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!
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