5 juillet
This morning I was at the manier and made some phone
calls to people to see how they were doing.
These old people are already pretty deaf, and then when you throw in my
accent it is sometimes difficult for them to understand me...Veronique helped
me out when I had trouble. The benevole
Danielle came in to do some phone call visits too. She has the cutest little black dog that I
love to play with. Veronique and
Danielle started talking about their kids which was quite amusing. Veronique talked about her 14 year old twins
and she gets so exasperated with them because they never make their beds in the
morning and sleep in until 11 every day this summer. She says that they just get up and then are
on the computer all day skyping or facebooking their friends.
I am loving taking the tram or the bus a lot more than
taking the metro these days. It is so
much nicer to just stay above ground and see the city as I go. It also avoids all of the going up and down
that is required with the metro. For
lunch I had a interesting mix of things on my sandwich—salmon, mozzarella, and
tomato—it was actually super good. That
afternoon I met Marzia who will be my work partner for the next month. She is really nice and super smiley and so I
think we’ll be able to get along well.
She is from Rome but goes to school in Spain! She is very good at her French as well. qSo many languages, it blows my mind.
I got done with work at 3:30 which seemed like a
gift! I watched the movie Marie
Antoinette—the newish one with Kirsten Dunst.
I remember that when I watched it years ago, I didn’t really like it but
decided to give it another chance since it’s been recommended to be several
times and since I visited Versailles and the Petit Trianon in May. I don’t know if I would explicitly recommend
the movie…but I did like it a lot more than I thought it would. The coolest part of watching it was knowing
exactly where that room in Versailles was or where a certain area was located
in the gardens on the Petit Trianon.
That night we had soirée familiale (FHE). Jared taught the lesson and talked about having
goals and saving money to attain those goals.
He talked about how attaining these goals and dreams takes money and
attaining these goals is important than buying a new pair of shoes or than
bonbons (candy). Jared talked about how
he has had a job since he was 14 when he started working at a pet store and
then later worked at a vet clinic. He
paid for his whole mission and is really good at saving money. This subject is something that Elder et Soeur
Rutman are concerned about with the JAs because they feel like a lot of them
are just hanging out in life and not really progressing towards anything by
going to school and such. Whenever Jared
speaks in French, he puts on more of a missionary personality that is more
serious and formal. But when he speaks
English, he is goofy and hardly ever serious.
For the game that night, we played Pictionary! We used the chalk board for all of the
drawings. When it was my turn to draw, I
was afraid I wouldn’t know the words, but I ended up knowing all of the words
on the first card and about half of the words on the card that I got when I
went up the next time around. I had one
of the JAs explain in French to me what the words that I didn’t know meant. In guessing the words, sometimes Jared and I
would yell out the word in English because we didn’t know the word for the
object in French…if the people in the room didn’t know that English word then
we got ignored and just waited until someone guessed the French word. It was a good way to learn some random vocabulary
words such as bark, lock, knight, next, swan, dice, and lily pad. Soeur Rutman made a delicious fruit pizza
where the crust was a sugar cookie with cream cheese frosting and then nutella
on top of the fruit. The JAs had never
had anything like it so I guess it is an Americanish dish. I found out that apparently they have EFYs in
France as one of the JAs is a counselor at them. I talked to some of the amis (investigators) that
were there about French and Italian movies.
This one guy whose name I don’t remember told me about how he loves
American western movies like gone with the wind (which is not a western…but I
guess they ride horses and stuff in it so it seems like it to him). We also talked about spaghetti westerns which
is an Italian genre of film that I studied in my cinema class that are Italian
attempts at making western movies…they tend to occur in Spain or Italy and
often would use American actors. Not
that I needed another one, but I had another awkward bise experience. There is this really tall JA named Robin
(like Robin Hood he told me) and he came to bise as he was leaving because you
bise everyone when you arrive and again when you leave. So we did the first cheek and then on the
second cheek I guess I didn’t stand on my tiptoes as much or something, because
I completely missed his face and just was in the air below him. It was an awkward half a second and then he
bent down farther and we succeeded in touching cheeks…..ahhhhhhhh I will not
miss these bises.
