We finally arrived in Paris. We were met at the airport by a contracted driver to take us to our apartment. We are near the Louvre and other museums. Our apartment is in a 16th century building. Rock on some walls. Wooden beams on the ceiling. Small but lots of character. This will be our home for the next three months.
Yesterday we spent all day in the Louvre. We are so lucky to have our apartment within walking distance of the Louvre. It is so huge. We still didn't see everything. The art and artifacts from around the world are amazing.
This is Jan! We have decided that Mondays will be "P" days - everything is closed!!! It's been a great weekend. We got up to go to church, fell back asleep and slept til 100 pm. So we decided to walk to the church anyway to see where it is. Two hours later we finally found it. Next Sunday will be a cake walk. ;o) Today: doing my first load of laundry, just finished the dishes, Randy is studying by watching "Erkle" in French. ;o( We went to the Academie Nationale de Musique, Le Jardin des Tulliers, and to the Palais Royale (couldn't figure out how to get in the garden). We live on a very busy street with a market and bio (organic) food store close by. I passed my first level of French with Rosetta Stone. If I can one a day I will be proficient by April 30, 2015. haha. Starting to miss our friends and family, but it's all still an adventure. We really need to find some volunteer work to do!!!!
ReplyDeleteI just love this!! Pictures please! :)
ReplyDeleteSo, I have just now discovered that I am nothing more than a "comment" In my husband's life. Thirty-seven years and I'm a comment. Hmmm.
ReplyDeleteWe've been here a week. Here's a laundry list of what I've learned;
1) I forgot my favorite French tutorial "A Votre Tour!" and my contacts
2) I am so spoiled. I would do almost anything for an all-a-dollar store right now. I need washcloths, dishcloths, dish towels, clorox, lysol, safety pins, a sewing kit, shoe polish, scissors, and more. And those are just the items that I have not been able to find at the bio-marche (organic market), le souvenier (glorified 7-11) and the franprix (glorified mini-mart). Also, the French do not bag your groceries, they will give you plastic bags, but they don't bag.
3) I have not yet dared the outdoor, self-enclosed, full-spray when you're done toilets
4) you never know how much you don't know until you ask someone for something that you don't have.
5) crepes make everything better.
6) the church is true and all missionaries are angels sent from heaven, especially if they come from Utah.
7) Au pairs make great friends
8) Double doors with individual locks and marble floors are a welcome comfort
9) Randy is a good compass.
10) I need to skype my kids!!!!
11) facebook is now my only English.
12) I will know that I have truly "arrived" and "become" Parisian when I no longer feel that I need to buy something to do it the way I used to it. IT'S TRUE: THERE'S NO ONE RIGHT WAY TO DO ANYTHING - INCLUDING LOAD THE DISHWASHER WHEN IT'S A CLOTHES WASHER MOUNTED UNDER THE HOTPLATES!
(Dorothy: Toto, I don't think we're in Kansas anymore.... I have to admit Oz, is pretty dang cool!!!)
In spite of the dazzling architecture, the formal appearance of all the people wearing black, the constant noise and the delicious smells, it still feels surreal. I wonder if it will ever be real until I can share it with loved ones.
ReplyDeleteThe weather today has been stunning: clear blue skies, wafting clouds with just a touch of wind. It took us 15 minutes to walk to church. Last week we thought it was just a door with bars locked across the front. Yesterday, we learned that that is the visitor's center. We needed to walk about 20 feet and turn into a driveway carved into a building, which opens onto a courtyard. The church owns/rents the ground floor and a portion of the second floor. It's very simple with stacking chairs, a tiny podium, wood floors and a sacrament table. It was so delightful to hear small children speaking in French - just delicious, as Carolee would say! Randy & I found we could understand snippets of the meeting for two reasons; 1) we knew the topic was eternal families and temples, 2) we could then focus on words that we knew or that were cognates (the same in a different language, i.e. apartment, restaurant). Sunday school is presented in three classrooms - one in English, one in French and one in Chinese. The ward had a big pot luck dinner after all three sessions. It smelled yummy and we were invited to attended even though we hadn't brought a dish (I offered the Kitkat bar in my purse, but only the missionaries wanted that). We had just about decided to do so just as the bishop was calling a frail, elderly black man to say the blessing on the food. Apparently the cute man had something else to say, so I ran to the restroom in the meantime. I came back he was still talking. 10 minutes later the bishop has a very helpless look on his face as all these people are waiting to eat, but it is very important here not to interrupt or disgrace those who are speaking. The steam had long since left the serving dishes, people were plopped down back in the chapel, on chairs they had unstacked or in the wide windowsills...and still he talked. I have no idea what he was saying as he spoke very softly. I think it was in French? The sweetest thing to see though, was the bishop and his counselors hanging on every word this man said. "Greater love hath no man than that he lay down his life (style) for me." I am ashamed to say that we are not that sweet. We booked it home and ate microwave pasta and napped.
