We totally know how to celebrate holidays here at iccp. Or, Why I needed 2 weeks to recover from Easter.

so easter weekend was 2 weeks ago already, and i'm just now getting around to blogging about it. this is because it was such a crazy jam-packed weekend (in a good way!) that it has taken me this long to recover.

(see pictures of the entire weekend here)

iccp kicked off our celebration of easter on maundy thursday. i have no idea what a traditional maundy thursday service looks like, but we used the occasion to create a prayer labyrinth to allow people to experience and reflect on the reality of Christ's death. we had stations set up all around the room, each portraying in a sensory manner a different element of His last days on earth, and then guiding people through prayer and reflection. for me, it was extremely powerful and moving to reflect in this way- to use all 5 senses to experience the reality of my Lord's sacrifice.

saturday, the day before easter, ended up being a beautiful sunny day in provence, and we held an all-church picnic/easter egg hunt. we had a ton of people hanging out together at the park, and all kinds of fun stuff going on, including an easter egg hunts for every age. we had a bunch of our jr. high and high school youth group kids come, and we set up an entire easter egg hunt challenge for them. believe me, this was no normal easter egg hunt, it began with each team searching for the extremely well-hidden eggs in their team's color, before moving to an obstacle course that concluded with a dizzy bat race to a limbo finish line. watching 15 teenagers dizzy bat their way to a limbo line- how can that not be hilarious? i think the picnic was a highlight of the weekend for all of us, as it was a really great time of connection with a ton of people, especially since a lot of the youth group kids brought their families who would never normally come to church.

easter sunday meant waking up really early (at a time the human body was meant to be sleeping) for an easter sunrise service. it's early, but man is it a beautiful way to celebrate Christ's resurrection! we then headed to the french church's easter service, then an ecumenical service where all the churches, catholic and protestant (and us...), gathered to declare Christ's resurrection. the staff rewarded ourselves for all of our early morning work by enjoying an incredible 4 hour lunch (feast!) on the outdoor patio of an amazing restaurant out in the country. (and just to be sure that we squeezed all the celebrating we could into the weekend, we had a birthday party for hilary that night.)

the monday after easter is a holiday in france (and they claim to be a secular country!), so the iccp tradition is to hike mount saint victoire en masse on easter monday. exhausting. and so fun. of course, having my dear friend erin (from westmont) and her fiance mike here made the weekend even better.

ok, i'm exhausted again just thinking about all the stuff we crammed into easter weekend. or maybe i'm just exhausted after my work day today, which consisted of driving around southern france and repeatedly getting lost. definitely another story for another blog. this job is like no other...

What do Easter, dog sitting, and baguettes have in common? Or, my very late-night ramblings.

ok, so i'm not so good at the regular blogging. how on earth do people blog every day? i don't understand it. a few people have been not-so-subtly urging me to blog more often (ahem, lc, ahem). so here you go. due to my current lack of mental energy (and the fact that it's 2:30am), it'll be of the stream-of-consciousness genre. (p.s. i love how the french use the word genre. we definitely have not yet discovered the full potential of this word in the english language. they use it in so many different ways and it's brilliant).

we're right in the thick of easter weekend. i love easter. i love taking 4 whole days to celebrate the most amazing act of love the world could ever know. i love the traditions, all of them, from start to finish. (i also love the easter package with the cadbury eggs i got from my mommy today). but easter is busy. i work at a church. this is busy time.

today i discovered that french people, who are stereotypically rude in customer service-type settings, are excessively helpful in situations involving a dog. today i was dog-sitting Talli, my teammate Dom's dog. i'm walking Talli through town and we're right in the middle of the place de la mairie when all of a sudden she stops, sits down on the ground, and starts throwing up. then she starts violently trembling, and falls over on her back. i think she was having a seizure or something. do dogs have seizures? well, i'm freaked out and have no idea how to care for a seizing, barfing dog, but immediately at least 4 people rush over. two immediately drop to the ground to see what's wrong with her while the other two are inundating me with advice on how to care for her. one french guy was actually on his hands and knees, massaging Talli's stomach. well after a few minutes of lying there trembling, she hops up and starts to walk around as if nothing had happened. and she had no further problems for the rest of the day, so i guess she's fine. but i share this story for all those of you who are convinced that the french are so rude. it's just not true.

i'm rediscovering how wonderful it is to live in this city! a few of my new favorite things:
place to eat lunch-- on the steps in front of the palais de justice, soaking up the sun. i've enjoyed this lunch spot the past 2 days in a row. i bet if i eat lunch there again tomorrow, it will turn into a regular habit.
cafe-- la madeleine. delicious coffee, and i could sit there for hours. when you're inside you feel like you're in paris.
bakery at which to buy my baguette- emile bec. i went on a quest for the perfect baguette, and the winner is without a doubt the baguette at emile bec. it's important to get a baguette with the right consistency, not too dense, not too crusty, light and airy but not lacking in substance. trust me on this people. i was a psych major- i'm trained in research methods and statistical analysis. this was a systematic study- the best bread in aix is the emile bec baguette.
mode of transportation-- walking. if i ever have a lot on my mind, by the time i walk home i've had a chance to process it all out. how did i ever get any thinking done when i had a car?

blogs soon to come (i promise!): stories of all our easter festivities (and there may be one entire blog on the easter meal i'm going to have that i can safely predict will knock my socks off); blog including lots and lots of pictures of our awesome super fun youth group- it's growing and thriving, we do crazy wild fun things, but also have been having some really amazing deep conversations; and a blog about how i'm revolutionizing france with the game telephone pictionary.