When it was time for primary, we found that there was a British expat family with three kids that live in France and attend school in France, so the kids were fluent in both French and English. (The grammar of that sentence is perplexing me but I'm too tired to figure out how to fix it.) The French-speaking British kids offered to help translate for our kids. It was the best situation that we could have hoped for! Rose came back from primary beaming and said that the girls were very nice at helping her understand. Jay said "because it was girls, they mostly talked to Rose and left me out." Haha, stoic Jay survived church but didn't love his lack of comprehension. I asked Jay and Rose how Amber did during primary, and they said she didn't say anything the entire time! I guess she was overwhelmed into shyness by strangers and French words.
It's funny that Amber was shy at church because once on the metro in Paris, Amber talked on and on to a nice French grand-mere, all because Amber liked the lady's nail polish. She held her hand and told her Things. The kind French woman smiled and let Amber talk, replying every now and then in French, clearly not understanding a word of it. When we reached our metro stop, I whispered to Amber "say au revoir to her!" and Amber said it and the lady said "au revoir!" and we jumped off the train.
At church after sacrament meeting I had a wave of courage so I went over to the youth who spoke in sacrament meeting and told her "merci pour votres paroles." (thank you for your words). She spoke so fast I struggled to keep up, but we had a very broken brief exchange wherein I'm pretty sure she asked me where I'm from (easy well-practiced response for my French). Then I'm not sure what she said, but I asked where the women (aka relief society) met ("les femmes sont ici?"), and she pointed me in the right direction.
During relief society at church I understood about 40% of what was being said, thanks to the clear French speech of the sister giving the lesson. I told her merci at the end, and she hugged me. All in all, church was lovely.
We drove back home to our apartment for lunch and a rest, then headed out on a Sunday afternoon drive towards Carnac (half an hour away) to see the standing stones. This region of Brittany has 3,000 prehistoric standing stones. There were fields and fields of them, all lined up in long rows, almost like a graveyard. It was fascinating to puzzle over why there were so many all in one place. We discussed the possibilities at length. Jay loves hypothetical conjecture so much, he really got into theorizing about the standing stones. We walked around a bit, drove to another spot nearby and walked down a trail to see a 20 foot high megalith before heading home again.
I thought for sure we would be transported back into the past when we touched the stone.
The woods were beautiful and the weather was perfection: 75 degrees and a light cool breeze.
The Lone Megalith
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