So French people keep adding me on facebook…and since I
don’t always remember all of the names of the JAs, I am assuming that it is
them adding me…hopefully. After FHE,
Stephanie and I stayed and used the internet and talked and laughed with Jared
and Elder and Soeur Rutman.
Still everyday, whenever I introduce myself to someone,
they say oh Melissa like that song by Julien Clerc! And they start singing and I just say oh
really that’s cool like I haven’t been told it 20 times before. Either they talk about the song or they say
oh Melissa like the girls in little house on the prairie!
6 juillet
Today was a loooong but good day. All three of us BYU interns had to be at the
manier at 9h30 so we met up and went over together. We read our horoscopes from the paper on the way. I was destined to have a day where I would
have to make up for all of my laziness in the past few days…hmm. At the manier, we were having a sort of
summer volunteer orientation/welcome session since most of the other interns
are here now. There are 4 girls that
came from the same university in Spain and then there is a French girl from
Marseille. They had some fruit and bread
for us to eat then everyone went around and introduced themselves. Jared cracks me up because it speaks French
really fluidly and with hardly any accent and so the French women just melt and
sigh whenever he starts speaking because they are so impressed with how good he
speaks and can’t believe he’s not French.
Haha…if I ever need anything, I’ll just have him ask for me and he’d for
sure get it. We played a little jeu de
société (board game) with fake scenarios where we would have to say what we
would do in that situation. For
instance, if you were doing a visit and the elderly person asked you to go get
some money from their wallet then go buy some bread and the bakery downstairs,
would it be okay to do that? Or if you
get to someone’s house and you’re supposed to take them somewhere and they
start complaining and don’t want to go, how do you coerce them to change their
mind and go with you? We then all ate
lunch together. Everytime I’m at the
manier, it just feels like paradise because the setting is just so picturesque
and feel surrounded by the beauty of nature and the beauty of France. During lunch, Jared and I talked to the
coordinators about facebook and Veronique was so funny going on about how she
doesn’t understand how people can have hundreds of friends on facebook…she asks
her sons if they understand the real definition of an “ami” (friend). Jared and I laughed with them then
reluctantly admitted that we each had about 500 facebook friends.
It was really difficult trying to figure out what
language to speak. The Spain girls speak
Spanish to each other but I talk French to them and they like speaking English
to us in order to practice. But if they
start speaking to me in English, it’s kind of snobby to keep speaking French to
them. Confusing. Marzia, my Italian collègue, and I headed out
to visit Mme Dernaucourt near Rond-Point.
Mme was overjoyed to see us as always.
She had the movie all ready to go when we got there. We watched The Descendants in French. It’s an American movie starring George
Clooney…it was really good and powerful but didn’t ever really get not
depressing…it just kept being sad. Mme
served us strawberry sherbet and we started watching another French movie
called Les Intouchables that is about a low-class black man in a big city that
gets a job working for a paralyzed extremely wealthy white man. The movie was about the clashing of these two
worlds and the change of each character as a result of their interactions. Mme is quite a chatterbox during the movies
and makes sure to explain to us what is going on to make sure we got it. Or she will also warn us when a particularly
funny or sad part is coming up. We
didn’t finish the movie because Marzia and I had to leave. Mme
introduced us to her “cute and single” physical therapist that came in as we
were heading out the door. Mme also
warned us again about being physically accosted on the beach and on the
streets.
