Week 3 in Marseille!

Bon Jour from France!!  

Hope you all are finding your rest in the finished work of Jesus on this Sunday!

Here is a quick recap from our 3rd week in Marseille:

We had a several days of planning and prep for the English camp that will take place the week of July 4th for the church.  The interns will run it and so there is lots to do to get everything together!  It is like a VBS but also teaching middle schoolers how to speak English.  The theme is USA.  The church has an ongoing English Club for adults through their church throughout the year.  They have made some wonderful connections in the community this way and many of the kids coming to English camp in a couple weeks are their children!  The end of the year celebration for the adult English Club was this week on Thursday night.  The interns worked hard on presentations for the VBS week and shortened them for the adults Thursday night.  The theme for the party was USA and we decorated with red, white and blue.  The interns were very busy Thursday cooking a very "American" meal.  They had BBQ, potato salad, green bean casserole and cornbread.  It was a lovely evening!

Claire and Mei

English Club celebration dinner outside the church

Justine and her "host" family

Katie and friends (some of her Host family)

Another neat thing that happened this week that I did not document is the Festival of Music on Tuesday night!  Every summer, Marseille has one night to celebrate music.  It is a big deal here and you can find people set up on most street corner playing music, even if they are not the most skilled.  

Early in the night, Pete set up a place for us to sing.  Basically, it was an outdoor area in the middle of several shops.  Kevin played hymns on his guitar and we sang some Indelible Grace songs.  It was fun and we even had some super cute little girls that decided to dance while we sang.  It was in an area of town close to the church.  We had a few people stop to talk to Pete!

Later that night, we heard people at the end of our street setting up music, so we let the kids stay up late and we went down to enjoy.  Some people were playing along with a cd.  Kevin asked to join and play electric guitar and they let him!  They played a blues song and everyone enjoyed it!

On Friday we packed up everything and cleaned our other apartment and moved into our new place for the month of July!  We are so thankful for the family letting us stay here!! They have 2 boys, age 8 and 4 and they have a beautiful place!  They even have toys and english books our kids can read!  Yay!  It is amazing how content 3 kids can be with toys when they have been without them for almost a month!  They have a cool mat on the floor that looks like a city and trucks and cars and people to make-belivie.  This new place has more room so we do not feel like we are stepping on each other and it also has fast internet! Yay!  That is how I was able to upload more pics this time!

On Saturday, we took our day off and took the one hour train ride to Avignon.  We left at 8:15am because we have a book about flea markets in France and heard we had to get there early because they pack up around noon!  The book was right about that and right about how AWESOME it was!!!  I could have looked all day, but we only had a couple hours to comb through it.  I took lots of pics to give you a taste.  Toward the end, we had to bribe the kids with popsicles because they had already used the 10 euros each to keep them busy.  So worth it though!

Notice the Castle in the background!

Katie

Claire

It went on for what felt like 2 football fields!  This flea market is here every Sat. so if you are ever in the area, you should stop by!!

City walls of Avignon

Palais Des Papes

Justine on the streets of Avignon

Candy store in Avignon

Isaac and his cool hat he got here

Mei in Avignon

Isaac on the train back to Marseille

Flea Market finds

A view from our new balcony

Orange Freestyle Cup Skateboarders

This is a free competition that was going on down on the beach this week.  It was fun to watch!  The finals are this afternoon and Kevin took the kids to watch.  There were even some Americans here competing.  

Hope you have a lovely week!