Through the snow

Last night was an adventure. It started after nightfall at a little village train station. I followed the small group of locals across the tracks, and out of the station. They all got into waiting cars. I walked on to the road.

It was dark and snowy and windy. To protect myself, I had my wonderful ski jacket and new winter boots. And also my tiny flashlight that was barely strong enough to show me a where the drain ditch was, and the headlights of the many passing cars.

When you leave the train station village, they give up on sidewalks, and instead, you get a fairly generous gravel-and-snow shoulder. There are fields on both sides, in between the villages. And there was one house.

The village I was going to was about an hour's walk away. And there were so many cars that I probably could have hitch-hiked. It's relatively common and effective in France, according to my Russian friends. But I had a little more than an hour to kill, and all things considered, the walk in the snow was nice.

I was going to listen my friend sing in her gospel choir. It's the first time I've ever heard gospel music, actually. It was a little awkward when one of the choir's very enthusiastic teenage groupies asked me if I was Christian. When I said I wasn't, the answer I got was, "Oooh! Interesting!" I made up for my lack of Christian-ness by being my friend's official photographer. Oh! And I got to help them pack up. Which was cool, because how many times do you get to be useful at a concert? And see how it's all put together?

The people in the choir, plus family, plus friends, plus whoever were all super friendly and energetic. I think energetic is the best way to put it. It was fun.

During the intermission, I talked to a mother and daughter from the village. They wanted to speak to me in English, and I wanted to speak to them in French. The daughter (14 years old) wanted to go away to Germany to teach English, when she grew up. When I teased her for how odd this sounded, I got teased back for being a Russian who went to America, and then decided to live in France. Honestly, I think she just wanted to get out of the village. And her mother was afraid of letting her go on her own. It's a small village, and people are closer.

It's good to have friends who sing. It's especially good when the fact that your friend sings means you get to wander around French villages.

We finished packing up the bus some time past midnight. There were no more trains, so I went back with the group to Grenoble, which is where it's based. One of the choir girls let me crash on her spare mattress, and we got to her place a good bit past 2am.

And the next morning, she fed me coffee, and bread with preserves made by her mother. In the background, she played gospel music.