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Monday, June 09, 2003 Deux Histories I have a ton to say, as usual--I seriously save thoughts throughout the day for expounding on here--but I'll limit myself for time's sake to two stories, one American and one French. American Story: The longer I'm here the more I realize that I'm not very American, at least in a typical way. Yesterday I went to Breakfast in America, a little diner that serves nothing but American breakfast food (disclaimer: I was only going in order to hang out with the 15 others who really wanted to go); the restaurant was busy so even though we got there at 1:45pm it took forever to get served and we didn't end up leaving until 4:15pm. Talk about killing an entire afternoon. And this not even counting the fact that the place is a good 30-45 minutes from the hotel (a figure that varies and can be longer, thanks to the strikes currently in progress; according to Let's Go France, the definition of un grève is "strike, French national pastime." You have no idea how true this is. But on with the story). Everyone at the restaurant was ecstastic about the food: "This was soooo worth the wait!" "My tummy is happy!" I kid you not, these are actual word-for-word quotations. I, however, was unimpressed--if you gave me 20 minutes, a kitchen, and some ingredients I could have made everything we ate and paid less than the 10 euros we forked over for the various omelettes, pancakes, toast, coffee, eggs, and bacon in petit portions. Many of these are the same kids who went crazy at McDonald's a couple of days ago. As I sat there, discontent, I just thought, I'm not very American. I hate peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, mac and cheese, and hot dogs. I'm not a fan of burgers either. In France, doesn't it make sense to try to eat French food? In any foreign country, for that matter. French Story: Two days ago I was at a cafe with my friend Priscilla, also known as my twin, for an afternoon of writing letters, reading, talking, and spending some time with God. Priscilla had been praying that she would be able to have a good conversation with a French person at the cafe, and God definitely answered: that person ended up being our waiter, a sweet 50-year-old man. It all started when I asked for some cream. When he returned with the cream, Monsieur le Serveur started looking at what we were writing; we were both journaling, writing what were essentially prayers. Priscilla allowed him to read one of her journal entries--one in French--and he asked us to pray for him, totally out of the blue. Then he left and we did. Priscilla then prayed that he would have the courage to come back and talk to us some more, which he soon did, asking us in French to write him three nice lines, a prayer. Laughing as he left, Priscilla took out a postcard she had in her bag and wrote a note to him on one half. I wrote the three-line prayer for him on the other, asking God to bless him and show him how much he loves him. Then our waiter came back and with a pad of paper wrote that his name was Robert and asked again for the three lines--I think he thought we weren't going to take him seriously or didn't understand--but we'd already written them, so we handed the postcard to him. Robert loved it. He left again and came back to the table with a pitcher of ice water (VERY rare in France) for the "nice girls". He was really sweet. After we paid, we left him a French Bible with some passages highlighted that we liked as a gift, so he can perhaps discover the hope that we have in Jesus for himself. I hope he reads it. God definitely has a sense of humor. ^ Top | 9:01 AM | | | 
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