty expanse, while the Channel winds rocked them firmly into the viscous sand.
I would later realize this was not an uncommon scene in Brittany, a region with a highly active tidal pattern. What was different were the boats’ positioning. They seemed oddly optimistic in the way they faced the opening in the harbor, waiting for the sea to come back in, as if they just knew they’d be lifted and called again into service.
It was an apt image to the beginning of my first stint in teaching English abroad. I’d arrived in this rural region three hours west of Paris by train, searching for an experience with purpose. I didn’t know where it would take me and how far in life I could run with it, but I was here, waiting patiently for the tide to come in, just like these boats.
The following 8 months were consequently the best of my life. I made friends from around the world and discovered new interests such as design and cooking. In retrospect, they're the small things, but I left France full and encouraged to set sail on the rest of the world.
I know the tide eventually came in for those boats. It did for me.
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