It was very amusing and enlightening to get to know
Marzia better. She told me that when she
was 16, she went with some friends to Spain and fell in love with her now
boyfriend who is from Ecuador. When she
finished high school, she moved to Spain to attend college and be with her
boyfriend. She learned Spanish by living
there. She is majoring in languages and
aspires to be a translator. She said
that learning Spanish and French easier since they are so similar to
Italian. But English is completely different
according to her. When we would be
talking about a certain verb was, she was able to say it in all 4 languages
that she knows and show me how some were similar and some were different. All of the girls from Spain are big coffee
drinkers and big smokers. Marzia has to
smoke every 3-4 hours so before we went down to the metro, she asked if we
could wait a bit for her to finish her cigarette. She asked me if I wanted to smoke and I told
her I didn’t smoke but that it didn’t bother me that she smoked while I was
with her. She was telling me about some
of the BYU kids that did the internship last summer and how her friends that
were here last year that they were nice but weird because they didn’t drink or
smoke or party and I told her that that’s how the 3 of us Americans that are
here this year are too. She told me
about some laws that she had been told existed in America…which I’m pretty darn
sure they don’t exist. One of them was
in California and it banned anyone under 21 to go to a tanning salon. The other one was in Texas and banned a woman
from going to the dentist unless she had written permission from her husband…I
can see this law being existent in regards to an abortion…but no way for a
dentist! She thought it was crazy that
Americans could drive when they were 16 but couldn’t drink until they were
21. Marzia is also convinced that Jared
and I have a thing going on between us because she saw us talking a lot at the
manier…but she just doesn’t get that we are just friends and we both know
English so that’s why we talk more to each other than to other people. She would bring up things that we could go
see or go do in Marseille and then coyly add oh and we can invite Jared! with a
sly grin. Oh la la she cracks me
up. She is super sweet and even though
we come from extremely different backgrounds, I think we will be able to get
along well and work together well.
Marzia and I had to go back to the manier for a super
boring and long meeting for all of the benevoles over the south territory. Two hours of every person having to share
their opinion on every subject. We
scurried out when it was done. I had a
headache so I got some food and slept for a few hours. Around 11h30, Stephanie came in with her two
BYU friends Mindy and Jacqueline. They
are doing the Petits Frères internship in Toulon which is an hour train ride
away down the coast to the east. They
came to spend the night with us and go sightseeing with us the next day. It was a big crowded with 4 in the small
apartment, but we made it work and had fun.
I felt super young amongst them as they have all served missions and are
done or almost done with school, but I got over it and we all had fun
together. I’m guessing that we will be
sightseeing with them most weekends.
Mindy served her mission New Caledonia which is a French-speaking island
out by Tonga. Jacqueline learned French
through school and study abroad and served her mission in Japan.
7 Juillet
Oh my my my today was a fantastic day. A huge reason that I picked to do the
internship in the city of Marseille was so that I’d be sure to be able to go
see the Chateau d’If which is the island prison featured in The Count of Monte
Cristo by Alexandre Dumas. I read this
book in 7th grade and have ever since wanted to come to Marseille
and see the Chateau d’If. It is a huge
literary pilgrimage that I thouroughly enjoyed.
The 4 of us BYU girls took a boat out to the little island. It was a beautiful view as we exited out of
Vieux Port in Marseille and into the clear blue open Mediterranean Sea. It was a beautiful view looking back at
Marseille and seeing Notre Dame de la Garde up on the summit of the hill.
Chateau d’If was built in the early 1500s under the reign
of Francois I to be a fortress that would protect Marseille. It did so until 1580 when it was converted
into a state prison. It was a prime
location for a prison because of its location on a small island. Many politically rebellious French were held
here throughout the years. During the
revolution of 1848, Protestants were held here.
German prisoners were held here during WWI. Alexandre Dumas wrote The Count of Monte
Cristo and set it in Marseille during his present time which was the mid
1800s. In this story, Dantes is
innocently put in prison here at the Chateau d’If when one of his friends
betrays him. Dantes is there for years
and years. He communicates with the
Friar in the neighboring cell through a hole in his cell wall. Together, they dig a tunnel to get out of the
chateau. Dantes escapes jail and goes
back to Marseille under a false identity and plots revenge on the man who
betrayed him. Added to my list of movies
to watch post France is Count of Monte Cristo.
I bought a French copy of The Count of Monte Cristo with
a Chateau d’If emblem stamped on the bottom!
There were picturesque views wherever you looked as one stood on the top
of the chateau. We changed into our
swimming suits then took the boat just a bit farther out into the sea to the
Frioul islands. It was beautiful with lots
of boats at the dock and desert vegetation all over the rolling hills. After some getting lost and plenty of
walking, we found the public beach and it was just splendidly gorgeous. The water was clear clear blue and was cold
at first but then felt so good. There
were seagulls out in the water and constantly flying over us. We watched one seagull come off of the
surface of the water with a fish in its mouth!
