25 June-July 1

25 juin

I was kind of basically scared out of my mind to start the internship.  I was scared I wouldn’t be able to understand and I wouldn’t be able to communicate and I wouldn’t be able to do it.  But it all turned out quite well.  I met up with my coordinator Veronique.   She is a middle aged woman with short purple/red hair that must have a smoke break every few hours.  She has twin boys that are 14 and another son that is 10.  Veronique and all of the other people I met in the office, are extremely nice and helpful…I guess that comes with wanting to work for a non-profit organization.   I got introduced around as the young American intern that is there for the summer. 

I did training and orientation stuff with Veronique for most of the day.  In the morning, she let me check my email and then gave me a t-shirt, a backpack, lunch checks, and then some money for a partial reimbursement for my plane ticket.  Then I had a 2.5 hour lunch break after which I met Veronique at Le Manier which is where this beautiful house is located.  Les petits frères own the house and use it for office spaces as well as a dining area and lounge for when they hold activities for the elderly that they look over.  At the house, I met some more people and then Veronique gave me some more information and helped me plan out my week.  I don’t know if it is just because it is summer here or if French people are always so lax, but they have me working from 9 or 10ish until noon and then 2 or 3ish until 5.  That’s my kind of work week.  And there is this banquet thing on Friday night that I must go to and so they gave me Thursday afternoon off in order to rest because of that banquet.  Ha!  This will be a relaxing and enjoyable summer.  The whole system of how they do the visits is a bit confusing since it’s new, but I’ll get it down soon.  I was able to understand most everything they said which was encouraging.  I was still a little slow and hesitant at talking which is something I need to get over real soon. 

Things I learned throughout the day from talking to people and experience:

-I will need to watch out for pickpockets in Marseille especially because of my foreign accent…I shouldn’t carry my iphone around

-Marseille is famous for its wind that comes in off the sea…I experienced it and it is intense, but is a welcome thing in the heat.  Sometimes when the winds are so strong, they will close down high areas in the city because of the threat of fires (I’m not really sure how fire would be a danger…maybe with electricity poles)

-French women don’t shave their armpits

-The grocery store Casino is much cheaper than Monoprix (but Carrefour still seems like the cheapest to me)

-All of the food that I buy from the grocery store always advertises that there is no added sugar or that there are no preservatives which is great and healthy but means that food goes bad a lot more quickly here—thus why French people make more smaller trips to the grocery store. 

-If a store closes at 9, then they kick you out at 8:45

-Don’t always trust people that seem to know what they’re talking about when they are giving you directions…because they can be wrong

-There is a fruit/vegetable shop right by my apartment that sells beautiful and cheap produce

-Veronique said that the motto/slogan of Les petits frères is “Des fleurs avant du pain” which means Flowers before bread.  It’s the ideology of the organization where it is just as important to provide friendship and positive human relations with people rather than just giving them food to eat.  And I completely agree with this concept.  A feeling of social connection is a huge factor in evaluating a person’s quality of life.  I learned in one of my psychology classes that social support in old age is a better predictor of living long than smoking.

After I was done with work, I took the Metro over to the Old Port which is the main area of town.  I took the bus up to Notre Dame de la Garde which is up on a big hill.  The view looking out at the city and the coast line was breathtaking.  I had to sit down to take it all in.  There are mountains, and then the red roofed city, and then the beautiful coastline with clear blue water.  Incredible.  Then I took a long route back to the old port and saw the pharo garden, a big fort, an abby, a restaurant/shopping plaza, the palais de justice, and the opera house.  At the park, there was a mom calling after her son and she called him Marius which made me happy because of the French film Marius that takes place in Marseille.  After my walk, I stole some free McDonalds wifi and then headed home.  It’s so easy to lose track of time in the evenings since it doesn’t get dark until 10ish.

At home, I was super excited to actually cook something and so I cut up potatoes to have fried potatoes with onions and then I put it all on the stove and it doesn’t work.  Great.  So I had yet another sandwich…but it was still delightful with boursin cheese and herbes de provence.  Mom and/or Alison, could you look at the store and see if you can buy herbes de provence in America? Because if not, I may stock up and bring several bottles home to share. 

