La Rentree (Sept - Oct)

Since school has started back up ("la rentree") things have gotten back to busy busy (my excuse for a lacking in blog updates).

September was filled with the start of multiple church activities.

Tuesdays- Song and prayer at the church

First week back doing this was a special night for me. Katie Young is one of the American missionaries here along with her husband Creg. Cregs Father is very ill so he was back in the states while Katie lead our time together asking that we spend the whole night simply praising God for how good He is and how we can have confidence in that truth.  That was encouraging for me to see since they were going through such a hard time in that moment. It reminded me how lucky we are to be loved by a God that is always good and we can always know that He knows better and always loves us....even during a hard time.  

Wednesdays (once a month) the church soccer team is back in the Sport Et Foi (sports and faith) soccer league.  We are 0-2 so far buuuuuut are looking better than the few games I played with the team before the summer.  At least half the team is made up of people that don't go to the church so its been good to hang out with them and get out of the church bubble.  

Thursdays- Chorus practice. Almost as fun as sing song practice.....

Fridays - after school program and Club Cool

This is something that Gentry has been a lot more involved in than me since I am usually working Friday afternoon.  France has kids get out of school at lunch on Fridays and asks that kids do some kind of extracurricular activity. This was decided this summer so the church quickly put together an after school program for the neighborhood children. The first week brought something like 20-25 kids and 10 more showed up on week 2 and 10 more on week 3.  The church is VERY excited about this as it gives them contact with lots of new faces in the community.  

The church has kids from about 1:30 - 4:30. During that time they play games, learn English, do homework, and of course, end with "goute" (snack time).  After that is Club Cool which is a church activity for children that is used to teach kids about the bible. The kids usually learn a musical that is performed for the church around Christmas.  

Saturdays twice a month is the Young Adults Night.  Usually it means getting together at the Youngs house for a potluck type meal and then doing a kind of bible study/discussion.  The first one brought some new faces. Sophien is one of the new faces who also is on the soccer team. He recently told Creg, "Creg, I want to be a REAL christian".  Its great to see someone (especially from his background) want to find out more about what a real christian looks like. Not quite the same as someone in the bible belt deciding to go to church for the first time along with half of the population.  

Sundays before church class I have been meeting with some of the other guys (all in their 20s) for some time to share little more details from our lives and encourage each other. Its usually Constantine, Axel, Robin, Raphael, and myself. 

October brought visits from friends and family. Gentry and I were really excited about each as we continue to have some home sick days.  

Jeff and Amber Womble stayed 2 night at the Griffith B&B.  Our friend Fred from church drove us to the train station to pick them up on Sunday after church. From there we left Marseille for the Luberone area. Its just a typical pretty remote french area with lots of pretty drives, hill top villages, and vinyards. Fred was our private tour guide as we showed Jeff and Amber a little of the lesser traveled roads of France.

The next day we headed out to Cassis by bus. After waiting about 45 minutes at the bus stop, we got on the bus for the 45 minute journey along the coast to Cassis. Once there, a short walk got us to the beach for a litle picnic. Plenty of cheese, bread, and salted cured meats.  

We originally planned to rent some kayakes and take on the Mediterranean but it was day 1 of the off season....so ya they were closed. 

We set off for the nearby Port Pin Calenque (45 min walk).  Enjoyed some nice views along the way and eventually picked out a nice spot next to the water. I was afraid the water was going to be a little too chilly since it was October and I thought the Calenque water was freezing when I went in August but it was great. We were lucky to have a perfect day after the forecast predicted clouds and rain. 

Jeff and I obviously jumped off some rocks. Jeff and Amber are just now finishing their Euro trip otherwise I would have asked them to send the under water videos from their cool wanna be GoPro. Below is from their Iphone via instagram:

http://instagram.com/p/t2FPgXn8pT/

Gentry and Amber finally got the courage to get in the water and.....well I'll just let the video do its work:

As things started wrapping up we realized we were going to have to get back to the bus stop in town pretty quick in order to make the 615 bus.  At the time we thought that missing it would mean waiting for the 7:00 bus which meant we wouldn't get home until around 8:30. After a blistering pace back we found out that we barely made it back for the LAST bus going back to Marseille. So we got pretty lucky there. I'm not sure who was in charge of the bus schedule....

When we got back, we enjoyed a somewhat typical french dinner at home (more cheese and bread) and probably went to be pretty early. 

Gentry and I worked hard after they left since we were leaving two days later to meet my parents. We headed to Toulouse France to meet my parents. They rented a car in Paris and after some time with friends and family in that part of the country, they headed south to meet us in the city of my birth.

