Un Mois Aujourd'hui!

This weekend Nicole, Gregory and I went to Nicole's brother-in-law's daughter's wedding in Lyon. It wasn't just an ordinary wedding though, it was an Armenian wedding. It was really interesting for me to see the different Armenian traditions because of my Armenian roots. When I was invited to go to the wedding, I though "Oh wonderful! a fun evening with some good food and interestion traditions, however French weddings are extremely different from their American counterparts. In France, you're not allowed to have your wedding in the church until you've had the ceremony in the city hall, so the ceremony started at the city hall at 3pm. The crowd gathered in a room at the city hall to watch the mariage be legalized. From there, the whole crowd went to the Armenian Church for the religious ceremony. The whole thing was in Armenian, so I didn't understand a single bit (not that I would have understood much if it was in French either) but it was still incredibly interesting. There wasn't any "I do's" (that was done at the city hall), but the preist had the bride and groom put their foreheads together while he blessed them, and he had the best man, maid of honor, bride and groom all drink some wine. After some Gregorian songs from the church choir, some more blessings from the preist (in Armenian) they were married! They didn't even kiss!

And the festivities began! The reception is where the differences between French and American mariages come out. It started around 7pm and everyone gathered for some pictures. After pictures it was about an hour and a half to two hours of mingling, socializing, eating hors d'oeuvres, and drinking champagne. Once people started moving inside, the band started up, and started up and people began to dance. It wasn't until just short of midnight when dinner was served. There were four courses, and in between each course was more dancing and socializing. There were some familiar songs, but a lot of them were Armenian songs. The dancing was so different! There were some songs that I knew very well, but the DJ put an Armenian twist to them, so it was really interesting to hear these songs I had heard so many times with a Middle Eastern rhythm, and dancing to go along with it.

Cake was served at about 1:30am, and instead of one big white wedding cake with the bride and groom at the top, there were many different cakes and pastries for the guests to choose from. We ended up leaving around 2:45am. It was definitely an interesting experience, but I can definitely say that I was ready for a nice long sleep.

It's been a month today since I arrived in Marseille. I cant believe it's been a whole month already, it's gone by so fast! But at the same time, it seems like it's been so much longer than just one month. That may not make any sense, but maybe it's an exchange student thing. 

When I think back to where I was a month ago, I was sitting in this exact spot thinking on my bed "What am I doing here?" I had gotten home from the train station, been given the tour of the house, eaten dinner, and was thoroughly overwhelmed by all of the French. Now, I'm sitting on my bed thinking that maybe I'll actually make it through this year. There have definitely been some times in the past four weeks where I thought I wouldn't survive. My French is getting better, classes are not necessarily going easier but I've accepted the fact that they're not going to be easy and until the language comes, classes aren't going to come. I've also (re)discovered that there's a solution to every problem. It's not necessarily that I forgot this small bit of very valuable information that someone very smart once told me, but I've definitely been saying that a lot. When things get too overwhelming, I just have to step back and see what the solution is, because theres always a solution.