Greetings everyone! Unfortunately i dont have journal entries to post here since i dont have my computer with me. this french keyboard is super complicated so just ignore all the errors!
But life update ready set go!
I have one week left in marseille and it is sad saying bye to everyone here that i love so much but i am ready and excited to be home. I went to london last weekend and got to see two olympic events...volleyball and speed walking! Also fulfilled a dream of mine to see les mis and i was not disappointed. I also spent some great time just wondering around london and also wondering around cambridge where i stayed with my friend jen. She showed me the charm of the city and we had a lovely time getting tea, seeing a shakespeare play, and visiting the beautiful colleges of cambridge.
Im still alive here and will most more soon! I will be back in america with my phone that i miss dearly on August 20 and then i will be in fayetteville until that saturday the 25th when i come to provo to start school on the 27th!!
Tuesday, August 14, 2012
Monday, August 6, 2012
photos!
Some quality cute children creeping in Aix-en-Provence
Aix
We went to a baby's baptism in this church in Aix...the cute baby named Arthur there :)
Marseille vieux port
Me with Sister Rutman at the vieux port during our sunday evening stroll
Notre Dame de la Garde lit up at night with the vieux port down below
One of my favorite ladies that I visit Madame Pellanq. She lost her parents when she was 2 and has been handicapped in a wheelchair her whole life. But she always has the biggest smile with lipstick on her lips and teeth. What a joy and inspiration!
Cute child in church wearing one of the missionaries tags :)
Also! Jared got published on the Petits Freres website! Here's the link:
30 July-1 August
30 juillet
One thing I’ve learned in France is that just because a
store has something in the store, that doesn’t mean it’s available for purchase
or that it won’t ring up an error at the cash register. I’ve also learned that just because a restaurant
is advertising something, there’s a 50% chance that they’ll actually have the
item available for purchase because there are always things that are only
available during certain hours of the day or that are just not available at
all. You’d think they would take
unpurchasable products out of a store or off a menu, but no.
Today started off with our weekly planning session with
just Marzia and me since Veronique is on vacation. Marzia was a bit of a mental wreck since she
had apparently broken up with her boyfriend off 4 years over the weekend
because she realized she didn’t love him anymore. She has a new boyfriend which is a guy that
she met on the beach here n Marseille.
She was super stressed about all the logistics of getting rid of the old
and trying to make things work with the new…it stressed me out! But we went and got food and bonded again
over her favorite song Call Me Maybe that we she asks to listen to basically
every day. There was also drama between
the people that Stephanie works with which is her the American, a Spanish girl,
an Irish girl, and a Moroccan guy. It’s
just hard with so many cultural differences that people take offense to things
that another person says that they didn’t see as being offensive. Always an adventure!
That afternoon was an outing organized by the Petits
Freres for all of the summer volunteers.
They took us all up to the tops of the mountains down the coast near
Cassis and we had an incredible view of the sea and the beaches and the small
villages in the mountains. Then we went
to a calanque that I had never been to that was beautiful! This time we hiked up the mountain for an
incredible lookout point. Afterwards, we
drove down to the beach of the Calanque and several people got in about halfway
then got out. Stephanie and I were the
only ones that actually got in and swam.
We swam over to this huge rock and enjoyed the sun and cool water. Then they drove us over to the Morgiou
calanque and we drove on these windy mountain roads to get down to the shore
where there were people playing petanque and old men sitting out on their
fishing boats flirting with us. It was a
beautiful location with the white cliffs and clear blue water.
They took us all out to eat to this Italian restaurant
which ended up being the same one at the St Loup centre commercial that Marzia,
Maxime, and I had gone to several weeks before.
They got us these formules (meals) that were 15 euros per person. We got drinks and then went to the buffet
which had a variety of cold salads and bread.
