Thursday, February 7, 2008

bienvenu

Which means, literally, well come. Or welcome. For the past two years my brother, Nathanael, has been serving a mission for our church in France and Switzerland. He gets in this evening and my whole family will crowd at the bottom of the escalator in the airport waiting for him.

I was a missionary myself, in France. I didn't love every minute of it. But I loved most of it: I loved France, loved what I learned and loved what I was able to teach others. I got to walk down little cobbled streets like this one, speaking French and eating pastries! And it will be funny to have Nith (as we call him) to come home speaking French.

It's an odd thing to come home to your family after two years away with minimal contact. One experiences a bit of culture shock. It's kind of a bummer that American streets don't look like that, isn't it.

When I came home, back before September 11th, those coming to pick up a missionary at the airport could wait right outside that nice tunnel one walks through after getting off the plane. I was so nervous to be home (maybe weird, but true) that I waited to get off the plane until almost everyone else had gone. Now regular people without plane tickets have to wait outside the security checkpoints, of course.

Nathanael won't have the pressure of a million people waiting to pounce the minute he gets off the plane. But he may have it worse. Now he has to come down the escalator to the baggage claim, where we will watch him descend in all his sleep deprived glory.

I can't wait.

3 comments:

  1. What an experience it is to come home to a world that went on like you never left...even though you think it shouldn't have.

    I'm excited too.

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  2. let us go walk the cobble streets together!

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  3. I wanted to serve my mission in France - really bad. I took two years of French at Ricks College (Pre- BYUI). I got called to LA Spanish Speaking instead. I did get to go visit Paris and a few outlying cities a few years later. I LOVED it! I even started catching on to the French a little, but alas - 9 days just doesn't make one fluent. I stumbled upon your blog while checking those little clicks on my profile to see who had interests in common with me. I have a 5 yr old ready to be 6 in June and being a new stay at home mormon mom, I really connected with your blog. I hope you don't mind me adding a link to my blog to keep in touch. Nice to meet you!

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