GARDENERS

As I said in my last post, this week we have done yard work.

You know the formidable hedge of thorns that grows around Sleeping Beauty's castle? WELL. It is also growing around the OM office, and quite aggressively. But no more! Katie and I have successfully hacked it into submission.

Look how much we chopped! Almost as tall as Katie:

LA MER

It's time for bed, but I wanted to put up a picture or so.

This weekend Katie and her boyfriend Stephan and I went to the sea! In Normandy. We saw many beautiful things.

(On the way):

(Once we got there):

And a missions update, quickly-- English classes are no longer on the agenda since no one seems interested. Not that I blame them, this is the school break after all. So we are doing publicity instead! Flyers for everyone in the neighborhood, anyone who looks illiterate, or not, or multilingual, or needing to be.

We are also cleaning up the house/ office. I have recently learned how to trim bushes.

We are generally trying to be useful.

Next week it's back to the usual, French classes for some and child care for me. Bushes are nice for a while, but kids are considerably more friendly and exciting.

CORRIE FOR YOU, CURRY FOR ME

Hello Friends.

As you can see, the blog is being re-done.

My name here is not Corrie, it's Curry pronounced with a lazy R. As in the spice. A lazy seasoning used for Indian chickens and sauces, usually some shade of yellow, and preferably served with coconut. In French, that would be me... I still have trouble remembering to respond to this.

So I thought it would be more appropriate to call the blog Curry, as it will be limited to my time here in France and therefore my life in the guise of a food. Normal life in America as far as I can tell is really not worth blogging about on a regular basis, as much as I know you all would love to hear about my daily comings and goings in work and school. Yeah yeah, fun.

And as long as we're talking about curry and food in general, I should tell you about going to Fatima's house yesterday. After the fake English class Katie and I met another woman who teaches literacy classes, Jan, and Allison, the Texan lady I mentioned a while ago, to go to Fatima's house.

-Which Fatima is this, I asked them, because Fatima is a safe guess for any North African woman's name.

-Crepe Fatima, they say. (There's another one referred to as Hajj Fatima because she's been to Mecca, and many other Fatimas who I can't keep track of).

Sounds good to me. Moroccan crepes are thick, bubbly, and dripping with honey and butter. Probably the best thing to happen in this world since.. ever.

So we wander through Crepe Fatima's neighborhood, down her cobbly driveway, up the tile steps of her small apartment building, and into her home-- which could be Morocco itself. Rugs, walls lined with pillows and square couches, red geometric patterns, and... curry! The smell is faintly everywhere. Actually, she informs us, after kissing each of our faces twice, it's turmeric. Oh.

We sit down in the living room where her sister is watching TV on a maroon couch. In the course of our three hour visit we saw a Turkish show in Arabic, a long Chinese soap in Arabic, and an Anime cartoon, also in Arabic, lots of drama in all of them. We proceed to talk about women things, like how to cook certain dishes or which skin care products are good or how many kids Fatima has or her sister's health or who had the worst time getting their residential papers this year.

She fed us crepes, of course. And chocolate cake. And dates and chips and almonds and chicken kabobs (turmeric) with baguettes, and mint tea. Loaded with sugar as always. Fatima is from a very quiet village originally, literally, Allison explained to us after leaving, which is why she doesn't say very much... But she sure does make up for it with her cooking abilities.

Conclusion: I won't have to eat again for a year and I'm a little bit closer to my life-long goal of visiting Morocco.

ENGLISH CLASSES

These next two weeks are a school break in Paris, and since literacy classes follow the same schedule we are taking a break as well. No childcare for Corrie.

Katie and I, however, are teaching English classes to the vacationing children, 3 days a week during the afternoon, potentially ages 8-12. I say potentially because on Monday we set up camp in the church, all ready for eager learners and Father Abraham and Hokey Pokey, but no one came. We think the pastor didn't advertise very well.

Today is round two. The good news is, we can use the same lesson plan. This is cause for great happiness as sometimes motivation runs low, i.e. there are some very lazy people living in the rooms downstairs.

So it's back to Father Abraham.

Or back to Luxembourg Garden, which is where we went last time after the nonexistent English lessons.

It was warm and crowded with people and a little dusty and rather enjoyable.

...

This is a noteworthy mention:

On Saturday I went to Père Lachaise Cemetery, which is on a hill on the East side of Paris. This is morbid maybe, I know, but there's something really nice and peaceful about wandering an ancient graveyard by yourself in the sun for an afternoon. There were plot after plot of small granite houses, shrines, covered in moss, falling apart, and wilted flowers in vases, and birds and photographers. It was my favorite place so far.

SOMETHINGS UNPLEASANT

Here is a story or so about living here:

At Saint Denis, one of our class locations, there are two Norwegian girls who teach, but they aren't with OM. Unni and Carrie-Helen.

Well today the three of us were walking though the tunnel to the train when the staircase in front of us erupted with shouts and a man fell head-first onto the floor. Almost into our laps. His head hit the tiles and the rest of his body slumped down the steps beside it, all twisted. My first impression was that he must be dead; I did not feel well myself.

The man was breathing, however; he looked drunk and he was bleeding from the head... we knew not to move him, so all we could do was keep the flood of people from stepping on him. Nobody seemed to know what to do. They would pause and, seeing that we were standing there, assume that everything was taken care of. Someone finally called an ambulance and the health workers arrived and shooed us away, and I could never be a nurse, and I hope I never hear that sick thump of a human body again.

That poor man.

