Numchucks!
Elder Miles drinking...
the hostel in the morning3 janvier 2010 (Day 125)
Brooke and I had our hostel room all to ourselves which was nice. Brooke almost jumped out of bed in the middle of the night to yell at the people in the hallway who were being loud. We got up and ready for church and then went to ‘the chapel’ in the Villa hostel that we were staying at for breakfast. They had artisian bread, toast with jams and honey, around a dozen flavors of cereal, milk, juice, coffee, tea, and hot chocolate. I had some great museli and some toast. We checked out and then made our way to church. It was quite an adventure, but we made it to church before Relief Society started. We had a nice lesson about Relief Society and visiting teaching. The ward is mostly older people and there are lots of Italians and other people who don’t speak French. In Sunday School these two awesome and ancient old ladies volunteered for part of the lesson and they were hilarious opening these packages trying to figure out what the game was. We talked about Moses 1. Testimony meeting was great. Elder Miles sat by us. A man bore his testimony in Italian (and then the translated it). I understand some Italian! Brooke and I were both writing our testimonies and then the time was up and we couldn’t go up. We did get to talk to the sister missionaries and the other missionaries a lot. They all knew Greg Johnson and Ian Thorley, both of whom served in the Toulouse France mission. There was a little ‘good bye Elder Miles’ lunch after church so we stayed for that. This awesome 71-year-old Asian lady busted out some numchucks (I am not kidding) and she started playing with them and let some of the missionaries try them out. It was so great because she is just a tiny old thing and out of the blue…WAZAM! Numchucks! Elder Miles is really trunky since he is leaving in two weeks. I’m supposed to hook him up with girls going to BYU-I. He is originally from Arizona. Two of the elders were from Utah, both of their dad’s being professors at BYU. Sister Madsen was from Utah and the other Sister missionary was from Normandy. She was hilarious. We had a lot of fun talking to her. Lots of people thought that Brooke and I were sister missionaries (or that we had served there and were visiting). It annoyed Brooke, but it made me want to serve a mission even more.
The lunch was really good. There were some new things to try along with ham, bread, tartiflette, salad, etc. Dessert was fantastic. I got to try some gateaux de rois (the real one apparently) which is has almond paste and mille feuille dough. There was some delicious homemade tiramisu as well. Needless to say, we were stuffed. We stayed and talked to all the missionaries for quite a while and then we left to catch the bus with the sister missionaries. We went down to the train station and waited there for our train.
On the train a Frenchman, Isam, came and sat by us because he heard us speaking English (we were discussing travel plans for my siblings and I). He gave us a little advice and we talked the whole way. He is really nice and has a restaurant in Nice. He is going to school but he wants to be a pastry chef. He is in his late 20s-30s and is a muslim. We talked about religion a little bit and it was really interesting to see his point of view. He was very nice and spoke English very well. He invited us to call him if we are in Nice again and he will show us around and take us to his restaurant and some great bakery, etc. I think I might take him up on the offer. He was very kind and sincere. He loves America because you can follow your dreams there, whereas in France, he feels that people look at him strangely when he says he wants to have a bakery in America.
Florence came and picked us up from Puget Theniers and drove us up home to Sallagriffon. We talked about Monaco, tax evasion, and the sales in France. We had some delicious soup with dumplings and a potato omelet for dinner. Jean Claude is the man! He flipped the whole entire omelet in one fell swoop without ruining it. The kids have school tomorrow, so they all went to bed early.
