Surprised!

One of my recent popular activities with the kiddies involves me acting out expressions and having them tell me how I'm feeling. They love watching me feign surprised, angry, hungry, happy, tired, etc. And in return, I get to enjoy calling something out- "SHOW ME" (remember, simple commands here)- and having 27 little 8-year-olds act back to me. We've also recently been loving alphabet bingo, complete with sucettes (suckers) for prizes, and literally ANY song in English.

I got a fun surprise this week!

I don't know exactly what this device is called in English, but it's called a ULM in French. We'll just go with ultra-light flying machine, or the thing from that movie Fly Away Home about the geese. Anyway, yes, I flew in one of these!

Last Thursday was a national holiday here so no one had to work, and my friend Pauline invited a couple of us to come over and make crême de marron out of some chestnuts that she'd picked. Instead, she took us to a hanger in the middle of the countryside where our friend Lionel surprised us with rides in his ULM! It was a beautiful day with awesome views of the mountains, and we got to fly over the river. Obviously, Lionel drove, but I did get to steer for a minute!

This day really reminded me of how blessed I've been during my time here. The French people that I've met everywhere have been so welcoming and generous to me, even though I don't have a lot to offer them back. It's humbling and wonderful at the same time, and I'm doing my best to learn how to accept people's kindness gracefully and gratefully! Here's me with the captain, Lionel, and the other girls, Pauline and Susanna:

Another cool thing that happened this week was that I led the French bible study that I've been going to! One of the leaders asked if I could talk about the passage for the next week, and I invited my friend Carey to help me with it. We had kind of a tough passage, and we were a little nervous about how it would go in French, but it turned out so well!

As we've continued to have awesome weather, my French friends decided to capitalize on the recent spike of Americans around here, and we had an American football session on Saturday! Much to the amusement of my family and others who know me well, I taught a bunch of Frenchies how to play football! Hey, I may not be an expert, but I have enough sorority flag football experience to teach the basics, even in French. They really got the hang of it, and we had some pretty cool plays going by the end of the afternoon!

I'm looking forward to figuring out how to bring Thanksgiving to France next week!