I noticed that all the French people took a roll with their salads
(innately have to have bread with every meal) and all of the not French people
didn’t. We all ordered pizza or
pasta. I got a delicious shrimp
fettucini pasta. I’m pretty sure this
restaurant was owned by an American because of all of the restaurant customs
and mannerisms were American and food portions were super large. And then because it was the week of my
birthday, the restaurant said they would give me a cake. But the cake would be for everyone! That makes so much more sense than just
giving a treat to the person whose birthday it is like it is in America. But our little meal plan thing came with a
dessert also, so I chose the fresh pineapple option and most other people got
ice cream or mousse. So we’re just all
sitting there at the restaurant and then all of a sudden they turn out all of
the lights in the restaurant and the song Gimme a man after midnight from Mamma
Mia starts blaring over the restaurant sound system. I was like this cannot be for my birthday
thing…but everybody was like I thing this is for you! So we’re all singing to the song and then the
waitress ladies come over dancing and cheering bringing the cake. They make our whole table of 15 people stand
up and clap and sing along to the song while I stayed sitting down and they lit
the cake in front of me and I blew out the three candles. The waitress lady was so funny and kept
telling everybody to sing and clap plus fort (louder). The whole time, I was like this cannot really
be happening—it was just so fun/funny.
And then afterwards we all ate the cake!
Which was a cherry ice cream cake!! It was soooo goooooooood. Everything in France is just so natural
tasting, not much of that artificial flavoring junk.
We had to say goodbye to the Spain benevoles who were
leaving the next day…it was sad.
31 juillet
Happpppyyy birrrttthhhdddaaayyy
jjjooossseeeepppphhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Today I didn’t have to be anywhere until 3:00! It was quite quite lovely. I did laundry, caught up on journal writing,
and chillaxed. At 3, I went to Mme
Dernaucourt’s apartment. Oh man, I love
that lady so much. She never ceases to
make me laugh or to teach something new.
She told me stories of miraculous healings, of her family, of Israel, of
Florence…and just never stops talking but it’s always so entertaining. We had cassis (blackberry) ice cream. Mme is still so so beautiful in her
wheelchair with her classy dark red hair and her bright red lipstick. Also, Jared was having a super stressful day
and so I texted him jokes throughout the day to keep him sane.
Then I went and visited Madame Alaguezian who I had never
visited before. She is something, that’s
for sure. She lives all by herself and
has never married. She lived with
someone for 20 years, but he has passed on.
She is pretty young (meaning early 80s…not like mid 90s which is old). She is in good health except for she has
difficulty walking a lot. She invited me
in and immediately called me her petite Americaine and was so content to have
me there…..oh my gosh my english is sooo
bad! I would never say the word content
in English, but it is said all the time in French…She whipped the
beautifully molded flan that she had made for me. She also pulled out cookies and chocolate and
water all for me. She said she wouldn’t
eat any of the cookies or chocolate because she didin’t want to grossir (get
fatter). She cut me this huuuuge piece
of flan that was half of the entire circle of it. I was praying that I would like the taste of
it so that I could eat the whole thing. The
flavor was fine and was sweet…but oh man the texture and the feel of it in my
mouth was unbearable. It was a mix
between and jello and animal fat….not pleasant.
I was praying that I would not gag as I kept forcing myself to eat it to
make her happy. I made it through 3/4ths
of what she had given me and then just couldn’t do it anymore and told her I was
done because I didn’t want to grossir either.
Mme Alaguezian is Armenian but has lived in France all of her life. She doesn’t like any of her neighbors and
doesn’t go farther than her immediate neighborhood because she doesn’t walk
well. She is very emotionally unstable
and told me she had just been crying when I came and that some days she just
cries and cries from loneliness. Her
apartment is immaculately clean. She is
so intelligent and knows about everything.
She reads so so so much! She
pulled out lots of her books to show me.
She showed me a French history book, a music encyclopedia, a way things
work science book, a book about the cheese of France, a recipe book and other
things. She is a master French chef but
doesn’t cook much anymore because she doesn’t want to grossir. She told me about friends she had made
through les petits frères and how glad she was for them. She told me about the petits frères benevole that
comes to see her throughout the year. When
it was time for me to leave, Mme filled a sack with the remaining cookies and
chocolate for me to take with me to share with people. She also gave me some of her headache
medicine for me to give to Marzia (I had told Mme that Marzia wasn’t there
because she was sick, but in reality she had just ditched me.) Mme Alaguezian is such a kind soul and I’m
excited to visit her again.
