Summertime, and the livin' is eeeeeeeeeeeeee-zzzzzzzzzzz

Summer is FINALLY here!

Oh, it's been a wonderful 70 something degrees here this week and I am soooo grateful because pretty much up until Tuesday, I was all bundled up all day (which is hard when you really only brought summer clothes with you...) and the temperature didn't really go above 60. JC and Silvia said it's pretty much cold all year round (except in winter when it gets REALLY cold) and people think we're going through a heat wave now because it's above 70. They say it's too hot to do anything and it makes them tired. 70???? From what I hear it's getting near 100 in the US. France, you don't know what you're talking about. But I finally got to wear a dress today because it was warm enough! This made me quite happy, although I don't know how long it will last. I should have taken this into consideration when deciding to come here... I don't do well in the cold at all. Tell me again why I wanted to come here??? Next time I decide to move to a foreign country, I'm moving to Jamaica.

Since the weather is nice I've been trying to spend more time chilling in the hammock that JC set up, but when it is not possible to chill in said hammock (due to maximum occupancy being only 1 person), we try to suffice by bringing the outside in; well, the fresh air at least. We've had our glass doors and windows open all day and it's really wonderful. Ah, bon, for the most part....

Remember I mentioned a few entries ago that they don't have screens on anything here. That means bugs. LOTS of bugs. I dont understand why they feel the need to come inside when the weather is perfectly suited for prime insect sustainability outside. Sometimes I wonder about the mentality of flies. Are they intentionally annoying and pesty? Like to be spiteful for the ongoing war between large fly-swatter possessors of the human kind and irritating tiny buzz resonators? Or are they really really dumb and don't understand that if there's a solid object (like a human body, for example) in front of them they can't just fly through it and fail to realize they'll smack into it and get all disoriented? Or are they actually really friendly and just like being around us?

Whatever their motivation, I don't understand and I don't care. I don't like you, flies, and I don't want to be friends with you- I just want you to go away. Literally last night I was in my room and I guess they were attracted to the light of my computer because they kept flying around me and I counted 7 that I killed within 20 minutes. Every time I killed one I kept hoping it would be the last but within a few minutes again I'd hear "buzzzzzzzzz buzzzzzzzzz *thwap* (because it's crash into something) buzzzzzzzz *thwap thwap* buzzzzzzzz". I didn't want to kill them because I figure they don't know any better and it's not their fault they flew into the house and couldn't find their way out before we closed the door, but I couldn't take it and there's no way I'd be able to sleep knowing there were that many bugs crawling around. If I were in Africa, it'd be a different story (goodness gracious at least this is nothing like the swarms in Gulu!) but this is France. Maybe if I had let that spider live it wouldn't have this problem.... or it would have just snacked on the flies and eaten my hand for dinner. Either way, it was gross because I only had paper towels so I had to squish them and feel their tiny little bodies crush between my fingers.

Sorry flies. I'm bigger, you're annoying- you die. Ironically, that used to be my philosophy towards little brothers about 10 years ago... or yesterday......

I really didn't do much yesterday besides try to conspire how feasible it is to organize a mass genocide of the vexatious Musca Domestica species, so I didn't really think I could update my blog. I watched an episode of Criminal Minds with Yadira and at night she, Gilles, and I tried to make a cake called gateau blanche-neige (literally Snow White cake). It was good except that Gilles wanted to substitute cherries for raspberries since we had so many, but cherries have a lot more juice in them so the cake didn't really bake really well and kind of stayed mushy because of all the cherry juice. Then we covered it with some sort of coconut/flan type mixture and put melted chocolate to try and make a marbled effect on top but that didn't really work either. Oh well. I don't count this as a loss for me baking because all I did was use the mixer to mix the ingredients and stir some things. Still France 11, Gina 24.

Today we had quite a fun day though! It was a réunion for all the AECM (Alliance Evangélique Chrétienne Missionnaire) churches in north France, which was held in the parc de Trembley, the park about 2 minutes from my house that Silvia brought me to that one time. Now I have to admit, Gilles invited me to this and I said yes because I figured it'd be something social and much better for me to do than lie around the house all day long in seclusion. But as the day came closer, I honestly was not looking forward to going at all. These are almost all asian churches (mainly Chinese but some are Korean or even Cambodian) and to tell you the truth it's a little intimidating. I remember having a conversation with Dr. Chi in one of our sociology classes about what it's like to not be white in America and how for her it was extremely intimidating when she first arrived here from Singapore to feel like the only asian in a sea of white people. Now, maybe it's because I'm white, but I figured, "Come on, this is America, it's a melting pot nobody stands out here because this is where everyone mixes together." Besides, I was one of the only white girls who grew up in an all black church, and I never felt different or intimidated or everything (although we also did talk about the "white advantage"- that even though you may be a minority in one place you still have majority status because you're white). Ohhhhh now I understand. You walk into a room and it's like BOOM wow I'm different. These people for the most part are french but they also have a completely different culture from their parents that I am not a part of at all. Now that's really hard to be surrounded with all the time. And of course, everyone separates into little cliques (which is normal and not necessarily a bad thing) but when you're different and aren't really close with anyone, it's really intimidating. So I don't mean to sound racist at all but I was not looking forward to being surrounded by asian culture, asian food, asian ways of joking around that I don't really understand, asian music, etc... all day long because it's something that everyone else has in common except me.

