L'église, Le Château, et Le Cathédrale

I just returned from my first church experience in Angers. I found a church online and tried to go to it. It took me a while to find because it was in an apartment building so i was confused. But it was a really small church (about 25 people). The people were really friendly. The pastor and his family are from California and they speak english. I met a few students from Gabon who live in the dorms near me. One of them speaks good english. I really enjoyed singing in french. And I understood over half of the sermon. So that was pretty good. But i still need to study. I still have trouble understanding converstaions. I'm glad I went to church. It's always cool to see God moving in people's hearts all over the world. One of the members gave their testimony. It was such a joy to hear someone elses story in another language and not only understand it but relate to it.

So Yesterday was interesting. It was my first cultural experience in France. Grabriel, invited me and some others to come hear him at a concert he was going to be in. The concert was at this really old church. It was beautiful. The concert was a orchestra of middle school students. They could all play very well. It was really cool to be there and see the old church, even though it lasted for 3 hours. After the orchestra played, our friend Gabriel sang with a chorale. They were very good as well. The orchestra even surprised me when they started playing Pirates of the Carribean. When the concert was over, Gabriel invited us to go eat cake with them. We didn't really know what was going on, until we walked into a small room with all the people that were in the concert. Once everyone was there, they sang a song about drinking and eating together. Then we proceeded to eat cake and cider. It was really good. The funny thing was that the other two guys with me were really confused the whole time and very uncomfortable. I guess all that STIM cross-cultural training and going to China did some good. And because of these things I was more comfortable being out of my comfort zone. I am glad I have those experiences behind me so that I can understand how to respond when you enter a situation like that. 

I've been enjoying my time here in Angers. 

I'm still figuring out my way around, as it is a pretty big town. I went to the castle last night and looked out over the city as the sun was setting. It was really pretty. I've also visited the huge cathedral that is in town.  Everything is really old here; built in the medival perdiod.  Well not everything, but there are a lot old bulidings in the center of town. I learned that the English have no idea what you mean when you say downtown. They say center of town, and the french says centre-ville.