Christmas day in France was one of the most amazingly beautiful things I have ever experienced. The Barrois family (Jenna, Lucie, Francis, and Peggy) invited us over for a day to become a part of their family for a little while, at least that's how Baker and I felt. I can only describe their family as the perfect bridge between the cultures that make up my life and it's passions. The dad, Francis, a huge French film producer had the deep French accent and culture whose every action reflected everything I've ever known to define "French." Then you have Mrs. Peggy, a native of Texas whose roots perfectly reflect the deep south super friendly culture I've grown up in. Jenna and Lucie are the perfect blend of the two: they have the bubbly Southern hospitality of their Mom and the artistic free-thinking personality of their Dad, with accents that any ambitious French student would kill for.
We walked into their home around 1pm for what we assumed to be "lunch." Little did we know that the next ten hours would have such an impact on our heart for the French people. When we walked in the door, we were immediately greeted by Lucie. Her gentle heart, smile and kind spirit immediately made us feel really welcome. I knew that we were meeting amazing people of the Lord, and that God was using them to continue to confirm our calling to a place that can sometimes seem really cold and impersonal. When Mrs. Peggy rounded the corner I was transported back to America, to my southern heritage where everyone knows everyone, waves at each other at redlights, and where someone opening their home to you just because you love the Lord is a blessing that often is taken for granted. Her high-energy comical personality set the tone for the evening, and she continued to pour out her love until we left. A little bit later, Jenna came in. One thing about Jenna's personality that we both noticed is that we didn't have to defend our French or our love for the culture. She spoke with us like we were old friends, never condescending our level of French, passions, or intentions for being here. It's just that so often when you explain to a French person that you're moving to France to tell people about the Lord and that you've spent the majority of your life learning their language and culture all for that purpose, they look at you like you're crazy; like you've wasted your ability to learn languages and intellect on something that's childish and silly. Not these people, they loved us as children of the Lord because they are in the family too. Too often we forget, especially in southern America, where being Christian is sometimes more of a culture than a relationship, that even if we have different culture, personalities, and even language, that God desires that his children love Him and love each other with everything within them, everything of themselves and everything outside of themselves. The Barrois family fulfilled that desire of the Lord. Even Francis, who is 100% French was different from most French people I've met. He appreciated our dedication to the French language, and after a few preliminary questions about why we were studying the language, he never corrected our pronunciation or sentence structure or anything. He was interested in getting to know us as people, not as Americans, not as French students, but as people who just happened to speak his language.
After Jenna, Lucie, Baker, and I scoured Paris for about an hour trying to find a baguette and had Mario Kart throwdown on the Wii, we started to eat. I've never had a stronger cultural experience. We ate lamb, scalloped potatoes, had wine, switched back and forth from English to French, sometimes not even noticing, ate black fuzzy cheese (amazing), chocolate chess pie, litchis (angry strawberries), dined on foie gras, played mexican train dominoes, and laughed and talked for hours. I can't explain how much spending Christmas with the Barrois family meant not only in our calling to France, but just to our hearts for the Lord. We left their house, movies and chocolate in hand, knowing that although we were away from our families for Christmas day, we were with another family, a family whose Dad has lots of kids, and a family who loves without regard to language or country, we spent Christmas as the family of God; and as we waved goodbye and boarded the 95 bus back to Montparnasse, we knew without a doubt that God loved us, that God loved France, and that his people still love each other.
So I'm guessing you guys who read this want to know what we've been doing. Well...let me tell you :). Our apartment is really small; it's what is called a studio apartment. Basically it's one room with a bathroom. The bed is what the French call a clic-clac; we in America call this a futon. The stove is connected to the sink, and the television is the size of my hand, but no worries, we really don't have time for tv. Our apartment is located on Edgar Quinet Avenue in the 17th quarter of Paris. Now that you know where we live, let's talk about what we've been doing. Day one after finally making it to Paris, we set out to conquer the city...and believe me it's a lot to conquer. Just like we do everyday, we took the sweatbox elevator down to the ground floor, went outside and turn right. We walked about five blocks down to the metro stop we use everyday, Edgar Quinet, also the name of the road. This metro stop is part of the 6 line, each metro line has a different color/number. Anyway, we took the metro until we got to the center of Paris, I mean, we've got to see the Eiffel Tower you know. P.S. it snowed the day we got here so Paris is covered in snow!!! So after looking at the Eiffel Tower for about 2 seconds, it just doesn't do much for us, we just walked around the city and looked at everything, btw it's night when we're doing this. Eventually we got tired, we'd been up for 30 something hours, so we found a little creperie and had dinner before going back to our apartment and sleeping. If you're not familiar with them, a creperie serves crepes (small thin pancake like thing). Baker had a Nutella (hazelnut chocolate spread) and banana crepe, and Alex had a ground beef, mushroom, and egg crepe, strangely called the Crepe Obama...LOL! Forgot one step...we went grocery shopping this day too. Grocery shopping was definitely one of our most interesting experiences. If you've ever taken a language class, when you learn vegetables and food, you think, when am I ever going to use this vocabulary...IN THE GROCERY STORE. So the French don't use shopping carts, unless you want to pay a Euro, they use what I can best describe as a small basket with wheels and a telescoping handle. So, little wheely basket thingy in hand, we start shopping. We picked up the simple things: potatoes, wine, cucumbers, zucchini, oranges, etc. Then, we got a little confused. We thought, "Hey lets get bread and sandwich meat for really cheap lunches." Although finding bread in France is easy, finding sliced bread for sandwiches is a bit different. Lunch meat normally comes in packs of 25 slices or so right? Not in France, it comes in packs of two and four slices, so we bought about 5 packages. We picked up some Nutella, strawberry jam, milk...that was hard too, they have lots of different milks and they don't teach you the words for skim, whole, and 2%. We ended up getting what we thought was 2%, ended up being organic whole milk haha, sick! We picked up a few other things, then went back to the apartment and slept.