It flew away to somewhere where it would be bothered by the other
seagulls. We also watched some seagulls
fighting over this small wooden rod. Not
sure why they wanted it. But they chased
each other in the air for a while. Then
the bird that had it accidently dropped it from its mouth so the other bird
swooped in and snatched it up. There
were people farther out into the water on a boat that would jump in to go scuba
diving. There were lots of snorkelers
and also some cliff divers. We swam out
to touch the yellow buoys, then just lay on our backs and floated and let the
current carry us back towards shore. One
of those perfect moments.
We took the boat and then the metro back to our
house. Mindy and Jacqueline gathered up
their things to take the train back and then we stopped by this pizzeria that I
had come across the other day that is just around the corner from us. It ended up being a treasure find! This sweet lady with a large german shepherd
runs it and was really excited that some of us were from Utah since that is the
name of her dog. She made us pizzas at
the oven in the corner (I got one with goat cheese and ham on it) and then gave
us slices of apple tart as a gift. The
pizza had that delicious thin crust and tasted almost as good as pizzas I’ve
had in Italy. We made tentative plans
with Mindy and Jacqueline to go to Carcassonne next week to see the medieval
fortress and also to attend the medieval festival that will be going on. This Saturday, the 14th of July,
is the French national holiday called Bastille Day (comparable to our 4th
of July). It commemorates the storming
of the Bastille prison in Paris in 1789 that sparked the French
Revolution.
Stephanie and I finished off the day with a trip to the
produce store and the grocery store and then watched a movie I had rented on
iTunes called Invictus until we fell asleep. Stephanie and I have been getting along super
well and have become good friends in just the week that we’ve been
together. She is 6 years older than me
but we both feel like we are the same age.
She is so good to answer my endless French grammar or vocab questions. She is super easygoing and willing to go
along with my sometimes crazy sightseeing plans and isn’t bothered by my almost
constant chattering.
8 Juillet
Today I played piano for choir again before church and
then for sacrament meeting again. There
is just one girl that plays piano in the ward and she has been gone these past
two weeks. I am encouraged with the
progress my French is making as I feel I am now able to understand basically
everything that is said in church. I
just have to keep focused enough during church to actively listen and not zone
out. Oh man I know I’ve said this
before, but you know you’re in France with the sacrament bread is so dang
delicious. There is the cutest little
boy at church with the biggest brown eyes that kind of overtake his face but he
is adorable. He was walking back and
forth between his family and one of the missionaries during sacrament meeting
today. The missionary gave him his
watch to wear for a while and then clipped his missionary batch onto his
shirt. My heart melted, it was just so
so so cute. I was so tempted to take a
picture right there in the middle of sacrament meeting, and probably would have
if my camera didn’t make sounds when it takes a picture.
Oh my word I eat bread and cheese with breakfast, lunch,
and dinner. I can just never get
enough. Thankfully with all of the
walking I’ve done this summer, it doesn’t have dire permanent consequences.
Stephanie and I used the internet for a while in the YSA
center on the upper floor of the church and wrote emails and such. Then we headed back home to eat. We were planning to go back out later and
walk around somewhere, but it just felt too good to sit and do nothing. We both caught up on our journaling then
finished Invictus. It was so good and I
understand why everybody recommends it now.
Very powerful movie.
So I kind of made up a recipe tonight based off of
something I ate in a restaurant in Paris.
We made couscous and then a sort of broth/vegetable/soup thing to go
with it. I boiled some water and then
added chicken bouillon, big potato wedges, big slices of carrot, big slices of
onion, two chopped up garlic cloves, and then salt, pepper, and herbes de
provence. It ended up being super good
with the couscous! It was super healthy
as well as cheap and tasted and looked like something fancy and expensive. The meal was delicious but the making of the
meal was a bit of a disaster! So I
didn’t read the directions on the couscous box well enough because I was
supposed to boil the water and then pour that water onto the couscous and let
that simmer for 5 minutes. But instead I
just put the water and couscous all together and then set it on the
stove…disaster. The water evaporated
right away and just made the couscous burn!
