Seventh email from France (Vitrolles)

5/27/08

Hey, what’s up? Sounds like everything is good with y’all. Gosh, I can’t even believe Whitney and Evan are done with school already. I didn’t even think it was near that time. It’s really going fast here. The weeks really just fly by here. We’re still in Marseille in the same apartment but we’re with the 2 other Marseille elders now. So that’s ok. I don’t like it so much, you know how I am. I would just rather be by myself than in a room with 4 guys all trying to walk around and no real places to sit. But its not that bad and we’re moving a week from today on the 4th so I’m looking forward to that. I think the office elders are going to drive down and help us move. They have all of our appliances and stuff because they are from the old Marseille apartment that we had to clear out last week. I don’t have an address for you to look online but our apartment in Vitrolles is right next to the big rocher or the big plateau thing. It’s in the really cool looking old part of downtown too, so I’m excited! I’m sure its not gonna be the best but it will work. It’s just gonna be good to just have our stuff to mess with because the apartment we’re in now has been a missionary apartment for years so there is just collected junk laying around- stuff that I would just throw away if it was my choice. So next p-day we should spend all day moving and stuff, this week really has been kinda frustrating. It’s really hard not having the car. We have to get up get ready, study and stuff, then go get on the Marseille metro to the bus station then to Vitrolles. Its just a mess and its taking alot of money. Just the metro is like 3 euros every day, then the bus is 3 euros each way. So its over 10 dollars a day- it’s a little ridiculous but I guess we have to do it. We bought this 7 day pass for 19 but we found out yesterday it won’t even work for the line of busses we use. The girls at the station- I don’t think they like us cause they can’t figure out how to use our credit cards because they have to slide. Everybody’s here has a little chip to scan. So I’m completely out of money now on my card until the first. Just the traveling has cost so much. I have 90 euros in reimbursements I need to send in so that will be good when all of that goes through. Another thing is the last bus from Vitrolles to Marseille is at like 7 so we come back really early every night. Gosh I can’t believe its summer already. I hope y’all are having fun. Tell me what plans y’all have coming up. Are y’all still going to the family reunion thing? I’ll try to get y’all some pictures. The only thing is that it’s like really 25 cents for every picture I would print out. I know I need to for y’all. I just don’t want to spend that much money. What Elder Clyde does is just sends memory cards back and fourth so maybe we can so something like that or I can just print out the really good ones. I have been taking alot though. I have like 280 from the start of the MTC. I bought a book of postcards to of Marseille so I’m gonna start sending people those, there alot easier ha I just need to buy stamps. We didn’t have as many amis at church this week cause it was Mothers Day or “fete de meres” here which is like mother’s party in English. (which I think is cooler anyways ha) They have been having a lot of “greves” or "strikes". But the thing is they're not like actual strikes they're more like scheduled days for not working. People just like sit outside in lawn chairs saying there not gonna work but they know they're just off for that day and they will work the next day. So they don’t get anything more out of it. That really messed up our trip to Vitrolles one day this week cause all the busses and metros weren’t going. Oh yeah everyone asks us about the presidential campaign. We’re not really supposed to talk about it at all. I think most of the people here like Obama. They really don’t like Bush at all. ahh Crawfish sound so good right now. We ate last night at the church with the family Renderanaridera for FHE- it was really good and fun. He has helped us so much to find our apartment. He has gone to every meeting with us and really just done everything to help us. He makes all the phone calls and everything. He doesn’t really work so he is always there to teach with us too, so that’s cool. He always finds people for us to teach. Awesome. We had district meeting yesterday in Aix- that was good. We have us 2 then Soeur Oliver so that’s really good to see her, then then our zone leaders than that’s it just 6. It was really good though. But that was another big mess with the busses, to get back to Vitrolles another thing is that the busses don’t go on Sundays so we had to take a train to church and get someone to pick us up in the town over Marinane which is okay- its just gonna be really nice to finally live in our area. The trains are really cool though, I really wish we had them at home- it would just make it so easy to go to Houston or somewhere for the day. The trip to Angoulem was really cool. I got to see alot of cool sights. There were a bunch of castles. One that really reminded me of Hogwarts, seriously. It was that big with that many spires and stuff. It was really cool. You know how she writes in the Harry Potter books, she writes his name in an english accent like "arry otter" or something like that- that's how they say it here. It's so cool. They don't really pronounce the h or the p. Today we played ultimate frisbee in the park, that was pretty fun. It was really windy. One of these days I want to play ping pong. They have alot of tables here, all the churches have them. So I'm gonna have to get that going. Take this out cause it's wierd to talk about but my arms are shrinking every day. It stinks! ha I got so much bigger in the MTC working out everyday, especially with the powder I had. I'm in really good shape though -we walk alot and its starting to get hotter. It rained really hard the other night. I really liked it. I really missed the rain when I was in the MTC. It's rained a few times here so its not to bad. It's not nearly as humid as it is there so that's good. I dont have that much more to say. I was really hoping to hear where the Lovelaces were goin this week -hopefully next week. Well that's about it. I hope everything is good! Love y'all, Taylor