On a sadder note, today we learned that Nicki's uncle had suddenly passed away from a heart-attack. This is when Randy & I really looked at each other and said, "We need to make some decisions." We knew that Nicki would not want us to come home early, but it breaks our hearts to know that she is sad, that her darling grandfather, her mother and two aunts and all their adult children are sad.. Nicki also has two cousins out on missions. Their family is very, very close and so silly when they all get together. I know this is quite difficult for her. I just want to wrap my arms around her and tell her that though I did not know her uncle well (he had just moved here) that I understand her pain. How does one do that from thousands of miles away?
Nicki and Zack, in the quiet moments of the next few days, when you feel the warmth of the Comfortor, know that we long to be part of that embrace and that we whisper our words of love along with His. Know that we are praying for you and your family and that our testimony of eternal families is strong. We love you all!
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteHugs! (Best I can do at a distance.)
DeleteSo, some people wonder what we do with "all our free time." We each study Rosetta Stone 1-2 times a day, dishes, laundry, four-hour "walk," pretend we know what we're doing/saying, watch 1-2 hours of U.S. tv shows dubbed in French - and they still seem more exotic than what we watch at home!
ReplyDeleteOur first week included such sites on our walks as: Le Jardin Tuiliers, les jardins aux Notre Dame, the Latin Quarter, Shakespear & Co. bookstore, the ferris wheel near Le Champs-Elyees, le bastille de la Sacre-Coeur and today we went to Saint Chappell. I think it's my favorite, although Sacre Coeur will always rank high in my heart. Saint Chappell is a jewel of artisan brilliance hidden in the center of the Department de la Justice (the courts). It was originally built to house artifacts collected the Passions of the Christ. Most have been destroyed or are located elsewhere, but the interior of the building is spectacular! Imagine walking into a smallish (by French standards) cathedral and being surrounded by incredible stained glass windows and carved, painted arches and statuary, then walking up a staircase and seeing a view so grand that you feel you must look back behind you and make sure that you are still alive. I have honestly never seen anything so glorious! (Well, maybe the DC Temple from the freeway when it just magically appears like the City of Oz) Stained glass panels (they can't be mere "windows") 20 feet across by 60 feet high (I may have the stats wrong I was a little overwhelmed by the view and may have missed something during the tour...) There are four quadrants each with 69 feet of individual circles in them and each circle depicts a scene from the Bible. and the windows completely surround the room, bathing everything in it in a kind of celestial, brilliant light. And it was a cloudy day! We stayed for an hour in the upper chapel, just absorbing the freedom of space even though the room was packed with tourists. It was fascinating to watch how moving your position altered your perspective and the way the light played in the room. Every nuance was perfect, each detail painstakingly restored in a renovation in the 19th century. From 2008 until currently, the museum has been undergoing a restoring of the individual pieces of the glass panes. A video shows the method by which each piece is unscrewed from it's metal frame, removed, cleaned, glass replaced as needed and figures repainted as well. Then reassembled, reattached and Viola! Honestly, every time I think I cannot find anything more beautiful than I have already seen, I am proved wrong. After we got out I saw a little girl with her mother in a camel-colored wool coat with a beret and curly hair. She was an angel incarnate from the glass panels we had just seen, but she spoke French!
And, Patricia, just so you know that the Be Brave scarf is working, we just received a call from the bishop and he found space for us on the ward's London Temple Excursion! We are going to one of the seven temples I had set a goal to do ordinance work in! We will have only been here two weeks when we check that off our Pocket List (remember we don't do Bucket Lists for before we die, we do Pocket Lists so we can make the memories early and savor them a lifetime, tucked neatly into our pockets). As Mrs. Benet said to Mr. Benet as the conclusion of Jane Austen's, Pride and Prejudice, "Mr. Benet, the Lord has been very good to us, very good indeed."
I'm assuming that last "comment" from dad was really you mom :) Keep the updates coming and post some pics!
ReplyDeleteoh ha ha this is Alya typing and left that last comment but its under Matt's account I guess. How ironic.
ReplyDeleteI love it.."we are all one"... aparently we are all male! That longer posts are definately from Jan - sometimes Randy doesn't log out of his gmail account, so it logs in under him. He wanted me to write, I told him it was his turn. Surprisingly, for those of us who have hear his lengthy lectures, he is a man of few words when it come to writing. ;o)
ReplyDeleteOh--that explains my confusion while reading about Saint Chappell. I wondered when Randy became lyrical, but it was Jan! I'm so thankful for my all-to-brief time spent in France so that I can half see-smell-taste what you are describing. Yes, God is very good to us.
ReplyDelete