As I was walking to the bus to go home, I get a phone
call from a lady that works at petits frères and she asked me really odd
questions about Marzia. She asked me if
Marzia was someone that I felt like I could trust and if she had done a good
job in all of the visits we did. Then
she asked me if Marzia had ever not come to do visits when she was supposed to. I told her about the one day that Marzia
didn’t come at all because she had gotten food poisoning and then also about
today how she had skipped out on the afternoon.
I had no idea why I was being asked all of these questions, but all I
could do was just answer them honestly.
And then about 10 minutes later, I get a call from Marzia and she asks
if we can meet up to talk. Boy was I
scared. We met up and Marzia told me the
whole story. So she had asked the petits
frères if she could stay for two more weeks and work for them (because of her
whole bf drama) but marzia had had problems with the hotel because she was so
messy and the hotel maids had gotten mad and reported the issues to the hotel
director who had talked to les petits frères.
Also, Marzia told les petits frères that that day that she had gotten
sick from food poisoning, she had met up with me later in the day for the
afternoon visits which was not true. So
because of her cleanliness issues and because they weren’t sure if they could
trust her, they told her she couldn’t extend her internship. She asked me to lie for her if they ended up
asking me about her sick day again…since the story I had told was different
from her lie version. I of course would
never do that, but didn’t tell her so.
She updated me on her boy drama and she talked about how she was sad she
had to leave les petits frères on a sour note since she had done so much good
and had worked really hard for the past month.
I ran into Jared on the way home and he came back to my apartment to get
something that Anastasia needed since he works with her.
1 August
I spent the morning relaxing and went to McDonalds to use
the internet. Sometimes I feel weird not
having work all the time…but then I remember that I’m not going to have a
summer break before school starts again in the fall and that this is my summer
break so it’s okay to have some free mornings.
Around noon, I went with Marzia and Jared to pick up my
new work buddy Anna (but pronounced Anya) who is from Poland. We found her pretty quickly and I was
immediately impressed with how great her French was. I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone from
Poland so I didn’t know what to expect, but Anna is awesome. I’m excited to get to know her better these
next few weeks. We got Anna her metro
pass and she told me later that she had used a photo of her identical twin
sister because she didn’t have one of her own.
All of their passport/official-y pictures have them not looking at the
camera, but looking to the side with one ear fully exposed. The happiness of this point in time was that
Marzia heard back from her dad who had conceded to pay for her flight home to
Rome the next day…and he said they would talk when she got back home…haha.
We ate lunch at a boulangerie and then headed over to the
CGD maison de retraite where Marzia and Anna visited Mme Gallet and went and
visited Mme Gaillard in the hospital. I
feel much more at ease with Mme Gaillard since it’s my 3rd visit
with her now. I got her talking about
the time she spent as a nurse and what she had and hadn’t liked about it. It makes my day when someone’s eyes light up
when I walk into the room to visit them…makes every hard time in my life worth
it because it led me to this point here to be with her and comfort her. We headed back to Cinq Avenues area after the
visits and Marzia and Anna talked with this group of BYU students that is here
right now doing sociological research and they needed to talk to young
Europeans. They had a byu girl that
spoke Italian, so Marzia did her interview in Italian. But none of them spoke French and Anna
doesn’t really speak English and knows a tiny tiny bit of Italian. Unfortunately I had to go meet up with
people, or I would have stayed to help translate..but apparently they got by
with the tiny bit of French that one guy knew and the little bit of English
that Anna knew.
I ran back home and changed then went and met Jared at
Rond Point to go to the Calanques to meet up with the JAs that had been there
all day. Soeur Rutman drove us over to
the start of the hiking trail and then Jared and I hiked in (it was the same
calanque that we went to last week). At
one point in the hike, I slipped on a rock and fell down and stood back up with
a bloody knee. Jared swore he would not
swim next to me for fear of sharks. We
met up with the JAs and they were all done swimming for the day but Jared and I
jumped in with one of the JAs, Jacob. The
water was freezing again, but somehow was more bearable and maybe a bit less
cold than last time. We swam over to a
different area of the calanque and Jared had his big goggles so we traded off
looking at the fish and coral and seaweed down below. It was kind of creepy actually to see what
was way down there. We swam over to this
huge huge huge rock that went straight up.