Boy was I wrong! There ended up being people there from Trinity Church, an international (english speaking) church in Paris. And when I say international, I mean it, because there are Americans, Europeans, Indians, Africans, Asians, Hispanics, etc... who all come to this church and worship the Lord on Sunday mornings. And they're a part of this Alliance that is otherwise all asian churches (go figure) but they were there today and it was really cool. One of the first people I met was a girl named Melanie who grew up in Gettysburg and is now going to Penn State. Oh it was so nice to meet someone else from Pennsylvania here!!! She's only here for the summer doing an internship with something involving agriculture and ecological studies (I didn't fully get it but it's okay). Then I met a group of 4 people who come from California, mostly the Los Angeles area. They don't speak French, but they are all musicians and here for a month and just randomly go around to places where music isn't usually performed (like homeless shelters and nursing homes) and just play for the people there for free. There was a flute player, a french horn player, an alto clarinet player, and a trumpet player and they played classical music, which was quite pleasant to listen to. After doing some praise and worship, we broke up into groups to do a Bible study. They gave us all a name tag with a colored dot on it and had us arrange by color. I was a little scared at first because I didn't know anyone in my group, but it turned out okay. The french horn player was in my group too, and I ended doing most of the translation for him translating what was being said in french into english (a very nice girl named Iréne helped me out when I got stuck on a word). Because I was translating, we didn't participate too much, but it was still pretty cool to know I could do it. I also was a little worried because there were other Americans there (as weird as that may seem) because even though I was relieved to have other people to speak english with, I also didn't want to seem like I was copping out of having to speak french to people and taking the easy way by only talking to the english-speaking people. But I actually found that I did a LOT better and spoke French wayyyyyy more confidently when I was going back and forth between the two languages. There were native french speakers complimenting me right and left on how well I spoke, when normally I just keep my mouth shut because I'm nervous about having to structure french grammaire in my head. It was lots of fun and really cool.

After the study, we had lunch (it was a potluck, so there was quite a variety of things, LOTS of baguettes, and more desserts than there were lunch items but no one complained about that!). I got to speak and get to know a lot of really new, fun, nice, people in French and English. I really really really enjoyed myself and all the conversing I was doing! After lunch, we got put back into groups by our colors for the games section of the day. We had 6 games in total. The first game we played had about 15 balloons hung on a clothesline between two trees. Each balloon had a point value (the red one in the middle was 10, the yellow ones were 4, the white were -3 points, etc...) and we had to throw pinecones at the balloons and hit them to gain points. But we weren't allowed to pop them because they only had a limited supply of balloons so they couldn't afford to have everyone popping balloons right and left. Let's just say I'm not a professional softball player for a reason. We did manage to (accidentally) pop the red balloon though. Oops.

Our second activity was the frisbee toss. They set up a birdie in the middle of the field and we had to keep throwing the frisbee until we could get it as close to the birdie as possible. The third game was that we took these long cardboard tubes (like you would use for mailing a really big poster in the mail but like, longer, at least 3 ft long) and there was a bucket at two ends- one was filled with water and a sponge, the other was empty. You had to take the sponge filled with water and pick it up and pass it using the cardboard tubes like chopsticks (of course, because we're all mostly asian here) and then the last person takes the sponge in their hands and squeezes out the remaining water into the empty bucket, then runs back to the first bucket, fills up the sponge again, and the process begins again. It felt like a game that should have been on Double Dare or any of those old school Nickelodeon game shows- and it was lots of fun!

The fourth game we played was that there were two buckets filled with water and everyone was handed a long straw. You had to suck the water through the straw, carry it to the other end of the playing field without spilling/losing any water, and fill up a water bottle. We were the first team to figure out that you could keep the water in your mouth and weren't just limited to the capacity of the straw (although it was funny- the french were like ewwww no way that's tap water I'm not putting it in my mouth! And the Americans were like, why not you won't die!) so whearas the previous teams had only filled up about half a water bottle, we filled up 2 1/2. Go green team, go green team, go!!! The fifth game was called Mikado (which of course made me think of Ed Bara and Muhlenberg's SMT) but it's kind of like the chinese version of jenga. You have a whole bunch of sticks and the one with the swirlies on it is "The Mikado" and each stick is worth a certain amount of points. The Mikado is worth 20. Anyway, you stand all the sticks up in a bundle, then just let them fall naturally. You have to take away all the sticks to try and get the Mikado and the most amount of points, but none of the other sticks can move when you pull one away or else you have to start all over. The last game we played was all riddles along the lines of "if a plane crashes in the middle of the desert on the border between two countries, where do you bury the survivors? A) You don't bury survivors" or "What has teeth but no mouth? A) A comb". At the end of the day our team came in 5th place out of 6 (ouch) but everybody got the same prize of a bag full of cheap candy, and the games were all a lot a lot of fun to play! And it gave me a chance to make new friends and meet really nice people and interact in French and English. I'm so glad I went, it was quite a good day indeed =).

And as I'm writing this I'm listening to JC and Gilles watch Looney Tunes in french in the other room. Comic relief is about a million times more funny in french than it is in English, especially with the voices and everything. And it's even funnier to listen to JC and Gilles's reactions to everything on the TV. Just thought you'd all like to know =P.