The longest day ever

Written on aug 20th:


Bonjour from France! I am here in Le Vesinet after an extremely long day of traveling. I woke up at 4:30 Tuesday morning and left for the airport by 5. The night before I was up for hours weighing and re-weighing my luggage to get it close to the 50 pound limit. The first time I weighed them they were both well over 70 lbs! I began pulling things out and packing stuff in boxes to be mailed. Finally I got them as close as I could without being 100% accurate and decided to call it a night. After arriving at the airport, I checked in and the first suitcase weighed 49.5 pounds! Praise the Lord. The second one was 53 pounds and the lady was nice enough to let me remove some items. I decided to let go of my shampoo which was a huge bottle. I took it out and immediately my suitcase was within the limit. She tagged them both and had us take them to security. I was so happy that I didn’t have to pay extra fees for overweight baggage. It was such a relief. As I was about to go through security and Brandon had come as far as he could, he asked me to text him my flight info. I opened my purse and realized I had left my phone at the house! It was so devastating. I had been planning on making my last calls to family and friends at the airport in la as well as philly. Brandon was sweet enough to check the car even though I knew it wasn’t there. However, I had no choice but to move on. I said my goodbyes and went through security. I wont go into all the details of my flights but I will say that they were fine and safe and I made it to paris without any major hang-ups..

When I arrived in paris, it was 7:30am (Wednesday morning) Paris time, making it about 11:30pm (Tuesday night) in California. My baggage arrived without a problem and I went through customs without any hassles. The family was right out front where non-flyers can wait for passengers. It was such a relief because I had a fear that they wouldn’t be there or I wouldn’t find them somehow. However, they were right there and welcomed me as if I were already part of the family.

Their home is 30-45 minute drive from the Paris airport. I was terrified to speak French at first and they were very understanding of that. I tried to answer questions in French but I wasn’t ready to be the asker. The kids were very shy and not wanting to practice their English, so we didn’t talk much in the car. Severine, the mother, has excellent English and was very chatty with me. She showed me different things as we drove.

As I said, it was still early morning in Paris. This meant that I still had a whole day to go through before it was bedtime. I knew that if I allowed myself to sleep then it would just be that much harder to get accustomed. I did manage to take a shower, which helped me feel much better. Afterwards I joined Severine and the kids to run some errands. They showed me around the town and we walked through the shops. I saw the kids’ schools, and different buildings. One thing that was very interesting was that they pointed out a church that they used to attend and then went on to explain why they stopped going and where they go now. They asked if I went to church and I said that I did. We had an excellent talk about religion and they were very interested in the differences between Roman Catholics and evangelical Christians. I was very excited to be able to open up about my beliefs so early on in this journey. I’m looking forward to see where God takes that from here. We continued running errands and went over to the neighboring town, Saint-Germaine. This is the town that my French lessons are located in and we found the building and went in to see when they begin. Severine has to call tomorrow to find out for sure because the woman there wasn’t positive. In Saint-Germaine, there is a beautiful park with gardens and trees that are absoloutely stunning. Within the park is the house where King Louis XIV was born. When you get to the edge of the park there is a great view that overlooks the whole area. I could even see the tippy top of the Eiffel tower! Boy that made my day.

By this point in the day, my nerves had calmed down quite a bit and I was much more willing to give my French a shot. They were very understanding and helped me when I got stuck. The kids warmed up to me as well and enjoyed practicing their English with me. Julien, the oldest, has very good English. He is almost fluent and gets really excited when he uses a phrase correctly. Pauline is 13 and her English is decent. She likes to try but sometimes forgets and just starts rattling off in French. It is funny. And the youngest, Manon, is 8. She has very basic English and is a bit shy to try it out in front of me. But I was impressed at how much ground we covered in the first day. I have already noticed my French improving. I played monopoly with the kids (the European version that uses Euros and the properties are all European cities) and that was an excellent time for us to bond and practice communicating. I was forced to use my numbers in counting money, multiplication, etc. French counting was coming out more easily than English by the end. All I could think about was how great this would be for Mrs. Wann (my French teacher from high school) to get to use in some of her classes. It really helped develop my counting and money skills.

Right now as I’m preparing to go to bed, I would say that today was a pretty good first day. But, I wouldn’t have said that a few hours after I arrived. I was not sure what I was doing and I was scared to death. I wanted to come home and see a familiar face. I wanted to cry. I was completely out of my comfort zone and scared. I guess that is where God wants me though because it forces me to put my trust in Him, knowing that he sent me here for a reason.

Tomorrow I will take the kids into Paris with Severine to do some back to school shopping. The kids start up in 2 weeks. I’m excited to go into paris. I do not have any photos yet, but will post them as I take them. Sorry this was so long. As I said, it’s been a looooong day and I had to cover it all for you! Blessings.

Prayer Requests:
• Continue to pick up the language
• Confidence in myself
• Courage to try new things (foods, driving in Europe, dealing with French sales people, etc)
• Encouragement so that I do not feel the homesickness
• That I would continue trusting God
• That I could have more enlightening conversations about my faith with the family.
• Protection

Thank you all for reading this and keeping me in your thoughts and prayers. I’ll continue to keep you posted as often as possible. Please feel free to e-mail me anytime to let me know what is going on in your life! Missing everyone!