BFG??????  Just Google The BFG and you’ll twig (that one was for you Drew).

I had to do a little blog post about my HUGE accomplishment I had today just to mark my milestone because I’m so proud of myself.

We’ve been here for just over 2 months and I was starting to feel really discouraged that I wasn’t making any real progress.  I knew plenty of random words, but for the life of me I was having trouble stringing a sentence together .  It’s only been in the last couple of weeks that things have started to click and I’ve been able to construct the most simplest of sentences.

Today was monumental in my eyes and although I look back and laugh at the situation I’m so pleased that I took a friends advice and humbled myself.

Let me paint you the picture:
I’m standing at the bus stop wearing Henry in his carrier, just waiting for the bus to go and see some friends.  Suddenly a little old lady who came out of know where starts talking to me.  Well at the stage I’m at right now I don’t quite hear all that people say to me  I just pick out main words that I recognise.  So I thought she asked how old Henry was so I told her “6 mois”, then she asked if he was a boy, then she asked his name.  Phew! I was fine answering all those little questions.  Then she twigged that I wasn’t French or at least waited until this point to say anything.  What was awesome though was that she didn’t just stop talking to me she carried on asking me simple questions!  I was loving it!  She asked if lived here in town and I pointed to my apartment and told her I lived on the 2nd floor.  Then I asked her where she lived….  THIS WAS ALL IN FRENCH!

For me this would have been enough of an accomplishment but it didn’t stop there.  The bus came and before we got on she asked my name and told me hers.  We sat opposite eachother  on the bus and she continued to carry on a conversation with me.  I asked her if she was going shopping and she said she was going to buy ravioli for her daughter and grandchildren.  Then she asked me where I was going and I told her I was going to see a friend.  She asked if I was going to see the baby’s “papa” and I said no he stayed at home with my daughter…….oh it was just great!  We were on the bus for about 20 minutes talking the whole time.  She showed me a photo of her grand daughter on her cell phone who is the same age as Poppy.  I found out her husband had recently died from Cancer and I told her I was a nurse had worked with cancer patients before.  I recognised the words for chemo and morphine.  It was sad, because she went on to say she lived in a big house and it was only her, she did mention something about students though so I assumed she was letting out a couple of rooms.  She talked about her big garden that needed lots of work to keep it tidy.  But she was so so lovely and spoke slowly for me and asked simple questions and made sure I understood.

I knew she was going to get off the bus soon so I asked if we could come and visit her sometime, seeing as we lived so close to each other.  I asked if she could write down her address for me and  then we said our goodbyes and she got off the bus.
I was elated and couldn’t wait to tell Drew who is always feeding me to the lions in the name of ‘practising your French’.  Haha.  All I could think was thank you God for this divine meeting that was probably as nice for her as it was a-mazing for me.  I probably sounded like an absolute idiot, getting all my tenses wrong and using the tu form instead of the vous form just because I was so desperately trying to stay afloat! lol.  Its all about humbling yourself and not caring too much that you sound like a babbling 2 year old

So pray we find time this following week to drop by her house and say hello.  I know she has plenty of family because she talked about her son and daughter and their kids, but that we could be her friends that could provide a bit of company now and then.  Her name is Sylvia if you want to pray for her, I believe she lost her husband recently because I picked up 7 months and she looked tearful while telling me about him.

And pray for me that I will continue to humble myself and just go for it.