we're back

Kristin and I just wanted everyone to know that we've returned from our travels. Our return was somewhat crazy between late trains, the air france strike, and a lack of ride upon arrival. However, here we are safe and sound back in France. It's been so nice to be back getting to see everyone again. The DEFI kids have been amazing welcoming us with a special sign and just being their incredible selves. Today was Sunday and so we went to a special church service in Grenoble for a bunch of churches in the area. It was in the skating rink so that everyone could fit and I sat next to Justin, which allowed for a running commentary throughout the entire service (very entertaining). Then we were late getting out and ended up being late back to serve lunch...oops. Luckily everything went smoothly without us. All in all a very full day of work and it begins tomorrow once again at 7 AM with petite dej....o the joy. :) anyways off for some games as Sunday night is game night with DEFI, fun fun. Ahhhh and for those of u lovely new englanders its winter here....no silly 85 degree days anymore haha.

3 MORE DAYS!!!

Alright well it's been a few days so heres a summary:

Sunday--served 65 people with 3 of us...fun fun. Then had a soiree in the evening with the whole equipier, staff, and some friends from Froges. I learned how to make crepes the real french way minus our little technological crepe maker back home. We had the meal crepes and then Junhio's fiance and I made dessert crepes for everyone. Also my mom, dad, sis and of course mel (because she's basically one of the fam anyways) called and I got to talk to them for the first time on the phone since I've been here. Yikes I am bad at calling/ talking to people on the phone! Then if the evening wasn't amazing enough Monica was at Dana's church to lead youth group and I got to talk to her on skype!!!! I had forgotten how happy I can be when I'm with my friends or even just talking to them. Mike was sooo surprised how excited and energetic I got. He says that I never act that way here! Well for those of you back home I guess that's some kudos to u all...u make me happier than anyone else possibly can:)

Monday--We slept. Actually I slept and Kristin made pies. Because she is amazing and I totally got her into it...teheh. There are two canadien girls here and it was Canadien Thanksgiving, so being the bright one that I am I decided we had to have a special meal. Sadly we were going to a meeting last night so it turned into a pie gouter kinda thing. Then I also ended up sleeping through the entire making of the pies and got up just in time to sit in the salle d'equiper with Mike smelling and yummy pies cooking away! In the evening we went to Grenoble for a dinner and presentation by the local Intervarsity type program. David decided to drive a group of us so we would have more space and we ended up having a little adventure on the way. I love these kids soooo much! So first we decided all the tall people would go in the littlest car...great judgment we all have! So Mike, Doris, Justin, David, and I crammed into the clio and headed to Grenoble. Only one issue, none of us knew how to get there. We almost missed our exit and ended up trying to follow Blain (who drives like he's from Texas...o wait he is) and crossing 4 lanes of traffic to get to our exit! The truck driver we cut off was really happy, especially when all of us turned around and waved! HAHA. As you can see the evening was enjoyable for all involved. The ride home wasn't that boring either, between having to negotiate our way home and not being able to see anything because o yea we broke the heat/AC in the clio! When we got back we watched a movie and we actually went to bed before 2 AM, for the first time in 2 weeks!

On today:
Plans for Paris are underway. Emmy and I spent the entire morning cooking lunch and dinner for camp and also planning exactly where Kristin and I must visit. It's neat to have the perspective of someone who really knows their way around and knows exactly what to see if you only have a day in Paris. I'm actually getting excited for Thursday. Before today I was just dredding having to lug everything through the city and just kinda stressed about figuring out Paris on top of flying home, but not anymore!
We also cleaned all of chartreusse today and had a most entertaining lunch. I love mealtimes here. I've heard complaints about how long the French eat, yet I love it. I love sitting forever and just talking to everyone. I'm also actually getting to speak french at meals. The dinner we ate out on Monday night we only really spoke french!
Right now we're sitting and checking up on emails, writing an update for ya'll and cleaning the salle d'equipier! The students have three classes today which is sad because we're leaving for AWANA's this evening. I am sooo excited! I love my kids sooo much and I love making Lewis speak with his scottish accent!
As I was typing both Jonny Garrett ( a friend from camp) and Dana came on skype. This led to about a 2 hour break and some long conversations. I love talking to people from back home! Anyways on that note I'm going to go do a devo and hang out with Mike and Doris as they just finished work for the day. Hope all is good back home and we'll see you all in three days! It's pretty funny to think that this weekend we will be with you all. It's especially weird as we're sitting here in France talking in french and looking out on the french alps...strange. Tomorrow we pack and then Thursday it's off for Paris and Friday home to America! It's going to be an insane two weeks!

