The French Adventure Continues: Marinland, Family Feud and Realizing there are 6 Billion People in the World

by Joy Mason, Greenheart Travel Language School Participant

Sunday

Today I went to the Evangelistic Church of Antibes. I’d been missing contemporary worship, and I can’t tell you how Picture 255happy I was when I walked into the sanctuary and there were drums and a bass playing!

Afterward, I went to Marineland! It was great! I saw a dolphin show, and an orca show, and a sea-lion show, and some sharks and fish and all sorts of things in the aquarium.

Tuesday

The twins and I watch television quite a lot in the afternoons and evenings. The show we watch the most often? “Secret Story”, a rather brainless reality show where there are a bunch of “beautiful” (read: guys and girls who spend more time on their hair each morning than I do in a full month) people who have strategies and deceptions and stuff like that. There’s also “The Voice.” That’s how he calls himself: “Ici La Voix.” I laugh every time he says that. We also watch “La Famille En Or,” which is the French version of “Family Feud.” Hilariously, though, the theme song is the “We are family” song, but instead of “we are” they say “En or.” I also watch a lot of “CSI,” which I never watched in American but quite enjoy here in France.
Click here for the video of "La Famille En Or."

Wednesday

I went to Grasse today with Emir, Pelin, Bercin, Amy, Kate, Maria-Julia, and Paola. Grasse is the world capital of perfume. When I told Pierre that we went to the perfume factory, he replied, “They have nothing but perfume factories in France!” We toured the Fragonard Perfume factory, which was interesting.

One really cool thing about traveling and living in different places like I have been is that it totally expands my view of the world. I mean, obviously, right? But we were talking at dinner tonight about how many people there are in the world, and how you can never know all of them. It’s so weird for me to think that there are like 5,999,999,999 (give or take a few hundred million…) people in the world right now that I will never meet, never know, never even realize exist! Before two Sundays ago, Emir and Paola, for instance, did not exist in my world. Now they do. Isn’t that so weird to think about? I mean, it’s a little self-absorbed: Emir and Paola didn’t exist in the little world that centers around me. But what I mean is, before I met Emir and Paola, I had never met (that I know of or remember) anyone from Turkey or Brazil. And now I have. And in knowing them, I learn a little bit more about this world I live in. Even meeting Kate, from Britain, is the same: even though I’ve met lots and lots of British, meeting someone new still expands my knowledge of the world. I’ll never ever be able to travel to everyplace on earth, but meeting people from all over is a little taste of all those places and all those peoples and all those cultures that God has created. And, seriously, how cool is that?