Saturday and Sunday

Ahh I just can't get over how awesome everything here is! This program is awesome, they have activities planned for us every day. Each day goes by so fast but we've done so much since getting to Chambéry that I feel like we've been here forever. And the group as a whole is great, and I really like the smaller group of people who I hang out with on a regular basis. I feel like I've know them for way longer than a week (with the exception of Anna, I have known her longer than a week). It's great, every day is so fun, and there is no shortage of laughter with us :-)

Yesterday we started the day off with a trip to the market. We met at 9:30 and went to stock up until Tuesday morning. Then we had to be to the train station by 10:45 to meet Guillaume to go hiking. We stopped at a Tabac to see if we were in the paper (from the picture the guy took of us in our france Jerseys on Friday night and WE WERE! I bought two copies of the paper.

After meeting Guillaume we took a train to Aix Les Bains and then took a bus to the start of our hike. I was told the hike would take 1 hours but it definitely took 2ish hours. And we weren't even dilly dallying! There was a group of like 5 of us who just kept truckin along - Jeffrey, Me, Michael, Lisa, and Liz. There were several forks in the path (they all ended up meeting the same trail, but we didn't know that at the time) so we thought we were 'perdus dans le forêt.' It was the joke of the day. In our confusion we turned around but then ran into Brooke and Hope, who had been a little behind us (they stopped to use the restroom we passed before entering the forest) and they reassured us that we were going the right way so then we all continued. Several rocky and muddy trails later we finally made it to the cross! It was HUGE! And the view was AMAZING (I will be posting pictures up after this if I have time). We ate lunch at the cross and then began our descent, it was way faster than the way up! WE missed the first bus back into town, it left at 3:30 and we got back between 4 and 4:30, so we just had to hang out until 6 (buses aren't very frequent on the weekends, especially in the mountains. Then our train was late so we didn't get back to the Chambéry train station until 8:15.

We walked home quick, changed and then went back to the same pub from the night before (It's a good one)to watch the US v England game. Some people from the program were already there, we missed the first few minutes, didn't see England's goal. But we were there for the US goal! It was awesome, the whole bar (minus like 6 people) started chanting "U S A! U S A!" They all wanted us to win cause England's so good and we'd be easier to beat down the road. It was cool though. After that we walked around finding something to eat, dinner wasn't as good as we had hoped after over 3 hours of hiking. WE got ice cream and called it good enough :-) Then we (me, Anna, Jeffrey, Michael, Hope, Liz, Yvonne, and Hannah) just hung out for a little longer and then it was off to bed!

This morning Me, Anna, Jeffrey, Yvonne, Mike Lui, and Lisa went to church. Jeffrey, Anna, and me had looked it up earlier this week, it was a baptist church about 2km away. We walked there and it was totally worth it. It met in a high school and was probably 150, maybe 200 people, including kids. We started off singing some songs we didn't know but then after the offering we sang 'Here I am to Worship', same melody, just words in French. I cried a little because it was just amazing to remember how big God is that people across the ocean worship him in the same way but just in another language. It was just like a little hug and reminder that God is with us wherever we are. And that's one of my favorite songs to begin with so it was extra awesome. Then they just had a time of prayer and people from all around the room would just pray out loud, it was really nice. And I like how when people pray they go slower so it was easier to understand! The announcements lasted a long time and were harder to follow but when the pastor gave the message I think I got most of it. It was nice.



We walked back and some people got food from quick burger, possible the only place for food that is open in Sundays. It's so weird, almost every single place is closed on Sunday! Anna and I made lunch and shared with Mike. It was delicious again. Then we got our homework and things and set out to see if the ice cream place that advertised free wifi was open (trying to switch things up). We got there, it was open and we bought ice cream (me, Anna, Liz, Hope, and Yvonne). Then while we waited for the others to get their ice cream me, Liz, and Yvonne went inside to sit. We sent upstairs and were really excited to see that the world cup was on. We sat down and started to get our stuff out. Not even 5 minutes later the manager or something comes up to us and tells us (in French, of course) that ice cream is only for take out and we can't stay there. He asked Liz to unplug her computer and told us we had to go. Rude. So here we are at quick burger, yet again. At least they don't get mad when we're here for hours at a time after only buying a 1 euro thing of coffee, fries, or ice cream.

The rest of the day we're just relaxing, maybe a run in there. Tomorrow we're going canyoning. I don't quite know what it is but I know it involved rappelling down a canyon and then jumping into water. It will be interesting...

France is still awesome, I still love it :-)