Believe.Go.Love.Travel.Learn.Think.: Weekend :)

Mmm strawberries from the market..

Saturday, my last completely free saturday before classes start. What did I do? Shop! Noelle and I decided to just go into town and meander in some clothing stores..heh. So we headed to town around lunch time, in no rush, and grabbed a sandwich for lunch. It was one of those days weather wise, that when the clouds covered the sun it was chilly, but as soon as the sun came out the weather was PERFECT. Thankfully, the sun came out while we at our sandwiches in the grass. After, we went and got Noelle a phone! (Everyone is caving and getting one because of the need to communicate with eachother here heh). After we had decided to go to H&M, a clothing store, that is actually in the US too. It has cheap but very cute/stylish clothes. There are so many stores that are rediculously expensive here, and so it was good we knew off the bat a place we could shop without dying.

I grabbed around 3 things and when we headed to the change rooms, as I was trying on my clothes, I realized that this was the first time in 3 weeks, that I had seen myself in a full lengh mirror! This sounds odd to say, but honestly, there are no mirrors in my dorm, a small one above my mirror and that is IT. i think it is good, people (me included) are less able to obsess over their looks, or take forever trying on things in the mornings because all there is to do is put something on and hope that your friend (Noelle) across the hall will tell you if you look rediculous or not.

So I ended up buying 2 shirts for a grand total of around 25 euro ish? Not too shabby. Noelle got a cute outfit as well, and I had been texting Ed, so he found us there right as we were checking out. Also, I need a winter jacket, I looked at a couple they had and found some I liked, but I am going to shop around more, because I really want a leather jacket..heh, Fake of course.

So with Ed we headed to get him some late lunch, and at the Boulangerie that we went to, Noelle and I wanted dessert, so I got this soft serve Italien ice cream and holy cow. not only was it PILED on the cone, It was so thick, sweet, and flavorful (I had never experienced vanilla this way before) that by the time I leveled off the ice cream to the cone, I was stuffed, and Ed finished it off for me.
We headed back to the dorms after running into a few friends, and decided that we would meet back up in an hour to go to an organ concert at the Abbaye aux Hommes. Well, Kaitlyn and Noelle took a nap, and slept in. Ed is soon calling and knocking on my door. Oops, so we rush, get ready, and grab Chelsea from her room, and are off! Only around 20 minutes off schedule. Well when we get there, we had missed it hahaha. Oops. SO we head to a Pizzeria for dinner and split these 2 pizzas that were amazing, as usual.

Pause. I know I say that everything I eat is good.(Except my salami, butter, and pickle sandwich, which was only OK) And I am not exaggerating. The food here is just, different. So much fresher, and more flavorful. I was thinking the other day about trying to explain to a bakery here to use preservatives in their bread, and how absurd they would think it was. Daily producing food is just the norm, and they do it with excellence. I am going to miss it when I have to return to Waco and eat, well, I don't know.

Continuing. We headed to the Iglise St. Pierre, for a DIFFERENT organ concert (we are the coolest college kids) that was happening at 8:30. It was put on by a young talented musician and lasted over and hour. He played a lot of French composers, and ended with some from Bach. I honestly did not like the first 3 or 4 songs he played, they seemed off rhythm and like he was messing up a lot (Which is probably not the case at all), but things got more interesting when he played this piece that sounded like Creation. Very dark, repetitive, like what it sounded like when there was a void in space before anything existed type thing. I loved it.

As soon as it ended Ed whispered something to Noelle and she started laughing siliently uncontrollably, I was confused, leaned over and she said "Ed just commented, 'Well that was nightmarish'". HAHAHAHA. Now it is all in context, but the seriousness that this magnificent cathedral radiates, combined with the small older congregation we were surrounded by, just made the comment hilarious for some reason, so for the next 5-10 minutes, Noelle, Ed, and I are stifling our laughter and unable to stop. Holy Cow.
That ended our night and after we just headed back to bed, Chelsea stopped by our room so we could find a Church to go to the next day.

For church we had to wake up at 7:00am ish to catch the train around 8:15 in order to get to this unknown church by 9. Well Noelle and I slept in until 7:45, oops, no shower for us! We rushed and met Chelsea almost on time, and then headed to the tram to wait for 10 minutes because Sunday it barely runs (every 25 minutes instead of like, 12 minutes). When we go to the other side of Caen, get off, and find our Church, just in time, it is empty. Hmm...awk? We look at the sign outside the church and it says the service is at 10:00am. Ok. So we head to a boulangerie to get a more substantial breakfast(the rush in the morning made that hard), and took it to a nearby park bench to munch on. I got a pepito, the pastry I raved about the other day and took pictures of. It honestly wasnt as good as the other one, although still incredibly fresh. So we just sat in the warm morning sunlight, while the town around us was still asleep, oddly, untill 9:50 and headed back to the church.

We hear singing inside yes! Are we late? No the band is practicing, ok! Then we realise the service does not start until 10:30. Shnap, the market closes at 1:30 that we were planning on going to, we can still make it we figure, we will just have to rush, so we sit on the Church steps then head inside 10 minutes later. It is a very small church, It reminds me of the one I went to In Nigeria, but the Pastor came to say hello and he was VERY nice! He spoke to us in French but managed a few English words too haha.
The service was so good. I actually understood what was said, Thank you Lord, and the message was very good. The first half of the service had one man leading and he would speak some, then we would sing a song, then we would pray some, and just back and forth with those three things for some time. People in the congregation would do scattered prayer at times when he opened up the floor and I really liked that. We sang a few songs that I actually recognised the tunes too! Of course these were in French though.

Then the pastor came to preach and he preached on communication, using the Samaritan Woman at the well with Jesus, and the conversation they had. He said that you need Humility, Listening, and the Truth like Jesus did. I loved that I could understand the sermon.

At the end he kind of welcomed us in front of everyone, so if the congregation didn't know we were there they did now, and after a British woman came up to us! She apparantly in the late 1990s did the same program as us at the University, came to the church, met her HUSBAND, and never left. HAHAHA, how funny. But also how awesome that we met her! Lottie, short for Charlotte was her name, and we exchanged contact info with her before we dashed out the door for the market.

Market. Wonderful as usual. I got some Moraccan food for lunch, and strawberries, figs, and green beans for dinners this week. Win. Pause on the strawberries. These were ripe. LIke they were picked the day before beautiful color red, super soft and perfect. Hence the pictures below. Words can not describe how wonderful they were. Like, you can get really good strawberries in the states, but the texture of these is different because they can be picked RIGHT when they are ripe, to be sold the next day. ACK, so good.

Came back, ate, listened to podcast (Carl's second part to Stake in the Ground series at Antioch) and then took a nice 3 hour nap. Excessive? I'd say so, but I did no set an alarm and I guess my body was tired. Heh.