Day 2 we woke up around 7 am, decided that was too early so went back to sleep until 10. Alex cooked breakfast: scrambled eggs and toast with our amazing jam and some fresh strawberries! We made toast in the oven because we couldn't find the toaster. We went out into the city later after making plans for the night with the people at le Pavé d'Orsay. We showed up at le Pavé at around 4...turns out the service didn't start until 7, so, after watching a little puppet show of the birth of Jesus for the Parisian children, we killed three hours around the area near the Seine (Paris's big river). At 7pm we went back to le Pavé and met some wonderful people. Our favorites that we've met are Steve, from America; Francisco, from France; and Jeanne, from France. A worship service in France is a bit different from that in America. This particular one was a small group of Christians, about 20 people all gathered in a small room, usually like what would be reserved for a college or youth ministry. In France, they serve wine before you start the service, since it's Christmas the wine was hot with little oranges and spices in it. Anyway the beginning of the service, remember this is all in French, was really overwhelming. After all we've gone through with our calling to France and serving the people here for the Lord, after taking French for hours and hours, we were able to stand and worship our same God with French people. Seeing the French people, a culture so fast paced and cold and individual at some times, open their lives and hearts to a God which their world explains as nonsense and limited thinking was one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen. The chorus of one of the songs we sang was as I can remember, "Il est grand digne d'être exalter et louer, de tout coeur nous l'aimons l'adorons, ton nom est saint" (He is big, worthy of being exalted and praised, with all our heart we love him and adore him, your name is holy) Imagine being in the middle of Paris, with French people surrounding you, raising your voice to the God who knows no separation of his people, some people raising their hands, some dancing and moving before the Lord, all singing without hesitation to a God whom they know is love. The sermon was on part of the Beatitudes, meekness or being meek in spirit. In the French culture especially, meekness is not a common thing, one's ability to do everything of himself without borders or limitations is huge here. We then got in groups of 3 and prayed for each others lives, talked about the sermon and just hung out. We were invited to the Christmas party the next night at le Pavé, and made plans to come to that. We went back to the apartment, made chicken fettuccine alfredo and went to sleep after a LONG day.
-Lane
Day 2 we woke up around 7 am, decided that was too early so went back to sleep until 10. Alex cooked breakfast: scrambled eggs and toast with our amazing jam and some fresh strawberries! We made toast in the oven because we couldn't find the toaster. We went out into the city later after making plans for the night with the people at le Pavé d'Orsay. We showed up at le Pavé at around 4...turns out the service didn't start until 7, so, after watching a little puppet show of the birth of Jesus for the Parisian children, we killed three hours around the area near the Seine (Paris's big river). At 7pm we went back to le Pavé and met some wonderful people. Our favorites that we've met are Steve, from America; Francisco, from France; and Jeanne, from France. A worship service in France is a bit different from that in America. This particular one was a small group of Christians, about 20 people all gathered in a small room, usually like what would be reserved for a college or youth ministry. In France, they serve wine before you start the service, since it's Christmas the wine was hot with little oranges and spices in it. Anyway the beginning of the service, remember this is all in French, was really overwhelming. After all we've gone through with our calling to France and serving the people here for the Lord, after taking French for hours and hours, we were able to stand and worship our same God with French people. Seeing the French people, a culture so fast paced and cold and individual at some times, open their lives and hearts to a God which their world explains as nonsense and limited thinking was one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen. The chorus of one of the songs we sang was as I can remember, "Il est grand digne d'être exalter et louer, de tout coeur nous l'aimons l'adorons, ton nom est saint" (He is big, worthy of being exalted and praised, with all our heart we love him and adore him, your name is holy) Imagine being in the middle of Paris, with French people surrounding you, raising your voice to the God who knows no separation of his people, some people raising their hands, some dancing and moving before the Lord, all singing without hesitation to a God whom they know is love. The sermon was on part of the Beatitudes, meekness or being meek in spirit. In the French culture especially, meekness is not a common thing, one's ability to do everything of himself without borders or limitations is huge here. We then got in groups of 3 and prayed for each others lives, talked about the sermon and just hung out. We were invited to the Christmas party the next night at le Pavé, and made plans to come to that. We went back to the apartment, made chicken fettuccine alfredo and went to sleep after a LONG day.