It is so flippin hot in the apartment without air conditioning.  It helps when the window is open, but I can’t sleep with it open because of bugs.  Even with the fan blowing straight at me, it’s still super hot and stuffy…I’m gonna have to figure out a survival method.

26 juin

Remember when I got stuck because

of the train strike in France? I found out today that it wasn’t really a strike, that’s just what they told people.  What really happened was a young man got killed in the Nice area because he was walking across the tracks and had headphones and thus didn’t hear the train coming.  Super sad, but interesting that they didn’t tell us what really had happened.

I started the day of work at 9.  I went to the office right next to my apartment building and caught Veronique on her smoking break.   They let me check my email again and I told them my stove wasn’t working and so hopefully they’ll figure out how to get it fixed so I don’t have to eat sandwiches all summer.   

Then I went out to le manier, the cute house that is more out in the countryside, and met up with another volunteer named Laurence.  I thought that was a guy name, but it ended up being a woman!  She showed me how they do some of their “visits” by phone and have a list of people they call once a week to check in on.  It was a good model for me of what the visits are meant to accomplish.  It’s not to solve their problems, but more just to be a friend to listen and sympathize.  Basically she would call and see if they had any news to share and then just talk with them wherever they led the conversation.  She’d end by saying Je vous embrasse (kisses) and telling them what day she’d be calling back next week.  There was one lady she called that is 101 years old and she is just a super chipper happy old lady!  I’m excited to take over Laurence’s phone visits for the next few months.  She also talked to a woman who is in a nursing home who feels all alone and has a sore back and can’t get the doctor to give her medicine.  This lady is in a home with other patients of less brain capacity since she is an alcoholic but she still is all there in the head but feels isolated because she can’t relate to the other people there.  She said she so appreciates Les petits frères because sometimes it’s the only people she really talks to all week.   Laurence talked to me about how she and the organization take the approach of not being superior to these people that they help, but recognizing that we are all interconnected as part of humanity and we are here to help others and make human connections because they are so vital. 

After the phone calls, Laurence and I had a great chat about her kids and she asked questions about my life too.  She is from Bretagne and has 4 kids.  Her 14 year old son is going to New York to spend 3 weeks with a family there and he is super excited to go shopping in New York.   He learns a lot of English from listening to American music.  She has a daughter that lives and works for a nonprofit organization in Brazil.  Another one of her children lives in Italy.  I am always still so impressed with Europeans where it is so common for them to know at least a second language and often times a 3^rd or 4^th.  I told Laurence that I loved that about Europe and I wish America was like that.  She agreed and said she think it’s important for her kids to gain another perspective of life and see a world different from their own.  I agreed with her and said that that’s why I’ve studied French and why I was here this summer, to gain another perspective and realize that we are all a part of humanity.   

Then she asked me about my life and my family.  When I explained how big it was and about the 5 kids from Russia, she asked what religion I was and I panicked for a second because I thought I was still in Israel and couldn’t say anything, but then was grateful I was in France and could share it with her.  I told her I was Mormon but that it wasn’t super common in Mormonism to have a family that big.  She asked about where I grew up and if there were a lot of Mormons where we lived.  I said no and she asked if it was hard to grow up in a place where not everyone had the same ideology as me.  I explained to her that it wasn’t that hard because as a young teenager, I decided on my own to live a set of standards and I stuck to them and that my friends were aware of these standards.  I told her a lot of my close friends were Christian and had similar values to mine.  Very interesting conversation that I enjoyed with her.  It seems I speak French more fluently when it’s a conversation like this and I just forget about being

stressed about grammar and then it just flows naturally and I may make one or two mistakes, but all in all I communicate a lot better.  This conversation gave me encouragement to be more confident with my French because I understand it and I know it and can do it and so just need to take the next step and let it flow when I speak and not be scared. 

We were done about noon and I had a 3 hour lunch break! I think that things will be busier when all the other interns come because they are just kind of finding people for me tag along with this week to see how it all rolls.  But for lunch, I took the metro to the train station and started walking down a road.  I used one of my lunch checks for the first time and I loved it!  At this bakery, I got a delicious salad with thick slices of goat cheese, ham, corn, and tomatoes along with a delightful lemon pastry.  I also got a can of apple juice and a small piece of bread.  I got all of this for 5.5 euros so I just had to pay 10 cents out of pocket!  It’s a great feeling to be eating a free delicious lunch…makes it taste even better.  I found a cathedral and sat in the shade on the steps.  I got myself a creeper who came and sat a bit away from me on the steps and wished me Bon Appetit.  Then he kept coming closer and closer to me…it was slightly amusing but I definitely left and didn’t look back at him and finished eating somewhere else. 

