Day 214: Picnic at Church

2 avril 2010 (Day 214)
It is Friday and I am definitely ready to be in Paris! This morning I went to the store and bought Hyer and Coyle all the essential French cookies that you need to try, as well as Buenos because they are like the most famous thing on the planet as well as some Lyon candy bars. Lyon candy bars have kit kat crunchy stuff, caramel, chocolate, possibly nougat, etc. Classes were great today even though my brain was a little distracted. We had a really interesting discussion about messages expressed in photos. Mr. Lehmann made a joke about things that don’t exist…blue oranges, Santa Claus, God… He was joking about the God one but the girl who always likes to argue if you push the right button started flipping out. He said if I say Santa Claus are you okay with my argument? Yes. Okay then. In history we talked about the de colonialization of French colonies. I never even thought about what happens to countries that are de-colonialized. France ended up fighting a lot of wars with the countries it colonized, specifically in Algeria and Vietnam. We watched some photos and it was pretty terrible. History is so fascinating. I always learn so much in history class.
Hannah and I took the bus right after class to go to church for our home teaching appointment. It was really cold outside so we were praying that the church would be open. The church wasn’t open, but the gate was! We went in to the back and decided to have a fun little picnic. It was nice because we were out of the wind. Kevin then found us. We don’t know why Kevin was there for institute over 90 minutes early, lol. He went back to his car and we finished our picnic and then went in the church for our home teaching. Laurent, a very small quiet man brought us chocolate for Easter and Frere Etourneau gave a really good lesson covering a couple of talks from the March Liahona.
Elder Lazarev and Elder Knapp were at the church when we came out (For those of you keeping track, I’ve seen them every day since Saturday, and most days not on purpose). They were talking to our teacher and the others, and we continued to talk with them a little bit so we started institute 30 minutes late. It was great. We actually had a really good lesson today as well talking about prayer and the sacrament. Kevin said some things that I didn’t agree with (and nor did Elder Knapp…apparently he grabbed a chair and sat by the door). During all of institute Elder Lazarev called the six Chinese contacts I got for him which took about 90 minutes! How insane is that. He ended up talking to them all and said that they are all really great and all have different life stories and seem really cool. Kevin gave Hannah, me, and the elders rides home. Elder Lazarev and Kevin were in the front so they were talking and those of us in the back talked about getting letters and grandparents, as well as the scale of fantastic.
I ended up staying up pretty late working on catching up on journals and talking to Josh Burch, a friend from high school that just got back from his mission in Quebec. It is fun to see the difference in vocabulary because lots of every day words for Frenchies are bad words for the Quebequois!