Good Day!

I wasn’t planning on blogging at all today, but the Lord really blessed me today and I simply had a good day. It’s also 20-10-2010 which is worth mentioning simply because the date won’t occur again during our lifetimes. My good day is very significant because there are definitely times when I feel like on top of the work I am putting into learning French, listening to Spanish, and trying to remember German, I am also fighting depression. It’s not serious, but it can be hard to simply stay in my room for hours at a time and not have anywhere to go because it’s so cold. But today was really wonderful, and for no particular reason, which is why I am so grateful. My classes ended at noon today and so I went and got some lunch and ate at the Institute with some friends before heading off to H&M. The last time I was there we were evacuated because someone had set off a pepper spray bomb in the store and within minutes there were 15 police officers outside. Pretty intense to say the least. Today however I was fortunate enough to avoid the pepper and the spray and simply make my purchases that I had intended on making the other day. The weather here has been really cold and apparently that’s typical for France at this time of year. In the morning it can be as low as 30 but today the high was probably about 62 and sunny which made for nice walking weather. I bought a really big scarf today and I am very excited about how it will look with my new pea coat I purchased. When I got home I tried on the scarf with the coat and it looked really cool!

Soon after looking in the mirror however I realized that I really needed to clean my room but a nap was calling first and so I set my alarm and slept for two hours. With the bed problems I have been having lately I just put the mattress on the floor and crashed until about 5pm. At that point I put on some exciting European jams from my “Europe 2010” playlist on iTunes and got to work. I organized my clothes, hung up my coats on the coat rack I didn’t realize I had, and then sat down to talk with Elyse for a while. We had a great conversation about so many different things but I think I particularly enjoyed the most when we started talking about Vincenzo and Tuna. Those would be our cars that used to spend lots to time together while parked next to each other in the Howard parking lot. I miss those days.

I had to cut my conversation with Elyse to get ready for choir and so I put on my new gloves, (Gantes or Mittens as they are called here in France) and walked out of the door for choir. There were only 5 basses and 2 tenors tonight and so it was a little rough, but my voice finally opened up and I was able to sing like I used to when I was at Hillsdale last semester. There were a couple moments as well when I could really feel it, when we got to the Deceptive Cadence the basses hit a B-Flat that my voice rang so clear on, it just lifted my spirits so high. (I love how music can have that affect sometimes.) The choir itself is also very nice. The ladies are always talking about me when they think I don’t know it but all I have to do is scan the room and all of their eyes are on me, I think they are always surprised to see an American who is 30 years younger than all of them making the choice to sing with a choir like theirs, but I enjoy it tremendously. One of the basses told me today, “What are we going to do when you aren’t here? We won’t know what to do?” I laughed and told him they would be fine. It’s funny how quickly one can make an impact here in a group setting like a choir.

There is also a lady in the choir who I don’t know but the only way I can describe her is “That lady that everyone knows.” What I mean by this is that this woman is probably 65 but trying to look ten years younger with obscene amounts of makeup and dying her hair an almost dark orange color. She is that woman who wears that perfume with the very particular grandma “refined scent” and the scarf that only someone like her could wear. Every time I see her and she smiles at me with her giant round face, I simply smile back and realize that she is helping contribute so much to what my dream of French people were. As well, as often as France smells absolutely wretched, it can also offer some of the most intoxicating smells in the world. Today as I was walking to and from choir I smelled something cooking that reminded me of Rachel cooking pilaf and the butter boiling but the scent today was that of butter and cheese mixed together and it made me want to climb the wall and find out whatever that delicacy might be and snatch it all up.

The walk home was remarkable pleasant with the full moon and clear sky showing it made me realize how lucky I really am to be in France and see things so many other people never have. God has been truly gracious to me today and I am now going to go to bed and look forward to another morning spent in communion with Him through His Word in Acts. I am currently working on Acts 9 and taking extensive notes. If anyone is interested in reading them, please feel free to leave a comment or send me a message and I can email them to you. Hope you all have a wonderfully blessed day and can find a moment to notice God’s beauty reflected in nature and how truly blessed we are. That’s all for now. Ciao!