We found my parents in good form. Telling us the people they had visited and plenty of details about each meal eaten so far in France. My Dad then revealed that he was in France first for the food and second to see us.  I understood.

We visited our old house:

From Toulouse we drove an hour or so to the castle of Carcassone. Its a pretty impressive place. Its 25sq/miles of medieval protection with a city inside taking full advantage of all the tourists. Jim "Almanac" Griffith told us it was the second most visited site in France. Gentrys favorite part of the experience was knowing what had been filmed here:

After Carcassone we drove a couple hours back towards marseille to stay two nights outside of the city of Avignon. My parents had stayed at this B&B before and we right away could see why they came back. It was a sweet setup for what i'm sure was a good deal ( I know my parents). Just a nice, big, old house with a great back yard and a pool (we didn't swim though). We spent 2 days seeing a lot of quaint villages and old things. Ate really well and were on the constant lookout for a good place to get coffee and sit (my dads favorite tourist activity). Here is some of what we saw (Gentry has more pictures on her Facebook):

We made our way back to Marseille. My parents left a couple days later for a few days vacation along the coast. They came back and we took a page from one of our days with Jeff and Amber going to the calenque near Cassis.  One slight difference, we had a rental car. So instead of taking the bus to cassis and walking form there, we were able to drive to the start of the trail to the Calenque and skip a good chunk of walking. 

More great views and ended up at the same spot as the week before, we enjoyed some more calanque time.

After Calanque we enjoyed time together at home. We took advantage of our last day with the rental car by going to a couple grocery stores that we usually have to take the bus to get to.  One of the stores is a discount store that sells all items that other grocery stores can't sell. So it is a lot of almost expired items and just random stuff that is super marked down.

One of those random items was cans of Foie Gras which is fattened duck liver.  It is as healthy as it sounds but more more delicious than it sounds.  We weren't sure how it would taste since it was about 90% less than normal price. When it ended being good, we went back to the store (on the bus this time) and got 9 more cans.  My mom found room for 6 in her luggage. Hopefully customs is ok with that.

We de-iced our fridge and freezer. It was an event. Thats all I have to say about that.

My mom was a trooper and joined me for a trip to a health care office to continue my never ending quest for health insurance. This quest has taken me to offices all over the city and had me send and resend form after form after form. This all started after my stay at the hospital on day two in France leaving us with a real need to get insurance to help cover the cost. 

Just before my parents arrived I received a rejection letter regarding my coverage citing that self employed citizens need to contact someone else. "Someone else" is often the mission statement for a french administrative worker.  Everyone can quickly tell me that what I am asking for is not handled by them but by "someone else".  

Before going to the office my mom and I spoke with the people that the rejection letter said we could help. They of course explained that they weren't the ones to help. So we called the people that sent the letter. That call lead to a conversation where we were told that the rejection of coverage was wrong and that I should be covered. She advised to resend the application. 

So back at the office, after a 30 min wait, we sit down with a man that tells us a whole new story. He calls a different supervisor who disagrees with both the people we spoke on the phone to before this. At this point I have to share with him my opinion on the matter. I start with "I am not mad at you, but...."  so that I can tell him that I actually don't think he or anyone else in his office or on the phone is correct. I tell him that I have received a different answer EVERY SINGLE VISIT to this office (at least 8 visits to this particular one) and that I don't believe a word he says. I tell him that at this point, I have done my due diligence and the ball is in his court. I'm sure it was a pretty impressive rant in my limited french vocabulary but somehow it didn't change anything haha.  He did say he agreed with and understood my frustration, but he could not help me. 

So yada yada yada I am back to being hopeless as far as getting free healthcare here but I will continue to have tests on my attitude as I see and hear about everyone else in this country, french or not, getting all kinds of financial help from the government. An example. Immigrant family in France. The parents don't work but get free health care, money for each child, and unemployment.  French citizen with a job who pays taxes in the US, no help.....ok i'll move on now.  

My parents had a chance to go to church with us and see some old friends. The missionary team in Marseille and my parents worked together when we lived in France. It lead to some interesting conversations about mission work. Our time here has helped me understand a little bit about just how much it takes to be a full time missionary and makes me appreciate the crucial need to feel called to do it.  Without that, I just don't see how someone could last very long doing it because of how difficult and demanding it can be at times. 

After more great eating, games of 42 and of course Catan, as of this morning, Gentry and I are back to just us at the apartment. It was great having visitors and now we wait to find out who will be next to stay at the Griffith B&B!