We walked around and up it till we were basically at the top. And I knew we were planning on jumping off it
the whole time, and I should have just ran and do it. But I looked down first and realized hooow
high it wasssss. Oh man it was
scary. And there were jutting rocks on
the cliff below so I would have to be sure and jump out. I made Jared wait for me to go before him
because I knew if I was the only person left up on that rock I would never be
able to jump. I had to mentally prepare
myself for about 2 minutes, and then I told Jared I was going to likely scream
really loud when I jumped because that is just how I am. So I kind of screamed at the sky to prep
myself and then I jumped out and down and meanwhile let out this blood curdling
high pitched squeal/scream thing. I’m
surprised the whole world didn’t here it.
And oh man, it was a long way down and my body just folded down down
into the water when I reached it. But
luckily, I didn’t regret doing it at all.
After the epic jump, Jacob took us to this caves area where you had to
hand crawl through the water and little rock arches to get to this little
cavern sea shore area. We went back to
Marseille with all the JAs. Oh man I am
going to miss joking around and talking with these people!
Wednesday, August 1, 2012
27 July-29 July
27 juillet
Today I went out to meet Marzia where we were supposed to
meet and she wasn’t there. 10 minutes
later, she still wasn’t there and we had a bus to catch! So I called her and her roommate from Spain
answered the phone and I can never understand her when she speaks French or
English because it just sounds like Spanish to me. All I understood were the words malade,
toilette, and desole (sick, toilet, sorry) so I assumed that they were
sick. I thought at the moment that they
were probably hung over but found out later that they had gotten food
poisoning. So I was on my own for the
day. I went to the nursing home to visit
Madame Gallet but then found out she had gone out with her son for the
day. I checked on another lady that I
was supposed to visit and she was asleep at the moment but the animatrice told
me that they were doing karaoke at 14h30 and so I could come back and do that
with her then. I told them I’d be
there. Then I went back to my apartment
with nothing to do for the morning so I journaled and took a nap.
At lunchtime, I went out to eat with Jared and his new
work partner Anastasia. She is from
Russia and I love that that is her name.
She is from an area near Moscow (only a 9 hour bus ride away she
said!). She speaks French and English
super well but we talked in French the whole time with her. She talked about how it was different with
European and American people because they all smiled so much. I asked her if she liked Tolstoy and she told
me no, he uses too much detail. But she
gave me another author name and book title to read that according to her, better
illustrates the mind set of Russians. Jared
and I shared a delicious mozzarella and jambon pizza.
Then I headed back to the nursing home to go to the
karaoke session with Mme Pellanq. Mme
Pellanq is such an inspiring person. She
was orphaned at age 2 and has been handicapped and in a wheelchair her whole
life. But she always is wearing bright
red lipstick and is always smiling and laughing and enjoying what is going on
in the moment. If I ever think that I
have a reason to be sad or whiny, I’ll just think of Mme Pellanq and know if
that she can keep her chin up after all that she has gone through, then surely
I can too. I sat and chatted with Mme
and listened to thea group of about 30 nursing home residents reading and
singing the lyrics to these old French songs.
It was hardly ever on key but was still so beautiful as these people
that often don’t really look like humans anymore regained some light in their
eyes as they moved their lips to the words or just tapped their hands on their
wheelchair armrest. I of course didn’t
know really any of the songs but I enjoyed listening and chatting with Mme who
kept asking me questions about my life and how I like Marseille and such. She would keep saying how she was so grateful
that I was there and how les petits frères is her family because she has no
one—but always said it with a huge smile showing the lipstick that had rubbed
off on her teeth. A little snack break
was taken after some songs and little cakes and drinks were passed out. The animatrice lady came over and asked me if
I sang…I couldn’t lie and say no. So she
told me to come and look at the English songs that she had. Anywho, I got roped into singing a center
stage, miked solo of My Heart Will Go On (from Titanic)! Ha! I
started getting nervous, but then realized that this was probably the least
judgemental crowd I could ever have. I
got introduced as the special treat for the karaoke session. I sang the song as I read the lyrics on the
screen and people joined in to sing with me on the chorus. I did not have a super clear tone really but
nonetheless, I got a huge applause and cheers when I finished. I took a bow and they clapped even more. Haha it was a very memorable moment. My favorite part though was that Madame
Pellanq made sure everyone knew that I was with her and that I was her friend
and visitor because she was so proud of me and wanted to show me off J. I don’t think I will ever be able to listen
to that song again without thinking of the Etoile maison de retraite (nursing
home). I said goodbye to Mme Pellanq at
the end of the activity and she made me promise that I would be there next
Friday at 14h30.