In the afternoon, I met up with a sweet middle aged lady named Lilian that is also a volunteer for Les petits frères.  We met at a large nursing home complex that has lots of nursing home buildings as well as a hospital.  I jumped into her car as she drove up and she drove me around the complex telling me what each building was and what paths to take when I was taking someone in a wheelchair to the park area.  Then we went into the Jean Nasse building to do some visits.  Lilian had brought some newspapers and laid them out on a table for people to read.  She laid each one out individually so that they weren’t in a big stack.  She said she did this so that people didn’t come and take the whole stack and also so that people won’t come and take the whole stack to resell them.  We went and met what they call here an “animateur” but it is the person that is in charge of social activities for the people in the building.  He was a such a nice guy and sat me in his office and talked to me for about a half hour about the history of that nursing complex and the hospital that used to be a home for Napoleon III then was used as a war hospital during WWI and WWII.  He talked to me about the history of elderly care in France and how it was a priority in the early 1900s, but then got forgotten with the wars and the reconstruction that followed, but that it got prioritized again in the 1970s.  His ideology and passion for his job touched me.  He said that his goal in his job was to make these people feel like they are still alive, to give them hope and vitality.  He explained that it’s easy for these people to give up and just want to quit and welcome death but that is not good because they are humans just like us.  He said that I would be a great contribution to the facility because I would bring light and life into the building.  I could help these people feel alive again.  He talked to me about how at the end of life, there is a tendency for these people to regress into that fetal position physically and psychologically where things are safe and where one doesn’t have to accept the reality of the world.  I told him that I would love to be as helpful as possible.  He assured me that if I started feeling burdened with the sad things I was dealing with, to not hesitate to talk to him because we’re all a team there.  He also informed me that he is a 5^th generation Marseillaise and that if I had any questions about how to get around or what to go and visit, to let him know.    

I did a visit with Lilian to this old lady.  Before the visit, Lilian told me her story and said that she had traveled a lot in her life as a flight attendant for Air France and had kept her brain as she had aged and was a delightful woman.  But recently, two of her close relations had died in a tragic fire.  Since then, she has become dissociated and doesn’t remember her past life at all.  We went to visit her and there was a tape of bird noises playing along with a changing light humidifier thing.  Lilian had brought her some beautiful pink and purple flowers from her garden.  Lilian has been visiting her for years but this lady didn’t remember her at all this time and didn’t remember receiving Lilian’s postcard a few weeks earlier.  This sweet old lady was smiling and talking but just obviously not there…it was so sad.  Lilian introduced me to her and explained that I was from the United States and asked her if she had traveled a lot and she said no she hadn’t which is the opposite from her life has been.  We chatted with her about the bird sounds and flowers and the weather.  During the conversation, she asked me and Lilian both but separately “Quand est-ce que tu me deliveras?” which means when are you doing to deliver me.  It was so sad that she was ready to give up and leave.  Lilian said she had become so much skinnier since she had last been there and that she hasn’t been out of her bed for a long time because of her legs.  We gave her a kiss on the top of her head and left.  Even though it was so sad, it inspired me and made me so excited for these next few months.  I love being able to do the Savior’s work of charity all day, everyday.  I hope that I can bring some life and light in the lives of some people.  That makes every day I’m here worth it. 

