Category: General

 

Micah’s baptism was very nice. Thanks to everyone for their support. She said she was lucky to get so many gifts, but her favorite was a lot of love from everyone who came today.

Clark and I are atop a high-speed train hurtling toward Chartres, where he wants to see the cathedral. Now that his responsibilities are done, he get to choose the itinerary. He’s chosen to spend the whole day tomorrow in the Louvre.

Nantes wasn’t anything special. I toured a pretty boring castle. I don’t think Micah and Audrey would have wanted to live there. Maybe Riley….

Between free breakfasts and hosted dinners, our only food expense has been for Clark’s diet coke, to which cost we have to add an additional 50 cents, which is the cost to pee here in Europe.

Jill, you’re invited for birthday dinner on Sunday. I think I know how to fix escargots!

Right after I last blogged, Andy (Garcia, you recall) asked if he could get on the elevator with us in the hotel, or if he should wait for the next one. We begged him to join us, and I stood touching arms with him from the 3rd floor to the lobby! Clark chatted him up (and down) and promised to look into the traffic problems in Los Angeles for him. He (Andy)was on his way to a screening, and he smelled really good. Pretty fun.

We spent the next day traveling by train to St. Malo, France, where we boarded the ferry for Guernsey Island. It was a 3-hour trip over, arriving at 10 p.m. John had to get up early and return on the 8 a.m. ferry going back, since had a dinner to attend in Nantes Sunday evening. He basically just escorted me over and went back in the dark….what a guy!

I went to church in Guernsey. There were 7 others besides me. I met a cute Portuguese girl there who is on a 12-month contract as a nurse. She had a car, and she and her roommate took me all over the island. We visited a museum in a tunnel dug by the slaves during the German occupation, which is documented in the novel, “The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society.” The book is what piqued my interest in Guernsey, and I loved being there at the site of the events that were described. The people on Guernsey hadn’t heard of the book, with the exception of a 17-year-old boy inthe branch who spent last summer working at the Nauvoo pageant. He remembered hearing about “the potato peelings book,” but hadn’t read it. I wanted to leave them my copy, but Clark was reading it by then and wanted to finish it.

I started back to France (Guernsey is English) yesterday. At St. Malo I took a bus ride out to a small harbor so I could view Mt. St. Michel from a distance. Then after two train changes, I was surprised to see John waiting for me at the Nantes station. He took a chance I’d be on that train, met me, and off we went to a river cruise dinner with his group. I didn’t even get to change clothes.

So today is my one day in Nantes. I’m probably going to spend it doing laundry and taking it easy. We’re having a great time, but the days are long when dinner lasts until midnight.

On a serious note, Jim Smith has prostrate cancer. He was scheduled for surgery yesterday, but they postponed it because of a clotting problem. So, along with Laurie’s sister’s family, remember Uncle Jim in your prayers.

Love,

Mom

I forgot to report an interesting conversation with a Chinese PE teacher on one of my commutes. When I said I was from Utah, he said, “I know about Utah…the terrible tragedy of the insects.” He explained how the birds ate the locusts (I couldn’t convince him that they were crickets), and told me he had read about it in his textbook! Andrea reported that her guide in Xian also knew the story. I find that surprising.

Today is a national holiday. No one is working except me, and I’m grading 42 final exam papers. It’s going slowly. We were served the special holiday food at breakfast (stuff wrapped in leaves to commemorate the food that was thrown into the river to feed the hero who had commited suicide.)

I watched a granny helping her grandson to pee through his slit pants. Instead of choosing a tree or bush, which abound all over this campus, she had him stand on the porch and pee against the door of the foreign students’ building. I really don’t think she was making a statement, but I thought it an odd choice of location.

Well, I’ve stalled long enough…back to the test papers. So far the results are what I expected, but I’ve been given pretty strict instructions about the final grades.

Oh, one more thing. At the local fruit stand where I get my bananas, they now have cherries and strawberries. I was picking out some strawberries this morning, and the women got mad at me for picking out the ripe ones. She scooped them off the scale and threw them back into a bowl and yelled that I had to buy the whole thing. Since I’m leaving in the morning, I didn’t want that many. I just said “Duibuqi,” and she softened and told me I was forgiven. A nearby guard was impressed with my Chinese. Mind you, I could never think of the right word or phrase when I was here before, but the oddest words keep coming to mind at the appropriate times. Sometimes I even amaze myself! (It proves that my long-term memory is better than my short-term.)

Zaijian