Big long serious cheesy post...

At first I was disappointed that I probably won't be doing any travelling during the February vacation, but now I'm content with it. The weather was beautiful yesterday, so I walked to the park, sat on a bench, and watched some French kids playing a strange game involving a ball, a frisbee, and what looked like a giant yo-yo. It was sunny and almost hot. So I left the park and kept walking, past the houses and over the train tracks, until I was at the edge of the forest that surrounds the town. Just in front of the forest, beside the French equivalent of the highway, there was an enormous life-size crucifix. I mentioned it to Marlene today, and she said that displays like that aren't uncommon in France.

The good weather continued today, and Marlene and I went to the post office together to get the $10 that Grandma mailed me exchanged into €. The elderly man behind us overheard us talking in English and introduced himself. He was French, but he spoke English perfectly, so well that I couldn't believe it wasn't his first language. After we left the post office he treated us to drinks at a local bar. We talked about the difficulties we've had living in a foreign country, and he told us about his second home in Anchorage, Alaska, where it's dark for months on end during the winter. After that Marlene and I walked to the hotel, and she made reservations for her parents, who are coming to visit her in March. We came back through a path in the forest. One day during this vacation, I hope to pack a lunch, hop on the bike Nathalie gave us, and spend the whole day riding through the forest. I also want to take a tour of François I's château and attend Mass in the thirteenth-century church. Sarah is using the vacation time to learn German from Marlene. Why she wants to learn German I don't know, because she makes many mistakes in English and even more in French, and I think trying to learn another language will just make her more confused, not less. But Marlene said she was a good student.

Since I arrived in Villers-Cotterêts, I've heard this town put down an amazingly times, both by the other assistants and the French people who live here. This town is so small. There's nothing to do here. Everything is closed by 8 pm. As I standing in front of the crucifix on Monday, I struck  by the beautiful view of the hills and the forest, and I thought about those complaints, and about what it means to happy. For a long time I thought that happiness was something that was given to you, that it depended on the things and people around you. But it's occurred to me that happiness is something we have to look for, and it depends on us and our own ability to find and recognize it. In Ponette, one of my favorite movies, Ponette says of her late mother, "She told me to learn to be happy." This made me think about Dad. He never graduated from college, but he was so smart, and he could have had a much better job than he did. But I still laugh when I remember when he told me the meaning of his license plate number (X27 TFJ, which meant he was Agent X27 of the Texans For Justice, for those of you who never heard the joke). I know this sounds cheesy, but I think real happiness comes from things like that, finding the humor, joy, or beauty of everyday moments. And I'm writing this down because I feel like I have traveled somewhere recently, not in France but inside myself, and I don't want to forget that place or how to get there.