The animateur then took me on a tour of the building.  The more mobile and cognizant people are on the main floor so that they can go outside more easily.  The building is organized into little “quartiers” or neighborhoods that bear the name of a neighborhood in Marseille.  There are about 15 rooms in each quartier that center around the eating area so that even if people can’t get out of their bed, they can still feel connected to the others there.  The animateur walked around talking to people just like he was walking down the street and ran into people that he knows.  He told me it’s important to be very casual in the visits so that it feels more like a neighborhood and home.  He introduced me to the doctors and nurses as well as many of the people that live there.  There was this one lady that he introduced me to that couldn’t hear very well so he went right up to her ear and spoke extremely loudly to introduce me.   Another lady that we met has lived in that building for 30 years!  She has one tooth and it was super hard to understand her….that will be a feat that I must accomplish, to comprehend French when they have no teeth.  She let us into her room and it so cute with lots of cat and dog stuffed animals.  She also has a pet black cat that lives in there with her.  We had to redirect a man that was coming into the doctor and nurse area with a glass cup.  The animateur told me that he is an alcoholic and that this is a common occurrence.  I can tell that the animateur cares about each of these people individually and takes care to know each of their stories.  I met this man that was super friendly and came up and started talking to me about how he used to have 5 mistresses…two were American and three were Italian…haha who knows if that’s true.  The animateur showed me their art room where they make ceramics and such.  There was also a music room with old records and videos as well as a piano.  He told me I could bring people in there and play piano for them which I plan to do.  They have a salon and massage room there as well.  He took me through the first set of doors to the Alzheimer’s ward…they were impressed that I knew the word Alzheimer’s, but little did they know it’s the same word in English.  The people there are more on lockdown and constant surveillance.  One man came up to us and sweetly and politely asked if we were going to let him out.  When we got back to the animateur’s office (I wish I could remember his name!) I helped a girl there that is working on her Master’s degree in Exercise Science.  She had to write the abstract of her paper in both French and English and so she asked me to edit the English part.  I now have sympathy for people in the French writing lab at BYU because they say all the time to me “You just don’t say it like that in French.” And that’s what I had to keep saying her because some verbs you translate to English and it’s similar to an English verb, but not the most correct one.  Also she had written about “light gymnastics” because that is the direct translation from French but I explained to her that gymnastics is more like flips and cartwheels and balance beams and I can’t picture old people doing that, so I’m pretty sure she was trying to say aerobics which was a word she had never heard of.  I’m glad I was able to help her and she was very grateful too.  After I had edited her paper, the animateur as a thank you gesture, had printed out the lyrics of this 80s French song that is called Mélissa and also printed out the Wikipedia article about the singer.  He had highlighted stuff for me to read.  It was super cute and sweet and made me super excited that I had a French song about me!  But after I left the nursing home, I started reading the lyrics and it is quite explicit and a bit raunchy….which is kind of hilarious to me.  Guess it’s not my theme song…ha.  I looked up the singer singing it on youtube later at the institute and the French people there were like ya, I wouldn’t advertise that song as connected to you….hahaha.  Oh well, I tried to be part French, but it didn’t work. 

At the bus stop, I talked to this guy and it always gets around to talking about America when I talk to people because they find out I’m American.  This guy asked me how America was and if we are in a crisis right now over there…ha I assured him no, we were fine. 

I found a McDonalds nearby where I live on my way back so I’ll have to go check and see if they have free wifi.  I came back to the apartment and grabbed my computer then went to the institute because it is open on Tuesday afternoons/evenings because they have an English class and it’s open for people to come and hang out.  It was nice to talk to Jared, the other BYU student doing the internship and also to talk to his parents who are the senior missionary couple over the Institute.  I asked Jared some French vocab and grammar questions then used the internet for a bit.  I played bananagrams with Jared and listened in on the English class that Elder and Sister Rutman were giving to a brother and sister.  There is Florian (the guy) who is 21 and then Coralee who is 22.  They both have joined the church just this year.  Florian came over and talked to me for a while after the class.  He is saving up to go on a mission at the end of the year.  He encouraged me and said my French was good which I still think they’re just being nice.  He also told me to not worry about accent because it was cute, haha!  I guess that is okay with me J  I found out that Florian is OBSESSED with all things American.  His life goal is to live there eventually.  He loves all American music, especially blue grass and country.  His favorite is Johnny Cash (he was wearing a Johnny Cash that night).  He also loves all rock that is American.  He actually found out about the church because his favorite band is The Killers and he was learning about the main singer and saw that he was Mormon which led him to call up the missionaries to learn more about it.  I wondered if he loved the church so much because it has such strong ties to America but in talking to him more, I know he believes in it too and isn’t there just because of the American connection.  But really, he is so obsessed it’s so funny and cute.  He says he dreams about playing baseball with his son in his backyard.  His ringtone is God Bless America and when he receives a text, it’s the baseball stadium announcing noise.  He loves American football and the smell of French fries and watches so so many American tv shows…he named off a huge list and I honestly didn’t recognize many of them.  But I told him I like movies a lot more than tv shows and so he told me he really likes the movie The Notebook which is funny.  He was super kind to help me when I stumbled on a French phrase or when I questioned if a certain word was masculine or feminine.  He showed me a video he had found on YouTube and it was the BYU Divine Comedy remake of California Gurls that’s called Provo Utah girls.  It’s super cheesy and is overflowing with Utah jokes…he thought it was hilarious which cracked me up because it’s kind of that it’s so dumb it’s funny kind of humor.  We talked about American music and he knows almost every group.  He likes fun and John Mayer and glee and taylor swift and so many other so American things.  It’s cool that with the Internet and the globalization of the world that has occurred in the last few decades, it’s possible for people like him to know all about another country and what is popular there.  His sister really loves America too and really likes the tv show Desperate Housewives and the movie Twilight.  I rode the bus back to the metro stop with them and we had fun talking.  I think they’ll be some awesome friends and said they would love to show me around the city.  It’s nice because they know some English and want to improve and I want to improve my French so it’s fun to talk to each other.

