safe and sound

Last night Noemi and I went to the mission home for an FHE activity with the young single adults in the stake. It was a lot of fun! The mission president and his wife, President and Sister Carter, are from Montreal, Canada, so they're fluent in French and English (happy for us). Sister Carter gave a spiritual thought about allowing the joy of the gospel to shine through everything we do, and for us to be a joyful people. It was really inspiring. President Carter shared a thought about the importance of the Book of Mormon and challenged all of us to give one to someone. He handed out books and little slips of paper listing some of the particularly powerful sections of the Book of Mormon to glue into the front cover to make it a little bit less overwhelming for people to read. Maybe I grabbed two of them...and maybe I definitely need to give them to people before I leave because they're too heavy to take on the plane with me (I've bought way way way too many things).
Anyway, after that we ate dinner and then played the ever classic French game of boules/petanque! It's the game where you throw the heavy balls ("boules") and try to get them as close to the little ball ("cochonnet") as possible. Noemi and I were really good at it at first, but then our beginner's luck ran out, and we lost bad...but it was okay because we played around the world ping pong and I won! Yeah!

All in all, a fun evening. No youth hostel cafeteria food, no having to ride the metro late at night (huge thank you to the Larsons for driving us!), no crazies hitting on us.
We like hanging out with the Mormons.

we get ourselves into the strangest situations

A couple of weeks ago at church we met this lady who used to teach English. She was really excited to meet Noemi and I since we both speak English. She promptly invited us to come over to her house after church, and we were really quite excited about this (free dinner, right?). As we're sitting next to her in gospel doctrine though, we realized that all (4) of the young adults had left the room. We asked her if there was a young adult sunday school class or something, and she was like, "Oh, I don't know, I'm Catholic."

Hmmm. Okay, cool. She wasn't sitting with the missionaries or anything, so we asked, "So have you been to an LDS church meeting before?"

"Oh yeah, I've been maybe 10 times. I stayed with an LDS family in San Diego a few years ago."

Cool, cool. Still finding it amusing that the first person from the ward to invite us over isn't actually from the ward.

After church we went out in the parking lot with her to get into her car.

"Hold on one second, I'm going to ask that strong looking man over there if he could maybe help me with something. I hurt my arm and can't lift things."
Hmmm. Okay, cool.
Turned out he's a security guard, works late, can't help her, much to her disappointment. We got in the car.

We started driving to her house. "Are there any rules about going back to the residence? Do you have a curfew? Would it be okay for you to get back around 10? (it's now 5:30)"
"Umm...no, we have keys, we're fine to come back whenever." (stupid, stupid)

We got to her house, she fed us really yummy fruit (it's fast Sunday however, we had 2:00 church, and we were STARVING), and we talked French for a while. She answered cultural questions, and it was sort of fun, except she kept correcting our grammar and pronunciation so much that 20 minutes into this conversation we were scared to say anything (I thought she invited us over because she wanted to speak English with us?). She was lonely and lives in this huge house by herself, couldn't afford a maid, kept apologizing for the mess. I felt sorry for her. I noticed cobwebs. Huge, huge cobwebs. On every ceiling, in every corner, on every light fixture.
Someone should clean those, I thought. Little did I know...

We started to get uncomfortable, and there was no freaking way we were staying in the cobweb lonely house until 10 PM. So I told her I had completely forgotten that we had to talk with our families on Skype at 7:30, so we needed to leave at 7:00 (30 minutes away).

"Oh, no. Okay, well...we've got a little bit of time...I hurt my arm and can't lift it very high...but I've got all of these cobwebs that need to be cleaned...do you think? I mean, I don't want to impose or anything, but could you maybe help me clean them?"

Uh.
Okay, cool.
Charity. It's a good Sunday activity.

Broom in hand, Noemi and I start tackling cobwebs. Surprise. These cobwebs aren't vacant. There are live spiders everywhere. Huge, live spiders, crawling around on the ceilings. She kept telling us how nice we were for helping her out. Pretty sure my smile started to get a little not so genuine at this point.

But on we went, and we cleaned all the cobwebs out of the kitchen, living room, dining room, library, study, entry way, hallway, bathroom, extra storage room. And then as we were leaving,

"Could you grab these [nasty, old paint filled, potentially bug infested] glass bottles out of the yard and put them in this bag for me?"

I was desperate to leave at this point.
Sure! Whatever it takes for us to get the heck out of here!

She drove us back to our residence, gave Noemi her number, and said to call her tomorrow and "we can have dinner!" So we can scrub your kitchen floor? Or polish your wood furniture? Sorry, but no no no no no thanks.

We did not call.

Oh, but it's okay because she came to the residence yesterday and left a message at the front desk (she doesn't know our names, "the blonde American girl and the Spanish girl?") telling us to call her.