Singing in the rain...and practicing our chinese

Today could not have gotten any better. Mike and I had to do tons of work, but since we were working together and we turned today into Christmas in October the work flew by. In the afternoon the students took off for a camp out in the middle of nowhere so we have the camp to ourselves again! Which of course means an equipier adventure, so this evening the four of us--Doris, Kristin, Mike and I headed to Bringoud. We thought we would get crepes, but got distracted by the chinese restraunt and ended up eating there instead. It was tres drole to be eating chinese food, french chinese food mind ya, in France with american 80's pop disco playing in the background. I tried my first bit of duck at the persuasion of Mike and Kristin who said it was just like chicken...they lied. It's not. Afterwards, we decided to do dessert at the creperie. So to get there we had to walk a little bit and we did a wonderful rendition of singing in the rain, complete with our own improvised dance moves! For dessert we split two amazing chocolate, ice cream, and hot chocolate syrup crepes. They were the best crepes I have ever had and then we just sat for an hour or so and talked and talked. It was so nice to get away from camp and hang out as a littler group. When we got home Mike of course being the guy had to work off all the food we ate and started a game of tag in the parking lot which ended with us all completly feeling terrible due to stuffing ourselves silly. Basically another random equipier night over here in France. Tons of fun and some strange craziness on the side.

P.S.--There was a dog under the table in the restraunt we ate at!!!! It's legal here!

And that's all folks...off for some family guy with the kids :)

Airports :)

I've decided that I cannot wait to fly home today. I had the day off and thus this evening Kristin and I decided to watch a Nooma video. We watched Luggage which is set in an airport and talks about forgiveness. Another great Nooma which really made us think, but the whole video all I could think of was flying as it's set in an airport! I think why I love to fly is because of airports. I love getting there, seeing all the people rushing to and fro, sipping dunks as you wait for your plane, buying a cheesy book to pass the time, guessing where everyone is going, and just waiting. So often I get caught up in the rush of life in America that I don't stop and just look around. Airports have always been a time of yes rushing, but also stopping and getting a chance to look around for once.
Last year I flew to Calvin with one of my best friends Sarah Hathaway. When we got to the airport in Manchester they immediatly postponed our flight due to a huge snow storm and thus we didn't actually take off until 3 hours later. This gave me some time to just sit and enjoy the airport. My favorite thing is when it rains and you're able to sit inside knowing you're about to leave the rain behind. Sometimes you're going someplace with equally dismal weather...such as Sarah and I ended up doing, but other times you're heading to Florida or California. Our adventure didn't end here, Sarah and I ended up having to reschedrule our trip back due to a HUGE snowstorm which blew into the area the day we were schedruled to depart. When we finally got home I must admit that I didn't want to fly for a long long time. Yet here I am sitting in France and all I can think about is flying.
All year whenever my friends and I saw a plane we played a game. We would ask each other if we were on that plane where would we want to be going. For me the answer was definite. I knew that I wanted to be in France and every plane I saw I wanted to be heading there. Now it's funny because once again I look up and find myself playing this game with myself. A lot has changed since I've last played. My friends are scattered across the whole country and world. Everything I once thought certain has now changed. Things I thought unbreakable are now broken. I have discovered which friendships are going to last and those who I will lose due to distance and just the differences in our lives now. I have learned to live seeing what's going on from the outside, getting the updates here and there, but basically almost watching life going on without me. This is not to say that I have stopped living, in fact I have learned to live in a different culture and adapt to a much different manner of living and I find that I like it. So now as I watch the planes fly overhead here in France I am struck with not having the answer to where am I flying anymore. There is a part of me that says I want to be on the next plane home to you all, to Boston and that dirtyyy water. I want to have my starbucks and sit in barnes and noble watching the leaves change and snow fall. The other part of me still screams France. I want to sit here with Mike, Kristin, and Doris forever. Recently I guess I am facing this game everyday as in a week Kristin and I will be flying on back to good old Boston. I'm excited and yet not. I want to see everyone, go back to "normal", to drive with music blaring and my car windows open, to just be free and not have to work every second, I want to laugh so hard my stomache hurts with my girls, I want to go out to dinner dressed up, I want to go to Cosco and load up on american food, I want to go into Starbucks and order a tall hot chocolate and have them actually understand me in ENGLISH and I want to sit in my kitchen holding my cat and hearing Helen play piano. Yet I don't want to leave France, I never ever want to leave France. There's a part of me that could and will live here forever, and yet I think even if I did live here a part of me will always be more comfortable in America. So yea...thats basically what Kristin and I have been discussing lately. It's going to be sooo strange to go back to America. It's going to be exciting and so nice to be home, yet the whole time I'm home I'm going to wish I'm in France because it's home too now. And all this from watching a silly Nooma video set in an airport!

Our first night of AWANA

TODAY WAS SOOOOO AMAZING!!!!! Kristin and I just got in from our first AWANA meeting of the year. For those of you that don't know what AWANA is it's a youth group type program for kids ages 4-16ish. They have a service, games, and most importantly spend time learning and trying to understand the bible. One of the stresses of this program is learning how to memorize bible verses, which is always important for kids to learn! I still remember many of the passages that I learned at this program and I think I only recently realized how much I actually remember from those crazy wednesday nights all those years ago. Not only did I learn tons of verses and make some friends I've still got today, but I also became a christian at AWANA's!!!!

So back to tonight....