Then I went and visited Mme Gaillard who I had never met
before. She is in the same nursing home
complex but lives in the hospital. She
broke her legs two years ago when she fell and has never really recovered from
that and so is always in a wheelchair or in her hospital bed. I’m not sure what else is wrong with her that
keeps her in the hospital, but I know that she is given food and water through
tubes and tried to eat a cracker earlier that morning but threw it up minutes
later. Oh but what a sweetheart. I felt her kind heart and soul as soon as I
started talking to her. When I asked her
Vous allez bien? Ca va? She replied Ca
va doucement. (How is it going? It’s
going slowly/softly). She is all alone
since she never had any kids and her husband has already passed on. She was in a depressed state which I wasn’t
sure if that was her norm or if it was a particularly bad day. She kept telling me that she never imagined
finishing out her life like this, in a hospital room, but in her words of
acceptance “C’est la vie” (that’s life).
She reminded me several times “Il faut profiter de la vie” which means
basically don’t take life for granted and merit and profit from it as much as
you can. That’s such a hard situation to
know what to say to someone who is on the threshold of passing into the next
life but you don’t want them to be sad when it happens. So I said a quick prayer that I could figure
out what to say to her to make her smile and lift her spirits a bit. I started by commenting on how beautiful her
wedding ring was because it was a beautiful silver band with topaz and diamonds
in it. That got her talking about how
she had been married to her husband for 50 years and I told her that that was
true love right there and she agreed. I
asked her what she had done for work in her life and she told me she had been a
nurse. I marveled and told her that she
had helped so many people throughout her life as a nurse and she agreed with me
and said one must truly love people for that type of work. I reminded her that lots of people must
remember her for all the kindness that she rendered to others. I pointed out how lovely the view outside her
window was with a view of trees and flowers.
She has a shelf in her room with lots of little trinkets from all around
the world and she told me that she hadn’t traveled those places but had been
given those things by friends throughout the years and she brought them here to
make her room feel more like home. I
pointed out that wow she had so many good and true friends and she agreed. I asked her if she was going to watch the
Olympic opening ceremonies that night and she said yes! She said she loves the Olympics and was
looking forward to watching the opening ceremony tonight and the games throughout
the next few weeks. I told her that I
loved the Olympics too and we talked about what our favorite sports to watch
were. She is a sucker for figure
skating..but unfortunately it’s not the winter Olympics this time around. I had a thought in my mind that she must
wonder if this is the last Olympics she’ll ever see…or how many she has left to
see… Il faut bien profiter de la vie like she told me. I helped refill the drawer by her bed
with little cakes. She has trouble
sleeping at night and she says that that is hardest part of the day because she
gets bored and so she has these little cakes to pass the time. When I was saying bye to her, she smiled for
the first time since I had come into the room and said she had thoroughly
enjoyed our visit and thanked me for coming.
I didn’t want to leave her alone for the next two days because the
weekends are always lonely times for people in nursing homes and so I asked if
I could come visit her Sunday afternoon and she said Volontiers (of
course!). There is no better
satisfaction in life than being with other people and trying to lift their
spirits. Best feeling ever. Today was a great day of reminding me why I’m
really here even though it’s frustrating at times when people seem to not want
to see us or when logistics get complicated.
On the bus ride home I was trying to remember what
British English accent sounded like and I could not for the life of me
remember. I tried to think of lines in
Harry potter or pride and prejudice, but I could just not do it since I have
been so overloaded with French this past month.
So when I got home, I watched the first 45 minutes of the first Harry
Potter movie that I have on my computer and thoroughly enjoyed it. But I never get sick of listening to French
people talk. The JAs think that English
is so pretty to listen to and are shocked when us Americans say we love the way
French sounds.
