August in France

Since Paris, we've been enjoying a typical French August, kind of. Most French that can, use August for vacation. Since we spent most of July traveling, our vacation has been spent in our apartment.  There has been a lot of working, Netflix, Petanques with people from Church, eating, sleeping, etc.

One experience really helped me understand August in France. We opened a checking account at a french bank and have had some trouble with our debit card. After holding on the phone with the bank for 20 minutes, I decided I would need to just go in person. I get there and find that there is a long line.  20-30 minutes later, I am helped. I am told that there was a problem with the address they had for my account but since it will take 24 hours to update, I would need to come back to have them send me a new card. I tell the man that I don't have a car and have to take the metro to get here. I let him know that I tried calling but never go through and I'd rather not have to come back.  He says "what can I say, its August....I'm here by myself.  The bank usually has a handful of people ready to help, this guy was here solo. France in August.

August did bring us to Gentry's birthday. I wanted to keep the plan a surprise but as we got close to the day, Gentry let me know she was just a tiiiiiny bit worried that I just may not plan exactly what she wants to do. At this point Gentry is at the end of the project she has been working on for her old company and I think she was really needing this birthday to be right.

Luckily I already had the perfect plan so nothing had to be changed. I let her know the secret plan a couple days in advanced just to put her mind at ease :). A quick train ride to Aix En Provence for sushi and a movie. For us, doesn't get much better than that (actually, there may be better out there....change sushi into sushi, a salami sandwich, and gummy worms, and change a movie into seinfeld). We had great weather and enjoyed a simple day together away from the big city.

Going back to what we have been up to, I should mention that I have already decided that if its ever possible, I will build or most likely hire someone to build, a petanque court in my back yard. Below is a link to a YouTube video clip of a world championship in case you want to get a taste for the game. Its pretty much like washers/horse shoes/shuffle board but with heavy metal balls and one little ball. Point of the game is for your balls to be the closest to the little ball after all balls have been thrown.

http://youtu.be/1xTMadGhQPw


A crazy busy July and a very slow August had us pondering on our move to France as a whole.   After a day spent in the apartment working and only with each other, we wondered why we were needing to be in France if that was all we were doing. I've never really felt homesick before but August brought some of that. Although we have our times of missing our friends and family and missing things from the states, we are still very happy with our decision to come. In the end, we are ready for things to pick up again in France. Once September hits, the church will be back in usual super active mode. We are excited to see how we are going to get involved and how God will use us.  Its been a good reminder to live today for God and not worry about the future. "We are here, how can we let God use us today in France?" That is the thought I try to go back to after I let myself day dream about the future which in my day dreams is always in the US. But I don't know that to be true yet.

Anyway, we are excited for the fall. For Gentry, it looks like a few opportunities will be available to get involved. The church is going to have kids at the church after school every Friday for Art, English, Homework....all things that Gentry will be able to help with even with limited french.

As for me, I'm not terribly artistic or as good with little kids but in searching where I should focus my efforts, today brought some encouragement in something I was thinking I could do.  Alex told me that he and Romain (you'll meet them soon) had been talking about how its been really nice to have someone planning activities and setting up opportunities for the teens at the church to get together.  I really enjoyed doing Young Life while in Dallas and found myself immediately pushing to make things happen with the teens here. I think YL had a bigger impact on me than I thought and some of that has come with me to France. All I know is that I started meeting the teens at the church and right away wanted to start to get to know them in hopes that knowing them might give a chance for God to be revealed to them more or differently in some way during my time here. So what Alex told me was very encouraging.

Today was one of those activities. Unfortunately, a lot of the teens ended up not being able to go, but 3 of us still made it happen. Turns out that commitments from high schoolers in France to these types of get togethers are about as reliable as they are from high schoolers in Dallas. Gentry couldn't go either because of a ankle tweak that occurred while she was dominating our Insanity workout dvds.

So Alex, Romain and myself headed to the Calanques outside of Marseille. The Calanques are "creeks" south of Marseille that formed between the rocky coastline. There are 20 or so of these and the area is preserved as a nation park type area. Since its so protected, you can't really drive straight to it (not that we have a car anyway).  So a metro ride, to a bus and an hour hike, we made it to this:

Romain (right) Alex (left) on our way to a Calanque.

Our first stop. Water was pretty freezing.

Hiking from one calanque to the next. Looked back and had a good view:

Our last stop took us a little off the beaten path. No rocky beach or a bunch of people around. Where we left our stuff was about 25ft above the water on the rocks.

You can't see it in the picture but while we were swimming, we found this opening in the rocks. It was about 6 feet wide and two feet above the water. What I expected to just be a little indentation in the rock turned out to be a cave. Once you pass through the opening it opens up into a big dome with the top 15 feet above the water about 40 feet across.  The water was still super clear and the light coming in from outside the entryway light-up the water to be even more blue. Makes me want to buy a water proof go-pro camera just to go back to that spot.

So I thought I should use paint to help you imagine. Below is a view as we are approaching the cave from the sea.:

After shaming Gentry with this 1 minute of Paint skills, I thought maybe google images might have a better picture. Turns out google had a picture from inside the exact cave we found.

The thing to do at these calanques besides sail you boat and be fancy, is jump of cliffs into the water. We did a little of this at each stop with this last stop being the biggest. Since I've only seen people doing this illegally at Johnson's Shut-Ins and never got to participate, I was happy to join this time around. Don't worry, I didn't ignore the rules, its allowed here.

One night, Gentry and I realized our entertainment options were pretty minimal at our apartment. We have since order the game Settlers of Catan. This is a big move that will hopefully lead to a lot of fun nights educating our friends here on how to best place their settlements and when is the best time to use a monopoly card.

I never know how to end these things....