All day these past few days, I’ve been writing down French words that I’m learning or things in English that I’ve looked up how to say.  It’s a great method I think.  I’ll write down words when I’m talking to people and then I look them up and study them whenever I’m on the metro or the bus.  I’m getting like 30 words a day!

27 juin     

Last night was a struggle.  Sooo hot.  I got up and took a shower in the middle of the night because I was just dying and thought that if I was all wet, the fan would be cooler on me, and it worked!  I’m gonna have to figure out how to survive this.  Europe just doesn’t really have air conditioning and that’s just how it is. 

They didn’t have anything for me to do this morning and so I just used their internet and wrote people back that I’ve needed to respond to for a while.  Then I came back up to the apartment and had lunch and caught up on journal writing.  I took the metro and then the bus out to a big shopping mall area where I was meeting up with a volunteer named Bernard.  I had no idea how old he was or what he looked like and so I was kind of searching around and made eye contact with a couple guys thinking it was maybe them, but that was a mistake because I got a couple creepers that kept glancing back.  So I just decided that Bernard could find me and my eyes weren’t going to search for him anymore.  Bernard finally found me and I went with him in his car to visit these two sweet old ladies.  Bernard is in his 60s but seemed super active still.  He told me about his two daughters that live in Quebec and that are coming to visit him in a week. 

The first lady we visited was named Madame Ellena.  She is 90 years old and is extremely hard of hearing and doesn’t see very well.  It was necessary to speak extremely loud when talking to her.  She was such a sweetie though.  She told me about John, the BYU student that visited her last summer.  She showed me the post card of Utah that he had sent her and also the little Eiffel Tower keychain that he had given her.  She told me several times to tell him thank you again and to say hi for her.  Mme Ellena told me that she has lived her whole life in Marseille.  She worked as a housemaid for some rich doctors at one point in her life.  She told me the doctors were really nice but that their wives were not nice at all.  They let her eat whatever was left over from the family’s lunch and if there wasn’t anything, then too bad for her.  She also told us about how she had worked in lots of different factories in Marseille which is a big reason that she has bad hearing.  She said she worked in sugar, soap, and also olive oil factories.  Bernard was very concerned for her because she only eats what he called conserved food which basically means it is not fresh.  He told me that in France, when people aren’t eating fresh food, they are considered malnourished…which means most Americans are malnourished in their opinion.  Mme Ellena has meals delivered to her every day and explained to us that it is too expensive to get the fresh meals and so Bernard said he would talk to the organization to try and get the money to pay for her to have fresh meals. 

Next we visited Madame Galieni who is Corsican.  She has Parkinson’s disease and has a very difficult time walking, but she is still very cognitively capable.  She also talked to me about John, the BYU volunteer from last summer.  She had his postcard at the table right by her chair where she spends a lot of time.  She told me that he was so nice and that one time they had played cards together.  Mme told me a bit about Corsica and the geography of it.  She said that after spending days and days alone, it is nice to have people to talk to.  Even though one can tell that it is painful for her to walk, she went and got us a drink from the kitchen.  Mme Gallieni had me guess her age which was a scary thing to do.  But she is 88 years old!  I am so impressed with French people and long they live.  In America, it seems that most of the time when someone is in their 70s, they are considered old!  But in France, 60 is considered still middle-aged.  Bernard invited me to go back and do these visits again with him next week, but I will have to wait and see what I am assigned to do. 