AHHhhhhhHHHhhhhh

every member a missionary

I've found myself talking more about religion here in Toulouse than at any other point in my life I think. Religion is really important to a lot of the elderly that we visit (or they at least find it an interesting topic for discussion), so they always ask Noemi and I, "Etes-vous croyantes?" (Are you believers?) to which we always answer yes. We were talking with Madame Robin this week, and she asked us this and what sect we were from. When we answered Mormon, she asked us how that differed from her religion (catholicism). And boom, all of a sudden there I was bearing my testimony about the nature of the godhead, living prophets, and personal revelation. It was the coolest thing, because words were just tumbling out of my mouth. I was simultaneously totally panicked and totally calm as I would reach for a vocab word, and there it'd be. 

I don't know what Madame Robin thought about all that I was saying, but I felt the Spirit testify to me that it was true. 

And that was awesome.

in france, the 4th of july is just another sunday.

Noemi and I have been exploring.

We visited a little jardin japonais (Japanese garden) on Saturday, after which we took a little ride on a touristy train and discovered that Toulouse is actually...beautiful.
Saturday night we got invited to go watch the Spain v. Paraguay World Cup match at a pub with Pierre, Pierre's girlfriend Laura, and their friend Rudolpho. It was really fun. Also, it was really cool, because none of us were from the same country. Noemi's from Spain, Pierre's from France, Laura's from England, Ruldolpho's from Peru, and I'm from America. And yet we were all there, hanging out, miles and miles away from home, chatting in English, French, and Spanish. It felt like we actually have friends here.

We are starting to actually like Toulouse.

And today we went to the Toulouse Concorde ward, met the stake relief society president, introduced ourselves to the bishop, chatted with the missionaries that I had waved ecstatically to when we saw them driving in their car (they recognized us, "Hey, did you guys wave at us a couple days ago...?"). It was really nice. I like singing hymns in French. Except it makes me think extra hard and so I either a) sing the wrong alto note or b) sing the wrong vowel sound. Maybe eventually I'll be able to get them both right.

We may or may not be planning on going to see "Eclipse" ("Hésitation" in French) on Tuesday. Don't mock. It's a...cultural...experience. And movie tickets are way cheap for students here (3.90 euro= less than 7 bucks).

A mix of photos from the Japanese garden and random pieces of downtown:

blackpool competition, day one

So blogger/slow internet is really, really annoying for uploading pictures in posts. I've taken over 100 photos in the past 2 days, but within this post you will find maybe 8? which is still a lot...but not fully representative of the exciting adventures I've been having!

Yesterday we went to Preston, England and visited a few church history sites including the River Ribble, where the first people were baptized in England, the obelisk where Heber C. Kimball and his companions first preached the gospel in England, the house where I can't remember who...probably Heber C. Kimball and a bunch of other people were staying and they cast out some demons (it's the house in my header picture), and the oak tree President Hinckley had planted to commemorate missionaries in England. We got to have sacrament meeting in the park right next to the river, which was really cool. We also went to the Preston temple, which was very pretty.

This photo is to prove to Aaron that brightly colored doors are adorable. So many of the houses in Preston (and pretty much everywhere else actually) have them and I love them! So cute!

the River Ribble...more proof that England is absolutely beautiful

obelisk! aka location of preaching (it's also right in the middle of a carnival, which was interesting for us to parade through in our matching clothing-long black skirts and nasty plastic brown jackets with leopard lining, Alex said we looked like Jehovah's witnesses, we get the weirdest looks everywhere we go)

Afterward we went to this uber picturesque little village called Downham, which is exactly what you'd expect an English village to be. I couldn't stop myself from taking a million pictures of sheep...or posing in front of rustic stone walls, wooden doors, wheelbarrows, etc...

my future home

posers.

sheep! this place was better than a petting zoo

beautiful stained glass window in the little church (a warm up for France, yeah?)

me in front of said church

Today was my first day of dancing at Blackpool. We competed in Amateur Latin...which was scary...and kind of fun...

and....

we made it back to the next round!

So tomorrow I'll be dancing again! And that is all I expect to dance, haha. I never expected to make even one round, so this is quite exciting.

me and Mike after dancing, love the makeup

Once the dancing was over we went shopping. Love, love, love Primark, Next, and New Look. The shopping is great here! I got a pencil skirt at Primark for 7 pounds. BAM. And I also bought a couple of Cadbury chocolate bars. And a couple postcards. (Side note: I was so excellent at picking out the correct amount of coins to give the salespeople. I am so pro at paying in pounds/pence.)

Today is probably pretty representative of what the rest of the week will be like. The next round of amateur latin is tomorrow, then the standard formation and amateur standard are on Wednesday, and latin formation is on Friday.

I look forward to more shopping (I've got to get myself a British world cup shirt), more dancing, and more wandering around Blackpool. :)

Cheers!