So I decided to start over making the couscous. Dumb me pours all of the couscous and water
into the sink because I was thinking oh the couscous is small enough, it will
go down the drain. But I had forgotten
that there isn’t a garbage disposal and thus I clogged the sink. I used a colander to get all of the couscous
out of the sink but then it was still all clogged up in the drain with more of
it. So Stephanie and I figure out how to
open the sink down below and brave Stephanie puts a bowl under the pipe and
pulls out all of the nastiness couscous that was clogging it. Then when we were starting to clean up,
Stephanie without thinking pours a bowl of water down the drain and she had not
yet put the cap on the pipe to seal it up.
So water comes splashing out into the cupboard down below, onto the
floor, and all around the apartment! It
is more amusing now than it was then.
But we got a bunch of towels, wiped everything off, and eventually got
it all cleaned up. I don’t really feel
like making couscous for a good long while now J
9 juillet
This morning consisted of a planning session at the
manier where we planned out the week and who we would visit when. Then we made a bunch of phone calls to make
the appointments and finalize everything.
Marzia and I will be working together for all of July, but these next
two weeks we will also be joined by Maxime, a French boy that is from Gap in
the Alps region but who currently goes to school in Marseille. He is 19 years old and is studying
marketing. He said that he is
volunteering with les petits frères in order to help people and have an
enriching experience as well as to build up his CV (resume).
The food bank had brought food to the manier and so they
gave us volunteers some salads and sandwiches for lunch that had been
brought. We also had these delicious
delicious cherries. I don’t know if
cherries are good in America because I never really ate them before France and
Israel, but I am a big fan now. And they
aren’t the fake nasty maraschino cherries…they’re the real delicious deal.
It was a funny dynamic between the three of us because
Maxime doesn’t speak English but Marzia and I do. But obviously he speaks the best French and
sometimes he wouldn’t understand what we’d say.
Or Marzia would start talking in English and he would want us to explain
what we were talking about. It’s super
interesting to talk to both of them though and hear their perspectives on
things and compare and contrast our different countries and lifestyles.
The three of us went to the Rue de Provence office to
pick up a car to drive to our appointments.
Maxime can drive since he has a France driver’s license. But he hadn’t ever driven in Marseille before
and so Marzia were a little nervous about driving in the city and kept bugging
him making sure he really knew how to drive.
I learned that almost all cars in Europe are manual stick shift. I also learned some good driving vocab words
throughout our journey from Maxime. I
learned the verb for starting the car, the verb for stalling the car because
Maxime did that quite often, the word for brake, lane, and other things. Also learned the word for right of way. We used this GPS that the Petits Frères gave
us. It was fun to figure out how to use
with it all in French. But it doesn’t
give you much of a warning before you have to turn a certain way, so I was
helping navigate by looking at the GPS.
Maxime and I had some misunderstandings sometimes because the phrase for
go straight is tout droit (don’t pronounce the t’s at the end of the words) and
the phrase for turn right is à droite (pronounce the t at the
end)...so they sound extremely similar.
We got to the apartment of our first visit. The lady opened the door and said she was
really sorry but she was really tired and was waiting for the doctor to come
because of her headache. She said she
needed to rest and was really sorry. The
poor thing was shaking all over. We
offered to stay with her until the doctor came and offered to get her whatever
she needed but she refused and said that wasn’t necessary. We reluctantly left.
Our second appointment was on the far eastern edge of
Marseille. We visited a sweet 90 year
old lady named Mme Colonna-D’Ornano that lives in a nursing home. She is from Corsica and ardently argued with
Marzia (Italian) that Corsica is French, not Italian. Madame descends from royal Corsican
blood. She also descends from several
important French generals and marshals of the past 150 years. Madame never married and her only living
relation is a nephew that lives in Paris and calls her from time to time. Madame had pictures all over her room of her
parents and family and of herself when she was young. One picture of her was absolutely beautiful
and showed her long beautifully wave black hair that she said went down to her
legs. She also has a collection of old
drawings of Napoleon (born in Corsica).
She has a family document that was written 200 years ago in old French. She talked to us about Napoleon and how he
never did anything for Corsica but did lots of things for France. She said she gets lonely at the nursing home
and doesn’t really feel like she has friends since most of the people living
there aren’t mentally there most of the time.
She said she has her photographs to keep her company though. She talked about how she was at the end of
her life and she is slowing down and doesn’t go out anymore because it is
difficult to walk. We encouraged her to
be positive about things and encouraged her that she is still very intelligent
and is doing quite well considering she is 90.
