Paris- the real deal

In my effort to make the last post a nice, concise, and unboring rundown of the events I totally forgot ALL the stuff I wanted to say about the things that happened there and all the things I have been excited to share since I got back. Man, am I a fool. So now that you have that handy little overview of events, you can place these thoughts in with that timeline. :-)

The whole day of leaving Greystones was rather sad- I love that town and had been delighted to return (fulfilling a vow I made in the early hours of November 21, 2005). I was also sad because I was leaving my friends with whom I had been through this whole adventure. I was excited to see Devon, but I wish I had known I wasn't gonna see Ben again when I left the room that morning because we never said a proper goodbye, but it was nice of Kelsie to walk me to the DART station.

I was terrified of trying to find my way places using the French language. Sure I can memorize the Beatitudes in French and rattle them off with a nice accent, but landing at some airport in the middle of the night, finding a bus to one of the biggest cities on the continent, then spending the night who knows where? From leaving the DART station in Greystones at 3PM on Friday to finding Devon in Gare Montparnasse at noon the next day, I was mostly lonely and afraid.
But! God was watching over me in a way that was so profoundly evident I would have had to have been in an unconscious state to not recognize it. First, I got straight from Greystones to Pizza Pino in random street number 80 billion in Paris without a single hitch. I wanted to take credit as an expert traveler and decipherer of foreign language signs, but I knew I was too tired and confused for that to be true. Not only that, but God gave me the grace to sleep at time in places I shouldn't have without getting caught. I was given a nice little seat in the pizza place facing away from everyone so I could pull out a book and studiously lean over it which so happened to be a mildly comfortable sleeping position. Random times, I felt the need to open my eyes, smile and look around. Every one of those "random" times, my waiter was just on his way over to check on me. The same thing happened with the police when I was napping in the bus stop: I got up and was rummaging through my suitcase rather than huddled in a corner with a blanket an pillow looking like quite the vagrant. And of course again in the cafe the next morning, I was woken by an unexplainable thing during my little naps to grin up at the barrista who had just then decided to glance at me.

If God's hand wasn't evident enough in the amazing and unexpected hospitality of my new friends Melissa and Philippe, you might have to check your level of awareness and see if you're conscious!

And finally, the grace to have such and amazing, accommodating, wise, understanding, fun, and amusing friend as Devon Graves studying in France, to come to Paris to visit with me and show me around, introduce me to our hosts, not to mention give me the infallible directions that got me to Pizza Pino the night before as well as plan out our French adventure in Caen and Angers for the next few days... this sentence has become too long and I don't know how to end it. But God is amazing to give me a friend like Devon and put us both in that situation!

All in all, I did a terrible job planning this excursion and it should have been the biggest disaster of my life- I mean like dead in a gutter disaster.* But God through Devon, our hosts, and His hand working in so many ways turned it not only into a survival in a big city, but a fantastic touristy trek though Paris!




* Call this poetic license of exagerration: I remind you, I was never in any real danger of my life- pickpockets maybe, but nothing life or death!