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.