24 juin

24 juin

Marseilles! Marseilles! Marseilles! I love Marseilles! (Pronounced Mar-say)

I woke up still having that hungover feeling, but got up and showered hoping that it would go away when I talked to a real person for the first time in 3 days.  I successfully found church!  The beach is apparently right down the road from the church because everyone and their mother were in their beach gear with picnic baskets heading that way.  I found the missionaries at the bus stop and they helped me get off at the right bus stop.  Church was overwhelming but good!  Today wasn’t a super good speaking French day partly because of my hungover-ness and also because my mouth felt weird with the French words because I hadn’t been speaking it for 2 weeks.  But it will come back I hope.  There’s just one ward in Marseilles and everyone is super friendly…meaning I did the bise about 20 times today with complete strangers.  But that’s just how it is here which will be weird getting used to.  It just weirds me out to see a 20 year old girl give the bise to the bishop.  But Americans do weirder things probably.  I was relieved to find Jared who is another BYU student that is doing the same internship as me this summer.  His parents are the senior missionary couple that is in charge of the YSA program.  I started meeting the YSA people and completely forgot all of their names about 1 second after they told it to me.  Sacrament meeting was the last hour of church.  You know you’re in France when the sacrament bread is a delicious baguette.  A brand new missionary bore his testimony.  He has only been in France 5 days and I was so impressed with him getting up there and doing that because that takes so much courage and self-confidence!  He stayed up there longer than I expected he would and read from a notebook some pre-formed sentences and then did his best to communicate his thoughts.  He turned to the bishopric every so often to double check the translation of a word.  It was cute.  There seem to be a lot of neat people in the ward so I’m excited to get to know them better.   Singing the hymns was my favorite part as always.  After sacrament meeting, I was introduced to a bunch more people.  The typical conversation went like this: 

*bise*

Hi what’s your name

Melissa

Oh nice to meet you, are you visiting?

No I’m here doing an internship with les petits frères des pauvres

How long will you be here

2 months

Where are you from?

United States

I know, but where in the United States

Arkansas

(blank stares)

Don’t worry, Americans don’t even know where it is

Oh okay, how did you learn French, did you serve a mission?

No, I just studied it in school

You speak French well

Thank you but not really

That last part of them telling me I speak French well is not very flattering because it really means “I can tell it’s taking a lot of effort for you to carry on this conversation but you’re getting by just enough that you merit a compliment of encouragement.”

Jared took me up to the Institute room where I used the Internet and watched cute French children fight over a drawing game on an iPad. 

I made friends with this girl, whose name I forgot of course, but she is from Madagascar but has lived in Marseilles most of her life.  We bonded over both being 19 and feeling super young.  She loves English and was very encouraging and patient with my French.  She wants to take me out and show me the city and she spouted off all these things we could do like go to the beach and such.  Yay I have a friend! 

My roommate Stephanie, the other BYU intern, is not here right now…and I have no idea when she’ll get here.

I spent the afternoon/evening unpacking and organizing the apartment.  It feels a lot more homey and less cluttered than it did before.  Then I spent about 5 hours reading my Jerusalem book and then studying some French. 

All the grocery stores are closed on Sunday and so I had a lovely dinner of leftover travel snacks that consisted of an orange, cheese and crackers, and some trail mix.  I am looking forward to having a kitchen and being able to cook all my meals instead of having to eat out.  I plan on eating lots of delicious fruits and vegetables along with delicious bread and cheese.