When Kristin and I were asked by Allan Pavey (a missionary from america) to help out with AWANA I got sooo excited. Not only was it all in english...a bit of a different for us, but it's also a group of youth which is what I will be studying in college. It was neat that this opertunity was presented to us while we're here and so we decided that although we would be missing some of the work going on here Tuesday evenings that it was worth it. So tonight when Gudren took the kids to AWANA we went with them. We began the evening with an intro, a short message on the rapture, small groups, and then game time. I have my own small group! At first I was kinda freaked to be given a group of 6 7-11 year old boys, but they were actually really nice and sweet! I also have the Pavey's son so I knew one of them. Since I had done AWANA's as a kid I knew how to lead the lesson and memorization time. I am soooo proud of my group of guys, they together learned 8 verses! Pretty impressive for 30 minutes! It hit me during game time how original this group actually was. First off during have you ever one of the questions was who speaks another language other than french or english and more than half the group moves...ahhh! Plus half the people there have moved from America because they are missionaries or their husbands had to move for work. It was just so normal and everyday after living here at Champfleuri in this seperate world for soooo long. I guess what I'm trying to articulate is that it finally felt like we were able to reach out beyond our little bubble up here and meet Christians in the area. It was so nice to just speak english, to understand the little everyday conversations that were going on around us, to have people give encouragment and be positive. The people working there were so nice and friendly, they made Kristin and I feel right at home and the kids were so incredible. Basically it was a great night and I realized how many Americans and missionaries there really are living around here. It was so neat also because it just felt like we actually truly live in France. I mean of course we do, but sometimes it doesn't actually feel like that since we never leave camp. Alright and ending this random tangent AWANA was great and we are going to be heading there every Tuesday from here on out.

Conclusion of September

Well in keeping everyone updated I thought I would write a brief conclusion for the month of September. There's been a lot of activity around here lately and most of it I have yet to write anything about...or if I have then I have also forgotten! So here goes:

This past month has been the craziest of our time here. We have faced some of the many trials that missionaries face during their times abroad. For a little while Kristin and I have been praying together or sharing some prayer requests with each other. In a matter of weeks we have watched God open doors, close doors, and just overall answer our prayers. Some of the answers were not always the ones we wanted, but it's been really nice to see answers and pretty clear ones at that. Some I will share and others we have decided to keep between ourselves.

One of the things we had been praying for was anyone that would bring an air of optomism and get us laughing again. In the words of our camp director Blain "It's hard to be positive and upbeat all the time when you're cleaning toilets". He was right. Just two weeks ago by way of a guy named Jeremy we found laughter again. I know it sounds weird to word it that way, but in all honesty one night Kristin and I found that we had stopped laughing. Gasp I know you all think it's crazy that I would ever stop laughing, but I did, life was just not as funny anymore. So one weekend when we were a bit short staffed Thierry called a friend of his to come fill in for the weekend. The friend was Jeremy, a friend from this past summer. I had actually been praying that this same guy would come back to work here as I remembered how he had connected the summer equipier team and also kept us laughing nonstop. He is also a close friend of the family that worked here in August and we had been telling Kristin tons about him. It was neat for her to get to meet this guy we were all telling stories about. It was also pretty neat because there is no other way to put it than God clearly answered the prayers of both Kristin and myself. And it didn't stop here. Lately we have been praying for a way to worship. It's hard to get to church when you're serving groups on the weekends. This past Sunday we finally got the chance to go to Brignoud with the DEFI students. We also began attending the DEFI chapel and meditations that happen each morning after breakfast. Another answer to prayer was Mike. Mike is from England and besides having a hilarious english accent (yes mike this is me making fun of your accent for the world to see) he is crazy funny. He makes us laugh, jokes around with us, brought some amazing movies and family guy, brought new music on cd!, and is super outgoing. Roll all this into one and he was the type of person we needed to connect to the DEFI students. For a while now we have been mingling and hanging out with the students, but it was not until Mike came last week that we began to become like family. Now we hang out all the time, they ask to help with work, we all spend the evenings playing games and learning to dance and we eat all our meals together. It's so nice to have them here and they are such amazing people. It's neat to mix all the different personalities and see what happens. It's also neat to mix all the countries and see the differences and similarities between us all. My favorite story would have to be Friday night. We had finished work and had joined DEFI for a game of maffia. It was after a very crazy game, probably a bit too much sugar, and some coffee that we decided to learn to dance. Mike knows how to salsa, Hannah knows how to cha cha, Kristin and Justin knew how to waltz. Put them all together and we had a group of pretty decent dance teachers. Of course add the fact that it was midnight and everything is funnier at night and it was a truly amazing evening...and now I can kinda salsa too :)

There is so much other stuff that has been going on around here. Yet as I am beginning to realize unless you live here or talk to us daily there is no way for you to understand everything going on in our lives. Life is sooo busy and there are so many new people to meet and hang out with around here that I feel like I cannot begin to incapsulate everything into a blog. Basically life is incredible, God has been so good and we are seeing his many daily blessings and we continue on...I'm going to include a video and perhaps some pictures from our night of dancing.

O and on another note, it snowed in the mountains the other day. Real legit like knee high snow! I took pictures of course!

Hope you all enjoyed the weekend and are having a good transition back into the work week. For all of you who went to homecoming or participated. Congrats, way to beat Bancroft again!