After I was done with work, I met up with my YSA friend Orianne.   Her and her brother were on their way home from a day at the beach and came to help me figure out how to get a phone.  Orianne took me to the main shopping area in downtown Marseille which is a dangerous thing to show me.  To make it even more dangerous, she reminded me about the country wide sales that all stores participate in that start next week.  Oh la la!  I got a cheap ancient model phone for 20 euros that will work for these next two months while I need a phone.  Orianne showed me some of her favorite shops in the area and we made plans to come shopping sometime soon. 

I went to the McDonalds by my apartment and thoroughly enjoyed 3 things that I take for granted in America and that don’t normally exist here: Wi-fi, public restrooms, and air conditioning. 

28 juin

In the morning, I went out to le manier and met up with a benevole named Danielle to watch her do telephone calls to different old people.  She was a sweet middle aged lady with a cute dog.  I went and got lunch in an area of Marseille I hadn’t seen yet.   I walked past a museum about the Marseillaise (French national anthem) that I’ll have to go into later.  I also saw Marseille’s arc de triomphe. 

During the afternoon, I did a house visit by myself to Madame Dernaucourt.  Man is she an incredible person.  Several years ago, she had a stroke that left her with paralyzed legs.  However she has lived a full and adventurous life.  She seems to have lived a life in the upper class of society.  She lived for 5 years in Guadeloupe, a French island in the Caribbean.  She showed me pictures of the beautiful beaches and plants there.  Basically the visit consisted of her talking the whole time and me nodding my head and reacting to what she said and then listening again.  She is such a sweet and vibrant person that is so full of life despite her handicap.  She had Madeline’s and Orangina for me to eat with her.  She loves Americans because she’s from Normandy and remembers the Americans liberating her country.  She is full of stories.  She told me about her Grandpa that died fighting in the trenches in WWI.  She told me about how I shouldn’t ever go to the beach alone because she knows people that have had bad things happen to them there.  She told me about how she wants to set me up with her physical therapist.  She told me about how she is embarrassed by all the rude Arabs and Gypsies in Marseille that are a disgrace to the classy French people.  And then we watched a movie together!  We started talking about French films and she found out that I love them and so we watched one of her favorites.  It is based on a book written by Marcel Proust and took place in Provence during the WWII era.  It is probably one of my favorite French films I’ve ever seen.  The landscapes and music were both beautiful as well as the acting and touching storyline.  I could tell Mme had seen these movie many times before but she still laughed and laughed at her favorite parts.  She made certain to explain the colloquial language to me when it occurred as well as her opinion on all the characters and their actions.  It was a lovely afternoon and I’m excited to go back and hang out with her more this summer. 

That night was FHE for the YSA group.  The bishop gave the lesson and talked about the brother of Jared and his persistence.  We had delicious chocolate cake afterwards and then everyone just hung out and talked or played games for a while.  I snuck into the chapel and played the organ in there for a little while as well as the baby grand that is in there.  I had a funny conversation with two of the YSAs and Sister Rutman about peanut butter and how Americans eat it on so many things.  I explained what a Peanut Butter and Jelly sandwich was to them and they thought it sounded quite odd and not delicious. 

It’s funny how the saying is so true that the grass is always greener on the other side.  So many of the YSAs want to get out of France and go to America.  But I don’t understand how you could dislike France with all of its beauty.  Coralee has an Italian heritage and beautiful dark hair and olive complexion…but she was so disappointed when she asked me if she looked American and I said not really because she looks European.  Where in America, it is more the tendency to want to look European.  It’s also funny when French people use slang English like “Peace” or “What is up dude.”  It sounds so out of place and amusing with their accent.  Jared and I taught them the phrase “you rock my socks off” and it confused them a lot.   

That night, even though I got home at 10:30, I was so excited to use the stove and make warm food that I made yummy fried potatoes and scrambled eggs with plenty of herbes de provence. 