Unni said as we got onto our train, Well girls, the first thing we all do when we get home is look up the right numbers to call.

Also, continuing in public transportation:

Often when you are walking through the metro you hear musicians. One or two man shows playing harmonicas, violins, guitars, saxophones, singing for tips in front of advertisements of clothes, movies, and museums. They are usually quite good, and it's nice to hear music down there in the dregs of the city.

About a week ago Katie and I got onto the train and found ourselves standing in front of this very old man, probably in his 80's, playing his heart out on a violin-- and not very well. He obviously enjoyed it, though. The train was packed with people, all acutely aware of his presence there, and all of us scrambling for our change when he finished the song.

Most of you probably know this, but I love old people. I love them. Him especially. He was as tall as my shoulder, shuffling up and down the isle holding out a tiny cup for money and smiling at us through his wrinkles and saggy eyelids. I wanted to cry. No one deserves to beg on a train.

MORE PHOTOS

I was just thinking.

Most of you are probably my friends on facebook. So if you want to see more pictures of this and haven't, look here.

That's all.

Tomorrow will be: Women's Ministry Meeting, wash, groceries, nap. And possibly a trip to the park, if it's not so cold again.

SIGHTS

The things I enjoy best about Paris are not the landmarks many people come here to see. Yes, the Eiffel Tower and l'arc de Triomphe are impressive, significant, beautiful, but I love the streets.

The people who are all on their way somewhere, the walls that are losing their plaster, the staircases and the narrowness of every building. I like when the train track rides above everything else so that you can see people's laundry hanging out of their windows and their gardens starting to grow again in their yards. The mazes of neighborhoods fascinate me, and the clay chimney stacks clumped onto every roof as far as you can see.

Posters in the metro. Piles of cigarettes on the sidewalk. Crowded skies and overflowing fruit stands. The age of this place, and the way life continues here.

The layers of the city are what I will remember.

THE ROUTINE

Since it's been over a week since my arrival, I feel like it's time to tell you what the days look like here.

It goes like this:

Wake up, help around the office or read a book, walk to the station with my yogurt at 11:30 or 12:00, navigate through the RER (train system) for an hour. It's crowded with suave or gangstery or bohemian, but mostly just suave, looking French people. You see everything on the train, and even if you don't, you'll definitely smell it.

Women arrive at class slowly so we spend about half an hour greeting them all.

Kids go to school here at about age 4, which means I mostly have toddlers to take care of. There are several little boys who come regularly, adorable, they like throwing this spongy ball down the basement steps. Every time it bounces I hop around and they all think it's funny, and now we spend most of the class time wiggling and hopping and chasing the ball into unsavory corners of the basement. One little boy always tries to push the others down the steps. I'm afraid the only words he'll learn in English are "HEY. Please don't kill each other, it's not very nice."

Meanwhile, their mothers are studying away.

Classes focus on vocabulary, verbs, pronunciation. Many of them have not been to school before, or never learnt to read, but some of them seem to have it down really well. I think they like the socialness of classes. And they all have problems at home that we keep up with, so many problems. Whoever is teaching will tell a Bible story at the end of the lesson that incorporates some of the material of that day, and while the women are finishing up their work we serve out tea and cookies and juice.

Here I was a little worried about whether or not I would get my beloved orange juice these three months-- well, I am quite relieved about it. France is different from America in that people do not limit juice to breakfast over here. It's for any time, and I love it.

Anyway.

Once tea time is over they begin to drift out, gathering their layers about them and putting on their coats and wrestling their toddlers into coats and strollers.

Then we clean up.

There are three locations where we hold classes, and we alternate between them during the week. Two days here, two days there. Sometimes my housemate Katie is in the same place as I am, sometimes not. So on the days that she is we can go see something in Paris after class, but mostly I just come home. Fine with me.

I'm not sure if it's normal, but all of this traversing over the city and under the city and around the city and up and down the 5 miles of escalators in each train station really wears me out. Maybe I'm just not used to it yet, but as usual, sleeping is one of my favorite activities. Some things stay the same no matter where you are.

We often get home at 7:00 or 8:00 at night. We scrounge up something to eat (yogurt, anyone?) and wind down and go to bed.

A few events happen weekly:

Thursday morning is the OM prayer meeting, 9:00 sharp. We go to class right after.

Friday there are no classes, so those of us involved in that get the day off. How nice. In the morning, though, we have a meeting at Marie (the director's wife)'s house to go over the following week and catch up on what all the women are dealing with, to pray. This is referred to as The Women's Ministry Meeting.

Saturday is also free to do anything, like exploring the city or taking a nap or writing a letter or attempting to shop for groceries. I have a lot of reading to do as part of my unofficial training.

Sunday morning I go to church, which is all in French. It reminds me of being in the Solomon Islands, counting wasp nests on the ceiling because I couldn't understand the service, but here there are no wasp nests and it's not Anglican. People at church are very friendly, though, much more so than the RER crowd, so I like it.

And then it starts over. I might tell you what day I do laundry, too, but I haven't figured out the washing machine yet. Hah.

I'm sorry, readers, that this post was so long and rather eventless, although filled with activity. But now I'll never have to explain when things fit where in my time frame, I can simply cite this post on April 4th. For example:

"The meeting on Thursday was exceptionally boring (see THE ROUTINE)" and you will know exactly what I am referring to. Prayer meetings aren't boring so far, though.

Oh. And HAPPY EASTER! Enjoy your bunnies. I left mine on an armchair at someone else's house.