Being A Missionary Kid

Chapter 2

After our initial day in Paris, we headed south on the TGV. Any French person will tell you that that's the best way to travel. The TGV, or literally translated to "Train High Speed", is the fastest normal train in the world, and it branches out to England, Italy, Belgium, German, Switzerland, Spain, and the Netherlands. It travels on average 200 miles per hour, where an average train would go 68 miles per hour.

We rode the train all the way to Aix-en-Provence, a small city in the south of France. It's the kind of town that only other Europeans go on vacation, like Michigan and Wisconsin are to us Illinoisans. It's not big, but not small either. It's definitely pretty. All the buildings are old and it's known for its large fountains in the city center. (Look it up. It's gorgeous.) It's full of old, family-run businesses and musicians looking to show off.

We moved into a fairly large apartment below an older couple. It wasn't much space for two rowdy little kids to run around in, but it worked. It was enough that I almost had my own room, but my brother and I had been roommates for so long that I didn't want to leave him.

On our first day in our new house, we were greeted by a family who would later become our friends. Since we had landed on my birthday, they gave me a metal Tinkerbell lunchbox, which I would end up using all the time. They gave us some welcoming hugs and loved on us even though they didn't know us very well yet. They had two teenage daughters, who would both end up babysitting me later on.

Our new home felt so warm with newfound friendships. There weren't too many Americans in Aix, but my parents found some friends who could make them laugh, that they could cook for, who were in France for the same reasons. They were so happy right then. We made a few friends with our parents' friends' kids, which weren't many since most of my parents' friends were 20-year-old singles or young couples who didn't want kids, but we figured it out.

Our apartment slowly became a home. It was built with a sidewalk surrounding the perimeter, a few trees dotting the corners, and a garage beneath the ground with a long ramp. I used to ride my little razor scooter around the house, acting like an adventurer avoiding jungle vines. (Or clotheslines. Whatever you want to call them.) My brother and I used to ride down the ramp, only hitting the car inside one time. My dad and my brother (and sometimes me, but not as often) used to play catch on our small excuse for a lawn, and we would run around in circles, looking for lizards.

We were happy in that house. We hosted people all the time for dinner parties, trying to fit into the culture we dropped in on. But it wasn't always easy.