29 juin

Finally Friday!  I went to le manier and I found out that it was given to les petits frères by this old lady that passed and endowed it to the organization rather than having it being taken by the government.  It is such a beautiful location with several acres of gardens and open space.  There is also an operating beehive that makes “petits frères honey.”  I was supposed to meet up with a benevole in the morning but they never showed up so I just hung out and did stuff on the internet.  Every Friday, starting at lunchtime, there is a gathering of lots of old people and benevoles (volunteers like me) that come and hang out the manier.  It was so fun and super relaxing.  We started with a lovely three course meal beginning with fried squash, zucchini, and eggplant bathed in a vinaigarette.  Then we had some delicious homemade ravioli and whatever that pasta is called that is a big tube and you put stuff in it…something that starts with a C.  Then we had a scrumptious chocolate cake with cranberries in the middle.  Then the rest of the afternoon was just lounging, relaxing and talking.  They had games out like Petanque and dominoes and then about every half hour, there would be a round of coffee or cake or smoothie served.  I sat and talked to people and played dominoes.  It was great to just soak up the sun in a beautiful setting.  Also, Jared came to the gathering so that was nice to be able to talk to him there and see a familiar face. 

After helping to clean up and such, Jared and I headed to the church for the film night at the Institute.  We talked the whole way and I made Jared tell me lots of animal stories.  He wants to be a veterinarian and has loved animals his whole life.  He’s had every type of pet you can think of and has worked in pet stores and at a veterinary hospital.  He had lots of amusing stories from all of his animal experience.

That night we watched a movie called Night and Day that had Tom Ford and Cameron Diaz.  I was expecting a romantic comedy…but it was more of an adventure movie but I still really liked it.  We watched it in French with English subtitles.  And French people are just so quiet sometimes.  Jared and I were laughing and commenting throughout many parents and they just didn’t react or comment except for super funny parts…I think they just don’t understand the concept of cheesiness and how funny it is.  And maybe Americans are just loud in general which is true.  Sister Rutman had made caramel popcorn as well as popcorn with taco seasoning on it…which was surprisingly really good. 

I’ve been really bad at taking pictures…and I apologize.  But I don’t want to carry around my camera when I’m working and going all over the city to visit people.  So there probably won’t be as many pictures as before…but I’ll do my best. 

30 juin

Today was a relaxing Saturday.  I went with Jared to Carrefour in the morning to try and get my phone card to work, but alas no luck.  I apparently bought the wrong kind of card.  Then we did some Carrefour shopping.  Jared told me more pet and pet store stories.  Jared also showed me where he lives which is in a hotel that has air conditioning and wi-fi.  I’m very jealous, but our apartment is bigger than his room and I like our location better so it all works out. 

I came back home and cleaned up the apartment to get ready for Stephanie to come.  I did laundry at a Laundromat nearby and went grocery shopping.  Then I went and picked up Stephanie at the train station with Jared.  She is super nice and I think we will get along really well.  She served a mission in Quebec and this is her last term of school.  She is also super easy going.  We came back to the apartment and I cooked some lime rice, merlin fish, and asparagus.  We don’t have any measuring cups and so it was a lot of guesstimation but it turned out yummy! 

1 juillet

Happy July!  I miss America this week and the barbecue and pool party we’d be having at home for the 4^th of July….but that’s okay.  I’ll have lots of years celebrating the 4^th in America.  The countrywide soldes (sales) start on the 4^th so that is celebration enough for me.  But I might have to make the trek to Carrefour to buy some peanut butter to have a piece of America that day. 

Today Stephanie and I got to church early to be at choir practice because they asked me to play piano for it while I’m here.  I also played piano in sacrament meeting.  It’s so easy to space out when people are talking in a different language because if I turn off my brain for just a minute or two, it’s hard to focus it back on comprehending what is being said.  But church was still great nonetheless.  I’m always impressed with how friendly and welcoming everyone is. 

After church, Stephanie and I walked over to Parc Borely where they were having a huge Petanque tournament!  Lots of old men with their own set of Petanque boules were set up on numbered lawns playing their games.  It was a big carnival atmosphere with food stands and tents.  Some of the players had matching shirts for their Petanque team.  Petanque is a game that is a cross between croquet and horseshoes and is popular all over France but apparently is significantly characteristic of Marseille. 

We went and walked around the old port and went up to notre dame de la garde, the church on the hill.  The view was still incredible despite the rain clouds that were encroaching upon the city.