Sunday Funday

Last Sunday I went back to the American Church in Paris because the mom wanted me to see if there were any postings about an American baseball team/league for Guillame. So I went to the 1:30 service which is the Contemporary one – Queen, I think you would’ve liked it. There was a lot of singing with contemporary music and a more laid back atmosphere with the preacher/pastor lady not in the pulpit but standing in the aisle in front of the pews…Apparently the 9:00am service is the most traditional offering communion once or twice a month, then the 11:00am is the mostly the same without the bread/wine and then the 1:30 draws the youngest and most relaxed crowd.  The sermons are all the same but the vibes are different.

I doubt I’ll ever make it to the 9:00am but I think I prefer the 11:00am service, although I did meet some people my age from this service so….

After every service there is a small reception and there I met these two sisters form Finland.  One was just visiting in Paris as well as the South of France where their family/parents live and the other just finished studying Art History here in Paris and is currently looking for a job.  They were both very nice, very blonde, and very tall lol.  And I’ve only met one other Finn besides these two girls, but I’ve decided that these are good people.  They are super nice and seem pretty laid back (Margs – they were from Helsinki, so I told them about Lauri – sp?). The girls said that even though Finland has a fairly small populace, their people are everywhere.  Mostly because they are so far north, they have non-stop days of light and in the other cold season, darkness.  So if I ever go to Finland – it will definitely be during the summer.  After talking to these girls awhile, I declined a lunch invitation and moved on to the ad posting board.

There I meet, Armando from San Jose.  Armando, of Mexican descent, is a short, skinny, dark-skinned kid that was looking for the American Library. I wanted to help and didn’t really have any pressing matters to attend to so I told him I would help him find it because there were more ads posted there and since I might as well see if I can make some extra moolah on the side I said why not.

Well we found the Library and it is closed on Sundays, eh whatever.

Armando is currently staying in a hostel – has been for about a month. He was previously living in Rome, working at a hostel and then decided to go ‘woofing’ for a couple months in the countryside. For those of you poor souls who are not in-the-know ;) “woof-ing” means working on an organic farm.  Basically you can go stay on an organic farm and in exchange for your physical labor, the owners provide you with room and board.  I think it would be a really cool experience.  So now Armando is in Paris, wants to find steady work, learn the language, and is also starting to run low on cash so he was looking for some odd-jobs to hold him over.

He told me he was going to meet this man who needed help translating some documents into English. He asked if I wanted to come along in case the translating was over his head. Hell yea I’ll come! I get to go to a part of the city I’ve never been, meet a real French person, and see how this whole operation works.

We meet Laurent. Laurent is a 35-yr old surgeon who just got back from doing field work in Africa.  He also spent 13 months being isolated in Antarctica with about 10 other people doing research.  Laurent is flying to Berlin to attend a global conference on the research he has been conducting in Africa.  It was really interesting to me because he was basically arguing the ethics of doctors using universal treatment for a mass population or if treatment/care should be given on an person-by-person basis.  Basically – does the individual matter?

So Armando and I helped Laurent go through his PowerPoint presentation and fix all his errors in English – the subject matter may have been slightly over Armando’s head, so I am glad that I was there. I thought it was really interesting.  Then at the end, Laurent paid Armando 50 Euros for helping him out, 20 of which Armando gave me! Yay! So all in all it was a good day…

Oh and also while we were at the cafe working, I ended up drinking TWO cafe noisettes, which is basically an espresso with a hint of cream…its strong stuff…but they were free and the 2nd one was more to make Laurent feel better about keeping us there for so long…But anyway when we were leaving I was saying goodbye to our waiter who was standing at the entrance and he said “Au revoir, Petite Noisette”…It took me a sec to figure out what he had said but when I did I laughed and had a huge smile on my face! :D…it was so cute!