A Lovely Day

Hopefully more ski story installments to come later (trust me, there are plenty more stories to be told!) For now, however, I should like very much to tell you about my day. It was lovely.

Church this morning was grand for a number of reasons. Each Sunday, I find myself comprehending increasing amounts of the sermon. A nice feeling. A spectacular feeling, really, when you don't even have to translate it into English in your head, and you just know what it means. Today the Spanish opera singer Pastor Pablo gave the message, and since French is his second language, he speaks it a bit slower and it's easier to follow. Plus I was sitting next to Sarah. Trying to understand what's going on in this world of the francophone with Sarah is always a blast.

Directly after church, Sarah, Alyssa, a friend of Alyssa's who is currently visiting from Scotland, and I went on a little hike. The weather was sublime, the skies the purest blue and the sun casting a wholesome and magnificent golden glow in the crevices of every mountain and scintillating sparkles on the babbling brooks. (Alliteration, je t'aime). 

We hiked for what seemed like a rather long time (but it wasn't really, just felt like it due to the steeply inclined mountainside). But though long, it was not at all wearisome because of the beauty that surrounded and the cool breezes and invigorating alpine air. We hiked up to a little town called Mercury. Spectacular views of mountains all around by a church in a graveyard awaited us in Mercury. While Alyssa and her friend sat on the wall of the cemetery and ate their lunch, Sarah and I enjoyed exploring said graveyard. Families in France get buried in the same lot, and as a result, most gravestones looked brand new, having been replaced with more recent family deaths though the majority had people who had died some 200 years ago.

I do love a good cemetery. There's nothing quite like wandering through a graveyard, reading the tombstones, contemplating life. It was very beautiful, and I wished we might have stayed a bit longer exploring the quaint little town, but  the hike down was glorious. More so than on the way up, for we walked down the actual path this time instead of the road (having missed it on the way up!) and I do believe it was the loveliest, muddiest, twisty-turniest little path I ever did walk on! I love the soft feel of a path in late-winter - layers of snow and ice melting over layers of decomposing leaves creating a smooshy, muddy, gushiness like none other. I stopped for a bit to watch three little children jumping on a big trampoline out in the open, their little shrill voices jabbering on in French. What would it be like to grow up here, here in this tiny village, with mountains just as big as the village is tiny... Ivy-covered farmhouses with barking sheepdogs and grazing horses completed the picturesque landscape nicely. Bridges crossed over mountain steams, crystal clear water pouring over mossy rocks. 

All too soon, we were back in the city. And then back at the school. But another treat awaited. Les Misérables! Although I already had the pleasure of viewing this musical phenomenon in the States some 24 hours after it was released, the opportunity to see it here in France was just to good to pass up! Quite a number of people went from the school. The French cinéma was a good deal nicer than Quality 16. And when I say a good deal, that is an understatement. Mercy and I sat together, and the two of us more or less sobbed the way through the film, though I hear that the other adult women were just about as stoic as stoic can be, and it sounds as if we were the worst criers of the theater. Not a role I'm accustomed to playing, let me assure you. 

The conversation in the car on the way back home was, naturally, virtually all in song. Subsequent conversations to follow continued to be sung. Vastly entertaining I must say.

And so that was my lovely day. Thank you for listening. Or rather reading. I hope it was enlightening and edifying and that you enjoy the following pictures:

Albertville, so tiny, so far down...

Cemetery!

Mont Blanc!

Mercury...

The lovely path of squishiness and decomposing leaves and mud and snow and ice!