Playing Catch Up

Ahhh, I'm way behind on updating. Man, now that we've really gotten into the schedule here, we are SO busy. I'm out of the house by 6 a.m. lots of mornings, and I'm not home until around midnight. I love that we have plenty to do here, but by the time I get home, it's late and I go straight to sleep. So, I'm sorry for getting behind on my posts, and I will try to be more consistent from now on.

Now, I'll give a recap of the last few days.

One major new event is that I've started taking an intensive French course at the language school in town. The way this class is set up is that it's one-on-one, and I go in and speak with a French woman named Pascal for 6 hours a week. She refuses to speak to me in anything but French, so it's a huge challenge for me every time I go in. My biggest struggle with French is with speaking (reading and listening are easier), so in this setting, I'm really pushed to get out of my comfort zone and hold entire conversations in French. And for every hour I'm in class, she gives me that many hours of homework to do for the next time I see her. It really is an intensive class, but I'm since I'm trying to learn so much in such a little amount of time, I'm really glad that I have this opportunity.

This class takes place in the mornings, and then I'm spending the afternoons every day with the other interns doing work with the church. Every day we do something different. This week, we went to a nursing home where we visit with some of the patients who never get visitors. I met with a woman named Madame Touzeau (I think it sounds like the name of a psychic or something), and we just let her talk and talk to us and we listened. I always feel so bad for people who have no one to talk to because when someone finally listens to them, they go on and on since this is their only chance to be heard. Actually, I have a bit of a hard time going to nursing homes sometimes because it reminds me of how much I don't ever want to get old and be alone--even though that's an inevitable fate for many of us. When we went downstairs after talking to Madame Touzeau, we helped the staff serve crepes to the other patients for an afternoon snack. While everyone was eating, all of us interns sang to karaoke and danced to songs in front of everyone. This is something I would never do back home, but being here, I'm so much more bold for some reason. Maybe I've just decided that I don't have anything to lose, and I might as well come out of my shell. Either way, I've enjoyed not being shy and becoming a little more outgoing in public settings.

Madame Touzeau

Another thing we do in the afternoons is go visit people in the hospital. This week we went to see a woman named Rania, who had been in the hospital for a few days (for some injury I didn't understand), and we visited with her for over an hour probably. She is probably about 40, and it was her birthday when we went, so we sang to her and talked about French weddings. When you're young and healthy like I still am, it's easy to forget how blessed I am, but going to nursing homes and hospitals really reminds me how seriously good I have it.

I'm also teaching an English learning class for 3-6 year olds at an elementary school in town. We sing songs to learn colors, numbers, shapes, body parts, and all kinds of stuff. They are WAY cute, and I'm really having a blast with that class. It turns out that, their English level is about the same as my French (unfortunately I'm 21, not 5). I teach this same age group at Minter on Wednesday nights, and I've missed doing that back home, so this is working out as a good kid fix.

And now I'll tell you about the fun thing we got to do this week. On Saturday, the one day a week that we have off, we went on a little trip. This trip cost less that three euros and took me to the most beautiful water I've ever seen in my life. I'm not exaggerating at all when I say that this place was so stunning that I actually got a little choked up at one point just looking around me, which is saying a lot for someone who rarely cries. We were in the town of Cassis, which is just a few minutes outside of Marseille. I have never been anywhere in my life that looked so perfect, that looked so much like a computer screen stock background image. We took some really incredible pictures, explored the cliffs, ate lunch, and walked along the beach. It's hard to put into words and accurately describe how content I felt that day. I'm about to have a hippie moment here, but while I was in Cassis, it just felt like everything was right with the world, like harmony existed for all creation, like this is the way the Earth should be, and that there was so much love in the universe. I don't know, but I just had a strong sense of peace and joy being there. It's in those moments that I feel the most spiritual, connected to something bigger than me, and alive.

This picture accurately portrays how I felt being there

This water is SOOO BLUE!

Lovin' that ocean breeze

My wonderful friends