That night, instead of a film night, the JAs had a “ball”
or a dance. I first went upstairs with
my computer to see if I could find the Olympic opening ceremony online to
watch…but malheureuesment, I couldn’t find anywhere to watch it that didn’t
require a sign in. For the NBC site, you
have to sign in with your cable provider information and contract info. I was kind of bummed about that because I
knew that at home, Mom had for sure planned a super cool party/activity and
everyone was watching it at home. But
I’ll just have to watch it when I get back to the states because they are always
such cool shows and I have awesome memories of always watching them with the
family. I don’t think I’ll get to watch
much of the Olympics here because I don’t have a tv but I may be able to catch
some glimpses of stuff going on in reading the paper and watching tv with
people I visit.
So the dance was just the JAs and the guys had gotten a
hold of this huge awesome stereo system and played really good music. It was funny though because there were only
like 12 of us and they left all of the lights on….and I am much more
comfortable dancing in these types of settings when the lights are off. We had pizza and popcorn and cookies and
enjoyed hanging out and listening/dancing to the music. I also sat in the kitchen a lot of talked
with Sis. Rutman and Coralie. Coralie
asked me if I knew how to do a braid with 4 pieces of hair rather than 3. I had no idea what she was talking about and
so she looked up a youtube tutorial video and I realized that she was talking
about what we call in the states a fish hook braid. I did it on her long beautiful dark hair and
she loved it! Then I did it to Sis.
Rutman’s hair so that Coralie could see how to do it. Then I taught her how to do a French
braid…and she laughed that it was called a French braid and we both had no idea
why. I also showed her how to do a
waterfall braid. We played musical
chairs later and I won the first game then got out about in the middle in the
second game. At the end of the evening,
Stephanie and I missed the last bus to the metro stop and so we had to walk to
metro stop which took aabout 20 minutes.
Sweet Florian who had walked us out to the bus stop, with such sweet new
convert faith, said a prayer for us there on the road and then sent us off
knowing we would be safe.
28 juillet
Stephanie and I made plans to sleep in just like last
week. Then we went and got on the train
around 11:30 to go to Cassis. Cassis is
a famous beach town that is about a 20 minute train ride away in going east
along the coast. Whenever you ask people
around here what you should see at or near Marseille, they say Notre Dame de la
Garde, les Calanques, and Cassis. The
Rutmans have been there several times and told us it was a must-see. We got off the train and figured out it was
about 3 km to the city center and the coast and instead of waiting for the bus
for 20 minutes, we just decided to walk there since it was a downhill
trek. And oh man I’m so glad we
did! We passed beautiful vineyards,
farms, trees, flowers, and produce shops.
There were lots of cute countryside houses and the cigales (cicadas)
were chirping loudly away as always. I’m
so glad I have my camera to take pictures that can almost truly capture the
beauty around me.
We made it to the city center and oh man, Cassis is such
a cute town! There were obviously lots
of vacationing people here, but they were all French. We ate lunch on this cute square with huge
shady trees and lampposts with overflowing hanging flower baskets. We walked around the city public garden and
then walked down to the beautiful port and finally the beach. I keep thinking I’ve seen my favorite
Mediterranean beach, but then the next weekend I go to another beach and find
another most favorite beach ever. You’ll
just have to see pictures of this beach but it was just incredible. The water was clear and white and then a
beautiful turquoise blue in some parts.
There were big mountains/cliffs in one direction with castle ruins on
the top. This beach had great waves and
it was enjoyable to just ride the waves and listen to the children screaming
with fright and joy at the experience. I
never wanted to get out of the water, but we had a boat to catch at 16h so we
had to start drying off sometime. We
went over to these huge rocks down the coastline a bit and just laid on the
rocks to dry off and watched the waves foam and crash at the rocks.