We talked about politics a bit and she talked about the ban on Islamic
women wearing their veils in public and she is completely for it and said that
they are in France so they need to be in France. We asked what she had done for work during
her life and she said she had never really worked and was always able to live
off her parents and she took care of them throughout her life. She took us out onto her balcony and showed us
her magnificent view. She looks out at
beautiful rocky mountains that are extremely close to her. She can see the Mediterranean sea out to the
right and the sun shining over that. Her
view is full of greenery with lots of different kinds of trees. She also sees lots of birds and listens
constantly to the cicadas during these summer months. All of the buildings in her view are
decorated in that Mediterranean way with light yellow dry wall and blue or
white shutters and the red clay tile roof.
Maxime and I talked a lot during our driving time. He told me that most of the films he watches
are American and his favorite movie is Gladiator. He told me about how most of the popular
songs are American and I asked him if it bothered him that he couldn’t understand
the lyrics and he chuckled and said ya but it’s more about the “air” of the
music and the feel of the music. He
asked me to translate some of the lyrics to the American song we were currently
listening to on the radio. And then we
started talking about church. He asked
me if my family was “croyante” or believing which basically means
religious. I told him yes and then he
said he was catholic and had done his communions but he only went to church
during Christmas time. He was
shocked/impressed when I told him that I went to church once a week. I told him I was Mormon which shocked him
because he said he thought that Mormons didn’t use electronics and that they
had religious clothes that they wore all the time. I set him straight and explained that
missionaries do have a dress code, but in general, Mormons wear normal
clothes. He asked what our “valeurs”
(beliefs/values). I panicked a bit
because I don’t feel super confident in French church vocabulary but I did my
best. I told him that we believe in the
Bible but also in another book The Book of Mormon. I told him that we don’t drink alcohol, tea,
or coffee nor do we smoke and we obey the law of chastity. I told him that we think that families are
very important and that our church teaches us to be charitable and give service
to others like Christ did. I told him
that we believe in doing what Christ has told us to do. I explained to him that we have modern prophets,
just like the prophets in the Bible, who receive revelation from God for our
day. He commented on how rare Mormons
were and I agreed but told him that the church was in France and that there was
a church building in Marseille at Rond-Point du Prado as well as a young adult
center that organized activities. He kept asking more questions and so I kept
talking and it was a good conversation.
I came back and recounted the conversation to Stephanie and she said I
did a good job in giving an overview and the French words I had used were
correct so that made me happy. It made
me happy that I got to share that part of me with someone that wouldn’t have
heard about it if I hadn’t worked all these years to learn French!
My favorite French phrase these days is “Il n’y a pas de
soucis” which basically means no worries.
I love how whenever I learn a word or a phrase, I start hearing it all
around me, all the time by people I am talking to or listening to.
If you ever want to do something in fast and efficiently,
don’t come to France. Everything is just
relaxed and slow. At the grocery store,
lines take quite a bit longer than in the states as the cashiers sit down in
chairs and go at a normal pace, rather than a rushed, trying to be fast and
efficient pace. Once you get used to it
and know to expect things to be like that, it doesn’t bother you anymore. The cheese I bought for the next few days is
Brie! I feel like I still haven’t made a
dent in exploring the French world of cheese with all the choices of cheese
that are at the store…but I’m making some progress at least. There are 370 different types of cheese in
France…one for every day of the year! Of
course they aren’t all available at my grocery store. It would truly to take a lifetime to become a
true cheese conaisseur. The best grocery
purchase of the day was 4 little cups of delicious chocolate mousse for just
one euro!
I love observing people out our apartment window as they
are on their balconies. People hang up
their laundry or sit and chat with a cup of coffee. There are also cats on the roofs from time to
time. I watched one this morning chasing
a little lizard who scurried to safety up and over a wall.
Oh how I love to read your writings!!! You are learning and growing so much!!!! You have depth and understanding beyond your years!!
ReplyDeleteI love you Melissa!
Love,
Mom
I'll watch conte of Monte cristo with you when you get back. Oh and I love invictus. We had some really good cherries when we were in Italy. They are usually so expensive in America except for a couple weeks in the year which is sad because they are so good.
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