Our 2nd Week...

It's hard to believe we're nearing the end of our 2nd week living in Paris. The first week seemed to crawl with everything very new to us. The 2nd week, however, has flown by!

We've been busy working to find an apartment. We've looked at 4 apartments now (and are continuing to search daily for more to go and see) and have put in our application to rent with 3 of them. We are praying, praying, praying that God will open the doors for us to rent an apartment in a safe area, with good schools for our kids, with enough space for our family and not too expensive....oh, yeah, and something we can move into within the next 2 weeks!

In between our work, we've been out to see more Paris sights. But, first, here's something I would not have guessed our kids would be doing:


They've discovered Animal Planet on the Internet! They have enjoyed watching segments on the computer. Great fun! (I have to admit we got hooked on watching Animal Planet when we stayed in hotels during support raising. Great fun for the whole family!)

Our next adventure was going to Luxembourg Garden.
I know pictures never do justice, but I tried to capture some of the gardens. I'm learning that when it says "jardin" (garden), expect great things!


There's a pond and a famous monument in this photo. It was a really spectacular place...and a great reprieve from the hot sun. They had ivy growing on ropes in very interesting shapes all around the pond.


This is the Luxembourg Palace (the current French senate uses this place as it's office) which was built by Marie de Medici, the widow of Henry IV. Quite a building! The 60 acre gardens behind this palace were hers alone, until they made this a public garden.


These ponds are just beyond the palace. Someday we'll go back and let the kids pilot a boat. (Not sure "pilot" is the right word, but I'm guessing you know what I mean.)

The garden was filled with fun stuff for kids. Maybe a little too much fun for the kids, because each fun thing had a charge associated with it! While we are now residents of Paris, we are certainly tourists (or suckers) and we bit on a few fun things.

Like these super fun swings. The kids had a blast swinging!


And the famous Marionnette puppets. The show was an hour long and full of French humor. We were allowed to take photos before, but not during the show. So, here are photos of the place.

One of the puppets - a picture of it on the wall.
The kids waiting for the show.
It was a fascinating cultural experience to go to this puppet show. One, we learned that punishing your child in front of throngs of people is just fine here in France. As the kids were waiting for the show to begin, a couple of boys began to get rowdy. One of the grandmothers of one of the boys came to the front of the room and grabbed the boys hand and slapped it hard 3 times and gave a stern "shhhh", she then marched back to her seat and sat down. What she did certainly took care of the problem, but I (and many others) would never in a million years dream of doing such a thing in front of so many people in the USA for fear of being turned into social services!

Also amazing was to see how the French are just a-ok with putting tons of people into a small space (and I mean SMALL) for a long period of time (this happened to be an hour and 15 minutes for us) without any air conditioning! The only air to the building was through windows that opened in the side of the building, but they were closed so that the room was dark for the show. Can we say STICKY? And, remember, most of the French wear perfume (all different kinds), but not deoderant. :-)

The park also had a huge play ground (you have to pay to get in), pony rides, sandboxes, tennis courts, basketball courts, chess and lots and lots of beautiful statues and gardens. There certainly is lots more to see on return trips to this amazing place!

Now, some more about life in Paris. I didn't expect to be doing this with the laundry:
but, I can tell you this drying rack (which belongs to the owners of this apartment) is on the TOP of my "things to buy" list when we finally find an apartment! It works great. We cannot figure out the difference in climate here. It's confusing because Paris is really not closer to the equator than St. Paul/Mpls is, but it's a very different climate here. All this to say, things dry really fast here! The French really value conserving energy here, thus, many do not have dryers and they charge more for electricity in the daytime vs. the night hours. So, we wash at night and hang to dry during the day...and it works fabulously!

And, I just had to take a photo of the street cleaner going down our street. They come by at least once every day. Actually, there are many days they come down 2 or 3 times. First, a guy with a water truck and an amazing high-powered hose comes to wash the sidewalk "junk" into the street, then the street sweeper comes by to collect what's there.

They must have a huge crew of street cleaners to cover the entire city this way! All I can say is, "why not have people clean up after their dogs themselves?"

Then, I took a photo of our team meeting. We are meeting every week for prayer, and every other week for a business meeting. (In other words, one week we have 2 meetings, the other week we have one.) It's great to be together with our teammates and to be getting to know one another better during these meetings. We love it that Jim (our team leader) has such a high commitment to prayer. So, here's most of the group (some of the kids are missing) during our meeting this past Thursday at the apartment where we are living right now:

Yesterday we spent a huge amount of hours working on piles, finances, apartment searching, groceries, etc. We decided to go out after dinner to see the Sacre-Coeur (Sacred Heart) Basilica in the area of Montmartre (a place known for being a great look-out point since it is a big hill in the northern part of the city).

After getting off the metro, we walked through 2 streets of cheap souveniers to this....a short tram that takes you up to the Basilica:

Lena and Ryan were super excited about the tram (not sure why). Here they are at the top.

And, here is Sacred Heart. It actually isn't that old (built from 1875-1919), but it is certainly impressive! We walked through it, but were not allowed to take photos of the inside. As you can imagine, it is pretty amazing inside as well.


Mark by the front door.
Some photos of the outside...at different angles.




Proof I was here...along with tons of other people!

The family in front of the amazing view of the city of Paris.



Here's another photo of the view. It is, of course, impossible to capture the place well. It's really a sight to see.
Looking down the hill. We walked down the stairs taking in the view of Paris, and of the Basilica above as we went down.

It was interesting to go up to Montmarte because it is in the Northern part of Paris. We've been spending most of our time in the central (just south of the Seine River) and southwestern part of the city (where we are looking for an apartment).

But, being in the north, we saw the reality of how many Arabs (Muslims) and North Africans there are in Paris. Actually, there were a lot more Arabs than Africans there and we definitely felt like the minority...even in a super touristy kind of place. We had read and been told that France (and actually most of Eastern Europe) is being overrun with Muslims, and we saw that that is definitely true.

Finally, I'll conclude with the story of our trip to McDonalds. There's a large McDonalds right by our apartment, and we finally decided to go try it out for lunch. We have been told that the French like McDonalds. Here's a photo of Todd with the food. (I forgot my camera, so I took this photo in our apartment.)

They offer these sauces. The one called "Pommes-Frites-Sauce" is the one you can find readily..it's sort of like mayonnaise with spices in it, a very mild sauce. The Ketchup you have to ask for.

Mark and I got a Big Mac. The translation of the box is as follows, "The only one, the unique Big Mac."
You can have your Big Mac with a white bun, or with a wheat bun. (I tried wheat, it was good!) You could have pop, or Perrier or Evian water with your meal. (Never seen that before!) The kids meals came with Cheeseburger, Fries, Drink and dessert, which was fruit. Very nice! I can say that it tasted somewhat close to the US version, but definitely good. I kept drinking my pop and wondering, "Wow, this glass is not that big, but I cannot believe I am not to the end of my pop yet!" Then, I looked in the cup and there was NO ICE! So, if you are one of those people who hate it when they fill your cup FULL of ice and then put the pop in, just come to France! That won't happen here!

Finally, the nice surprise is that the cost was the same as in the USA. We paid the same in Euros that we would to feed our family in the US in dollars. Mind you, there's that pesky exchange rate, but it's the cheapest we've fed our family here yet...and we got a lot more food than anywhere else. So, you can see why the French like it here.

That concludes our 2nd week. We are starting to compile lists of "the American way" and "the French way". Sometime on a future blog, we'll type up the list for you. As for now, I must run. Have a wonderful day.