Next, Stephanie and I did an hour and a half cruise that
took us to see 8 calanques! It was such
a fun experience! The boat was super
rocky which I was not expecting but added to the experience. We sat on the top of the boat and took lots
of pictures of the beautiful white cliffs, greenery, and clear blue and
turquoise water. We saw lots of people
kayaking, rock climbing, boating, and picnicking. We got to see 8 calanques! It was so so so cool. The guy on the boat narrated the ride and
pointed out things in the landscape and the names of certain rocks and the
unique things about each calanque. We
went past the island where they found Antoine Saint-Exupery’s plane where he
had crashed it and died. He is the
author of the famous French book The Little Prince. We also went past the calanque where we had
gone with the JAs earlier that week. The
views were incredible but with all the rockiness of the boat, Stephanie and I
both had a headache and were ready to get off by the end.
After the boat ride, I introduced Stephanie to Amorino
gelato that we ate all the time in Paris then we bought some postcards. We went back to the square where we had eaten
lunch and wandered through the handcraft market that was there. Then we went back and walked around the port
and looked at the work of local painters…if only I had a couple extra hundred
euros…I would have bought something. Then
we kind of walked around getting lost and rewalking the same streets but we
finally found the bus stop that took us back to the train station. We didn’t want to walk this time since it we
were both more fatigued and it was an uphill walk now. We grabbed some bread, cheese, meat and
haribo gummy bears to eat for dinner on the train back. A super funny moment was when I told
Stephanie that the bus stop was by a casino.
Casino is the name of a common grocery store but this time it was actually
a casino, gambling casino. So we are
walking past the casino and Stephanie starts walking towards the front
door. And I’m like ummm where are you
going? I think the bus stop is going to
be on the road over here. And Stephanie
says oh I thought you wanted to buy a baguette and some food for dinner? And I responded in the casino?! I don’t think they have that there to
buy. And then she realized it was a real
casino…we still laugh over that J.
Stephanie and I were sitting on the side of the train
station on a little bench eating dinner and looking at pictures as we waited
for the train that was 20 minutes late. We
lost track of time, because thing we knew, the train that we had wanted was
leaving the station! We hadn’t even
heard it come up to the station or anything!
It was a shorter train and we had wrongly assumed that we would see the
cars pull up in front of us. It was a
bit frustrating but there was nothing we could do so we just laughed at our
stupidity and waited another 40 minutes for the next train back to Marseille.
29 juillet
We made it on time for choir and it was actually
happening this time! We rehearsed the
song and ran through it several times since we were going to sing it in church
that day. I waited out in the hall for
the first half of relief society as I was waiting for Jared to come with
Anastasia so I could take Anastasia to relief society with me. In
sacrament meeting, they had the hymn number for silent night listed up on the
board and Jared and I were laughing, wondering when they would realize it and
change it. It took until before the
sacrament hymn when the chorister pointed out to the bishopric and another hymn
was chosen. The choir number went
well! The a capella part at the
beginning where the women hum the melody and one of the basses reads the lyrics
always feels a bit jolted at the end when the piano comes in and realigns the
key…ha but I doubt many people noticed or cared. Transfer assignments were given on Friday and
so 3 of the 6 missionaries that were leaving bore their testimony. I hung out and talked to people for a while
after church then went back to my apartment.
I really really really wanted to take a nap and not go
back out into the heat. But I had
promised Mme Gaillard that I would come and visit her. I was so tempted to call her and cancel
it. I rationalized in my mind that maybe
she would forget that I had told her I was coming. But then I thought about the conference talk
about things that are good, better, and best.
It would be good to relax on a Sunday afternoon in preparation for a new
week. But it would be best to keep my
promise and be unselfish and go visit her.
I knew I would be annoyed with myself for the rest of the day if I
didn’t go. So I went. And it was enjoyable! She seemed to be in better spirits today and
was keeping food down. She told me
about the opening ceremonies and how they were incredible. She told me that the whole royal family was
there and that the queen carried in the torch or lit the torch, I’m not really
sure which. She told me about what
medals had been awarded so far. Then we
watched a bit of the basketball game between USA and France. I stayed for about an hour and a half and
then took the bus back home. Stephanie
had gotten back by then as she had done one visit that afternoon too. We both were exhausted and fell asleep from
about 5-7:30. Then we got up to eat and
get things done.
So I am supposed to teach the FHE lesson on Thursday
about how I’ve been to church in different countries and about how it is still
the same and is still true all over the world.
I’m having some difficulties figuring out where to take it…but I’ll
figure it out.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)