First Day Jitters....

First day of the convention- it started in the afternoon. The afternoon started off with us trying to find seats in the English section. On the search, Shawn accidentally knocked someone’s pop can over and it spilled everywhere. Immediatley, he went to find the cleaning department- seeing as he was working with emergency spills again. Because of the language barrier, he ended up getting sent off on a wild goose chase- doing various things for the brothers. Each time he tried to explain that he needed cleaning supplies, he was sent somewhere else to help move something or clean something.

Not to be a Debbie downer, but we were a little disappointed to find that we weren’t going to be in a giant arena where everyone is all together. Our facility is a huge convention center with 7 different buildings or sections with each language in it’s own section. If we wanted to see people from another group, we have to walk to that building- which can be quite a long walk depending on where they are. But, don’t get us wrong- it’s such a great experience being here with all the different nationalities. It’s a bit like Epcot Center. Today we visited Poland and France!
For most parts, we have English speakers and then when it’s a governing body member or special report, we are tied into the French stage (which is the main stage) and we listen over the speakers to the talk.

It was soooo hard to stay awake today! We were so tired, but everyone around was sleeping too, so we didn’t feel that bad. But the fact that the whole program was about keeping on the watch and staying awake to our world conditions made it worse. Every speaker seemed to have analogies or an illustration having to deal with sleep and waking up. One brother asked, “How could Jesus’ apostles could have fallen asleep the night of Jesus’ arrest?” Well, maybe they had jet lag! Not even when Jessica was nursing has she been so tired. I’m talking about the ‘sleep- with-your-mouth-open-in-public-and-you-don’t –even-care’ tired. You know it’s bad when you don’t know you are sleeping until you are woken up by applause.
Nevertheless, we got thru the session. 3,000 English were expected to be in attendance, but today we had 5,346 English speakers and a total of 49,338 for the whole convention. In addition to the Paris convention, there are conventions being held in Bordeaux and Lyon as well. Total France convention for Thursday: approximately 149,000.
Our bus took 2 hours to get back to the hotel that night. By that time, it was late, so we got food at the store and ate in our room. It was just what you’d expect to eat in Paris- bread, cheese, and wine. All I can say is, the cheese definitely stands alone. Why? It’s alone because it kills everyone and everything around it with it’s FOUL STENCH. This cheese we got is the worst smelling thing ever! And if any of you are familiar with the McNulty’s, then you know we’ve dealt with our fare share of gross smells. But this cheese pretty much tops most things- sorry Laura!
The night was spent eating and talking- which brings us to a new addition to this blog entitled: “Quote Du Jour”. Bret was making fun of us girls wearing make-up and Teri replied:
“If I didn’t wear make-up, I’d look like you.” Touche' Teri, touche.'