-Lane
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
So these next few blogs will be about my trip to Paris this Christmas with Baker. I'll start from the beginning. We set out on the 17th, ready to get to France; however, that dream took a little time to reach. After flying from Memphis to North Carolina, the lovely people at US Airways decided they needed to do a little plane maintenance between our flights...a.k.a. delay our flight 2 hours so we'd miss our connecting flight to Paris from Philadelphia. So after about 2 hours of figuring out what the heck we should do, the nice airport lady got us a hotel and dinner for the night and flights for the next morning with a connection in.....GERMANY? Well, that night the hotel decided to serve me food poisoning in the form of bad fried squid. We were fine until around 1 a.m. when the little squiddles decided they wanted to come out and play in the bathroom sink. Imagine thousands of little noodles with squid swimming around in it colored with red wine and topped off with some chocolate in a hotel sink and you've pretty much got the visual picture of what was coming out of the fire hose...i mean...my mouth. After Baker asked if he needed to call 911 we enjoyed a peaceful night, courtesy of the nice hotel security man's pepto bismol tablets and crackers. Then we left and went to beautiful Deustchland where we had to find out how to get our tickets from the Lufthansa people. After a sick onion and Camembert sandwich on the plane we set off for Paris. So Bienvenue à Paris, but we have no idea where your bags are...try dealing with that in French...take that noobs!! So, baggage in hand, we set out on the RER (slowest train ever). So we get to the apartment, and we find out Louise, the apartment lady, doesn't work Saturday's...and guess what? It's Saturday! Welcome to life a homeless kid in Paris. Luckily, some random guy got out of the "elevator" (more on that later) and found Louise/our keys. So we got into the 2ftx2ft "elevator" and after 20 min of trying to open the door's 4000 locks, we made it! We've been here a few days now, but that's the story of how we got here! More later on what we're doing.
-Lane
-Lane
Monday, December 21, 2009
Coming home after 6 months is not exactly what you expect. Suddenly all those wishes of growing up and being on your own are made real, and you don't want them anymore. Your parents build a new house without a room for you because you "won't need it," and you're stuck on the rose coloured couch eating cold chicken. Everyone you know lives...well...not here and you can't talk to her because it's what is best. Ole Miss wins, but you run out of State fans to mock, you didn't have any turkey and they ate all your summer sausage!! Once again we go back to those freaking racists. So what if I would've voted for Obama! They're all dark sided anyway. Give me my croissant and my Perrier!! FLY ME HOME I DON'T BELIEVE IN THIS!!
-Lane
-Lane
Friday, November 28, 2008
Each time she looks into his eyes, the beauty that gazes back at her pricks her heart. He is breathtaking, absolutely breathtaking. It hurts her so that their love now cannot flourish because neither can pursue the other without compromising their love for the Lord. But when the time comes that their love for the Lord brings them together and she can look into his eyes knowing that despite the passion held in each others embrace, the grip that defines the passion for "Love" Himself comes before anything of themselves. Then and only then can they begin their lifetime journey. She believes that what has begun will be lifelong. She must seek to be one with the One who formed her before she may be one with him. As they seek this, She has no doubt that they will soon find one another. Until then, she will yearn for the day that when she holds him to her chest, she will know that she is holding a reflection of their one true Love.
-Lane
-Lane
Thursday, November 27, 2008
I wonder if anyone else is like he is. Constantly having multiple paths before you, switching to a different path with each mood. The mind is amazing to me. He controls everything that goes on with the choices he makes to some extent; so why then does he choose this path? It's not right. He's happy fun outgoing, not depressive and emotional. The lies feel like knives, but he's told so many they have become second nature. Survival of the fittest huh? How the hell does that work within the realm of the Lord? P.S. IT DOESN'T!!! So why does he believe that? I've told him so many times that he has to stop treating people like the corporate world. Yes you would be good in the business world, you walk over anyone that gets in your way. You make the lowly feel great just so you can take the credit for it. You are so freaking good at hiding your sin. People think you're amazing. I mean really, the crap that you have pulled. You are a good actor, the best. You can fit into any character you need to: the hurt, the wounded, the joyful, the Christian, the hick, the child, the murderer, the criminal, the sophist, the whatever! But when the play is over who will be the cast? It's time to write our book. That's why you like Dorian...he's you.
-Lane
-Lane
Sunday, November 2, 2008
Here begins the saga. I'm sure these pages will one day be filled with love, laughter, heartache, and everything imaginable. For now, anyone who endeavors to read this should know, I'm an emotional nutcase. I live for romance and love love. Music is my escape, or sleep if it's something I really need to escape from. I'm currently on the task of learning more about the God that always eludes me. I know this for sure though, that He loves me and desires for me to be included in His plan.
-Lane
Monday, October 20, 2008
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