June 5

I ate lots of Chocapics on the morning of June 5. Maybe because I knew it was one of my two last chances to do so? Friday, June 5 was one of my favorite days of the whole trip.

Everyone met up at the school, and then the Americans, the biology teacher, Madame, and the French/Latin teacher left to go to the Somme American Cemetery. Melisa (I recently found out that this is how she spells her name...), Jeanne, and I rode in the biology teacher's car. He joked with us a lot -- "I'm not going too fast, am I? I'll slow down more...I'll go slowly this time, not like Saturday night, Jessie..." Melisa told him that he was a crazy driver, and whenever someone went past us on the road, he would say, "He's the crazy driver! I am not crazy driver!"
Melisa and Jeanne slept some on the way to the cemetery, and I talked to the bio teacher a little bit -- about learning French, how long I had been learning, etc.

We arrived in Bony at the cemetery. Our guide was an intern. She didn't speak much English, but she tried. First she told us such things as how many soldiers were buried in the cemetery, how many were unidentified, how many names were on the Wall of the Missing, etc. Then she showed us the graves of some interesting people: one of the men who won the Medal of Honor, one of the nurses. Then we went into the chapel and found the one soldier on the wall who had been Oklahoman.

After that, everyone went looking for their adopted soldier(s). Because I had written down the locations of my soldiers' graves, I went directly to that of Joe R. West, an Oklahoman soldier. I took a couple of photos, and then Madame took a photo of me beside the cross. Beside the cross I left the note I had written, and then I went to the cross of the other soldier I had adopted. I found it very quickly -- Henry Sierzyncki. I took photos, I took a photo of myself (or at least tried to!), and then I left the note.
At that point, everyone was looking for the other Oklahoma soldiers. So far, we had found four -- the one on the wall, and the ones Cate, Jeanne, and I had adopted. I found three others and took photos of their crosses. Eventually, we found all ten. I kept track of which ones we had found and where we had found them in my notebook, so that we would know whether or not a certain cross had already been counted. I felt very professional, going around with my pen and my notebook, searching among the many crosses for six specific ones.

Finally, everyone came back together after having found all the Oklahoma soldiers' graves and having taken pictures. Melisa went back to the welcome center, but the other Americans stayed. We formed a circle and all said the Lord's Prayer (except Stephanie who only knows it in Spanish).
"Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. Lead us not into temptation, and deliver us from evil."
Then everyone else was silent -- Jeanne, Cate, and Madame are silent and don't say the next sentence, so it was just me:
"For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever."
And we all said together, "Amen."

For some reason, that moment was very important to me, somehow powerful.

We left the cemetery and went to a spot near a German cemetery where we sat and ate lunch. I had a ham and butter sandwich with chips and a chocolate bar for dessert.
We then went to a small bar with lots of British WWI posters. There were some men there, WWII veterans, who told us that they were in France for the D-Day commemorations but had come a little bit earlier to visit the British WWI cemeteries in the Somme area. We talked to these men a little bit and took a few photos, then left for the Historial in Peronne. We were in somewhat of a hurry -- it felt like we were hurried all afternoon.

At the Historial, we had a short tour, but no time for exploring or reading everything. The tour was interesting but didn't cover much of what there was in the museum. Then we did an activity that was designed for French students learning English -- it was fairly easy for us. We were supposed to reconstruct the story of a soldier named William Ravin from clues that directed us to items in the museum and documents to read.
After the activity, we went into the museum gift shop. Unfortunately, I had left my money in the car...it seemed like I was always leaving my money or my camera that first week. Hmm.

On the way back to town I slept a little bit. I went with Cassandre to a shoe store because she wanted to buy new white shoes for the dance that night, and then we went to the supermarket to buy food for the dance.
At the house, I changed clothes -- kept on the same Coldwater Creek green shirt but put on a black skirt instead of the khakis I had worn all day. I started to pack, as I knew I wouldn't want to do it that night when I got back to the house and might not have time the next morning.

Then we went to the dance! We picked up Laura, Cassandre's guest (each French kid was allowed one guest), but she left the party early and I didn't have the chance to talk to her. At the dance, I stayed with Jeanne a lot of the time. We ate -- mostly desserts, because most of the food was dessert. M&Ms, Haribo stuff, cakes...yum. We sang, we danced...Jeanne taught me to play pool, and at one point I even played in Elodie's place when Elodie was trying to dance and play at the same time.

I took photos, mostly with Cate's camera but also with other people's cameras if they asked me to. When Cate's camera died, I gave up being the photographer and started dancing. The line dances were most fun, because being clueless in a group is a lot easier than being clueless alone. There were essentially five popular songs, and though we danced to others those five were played over and over and over. One of them was Ces Soirees La, a song I know from Lac du Bois.

And then, at around 9:30, Pierrot put on the slideshow he had made out of the week's photos -- ones taken by Jeanne, Melisa, and who knows who else. In the middle, Melisa and Pierrot started crying (we think it was when the photos of Melisa doing judo came up...), so then Alison started crying, and she went over to Jeanne, who started crying, and then I started crying, and after that soon our whole circle of friends was crying. Everyone was hugging each other and saying incomprehensible things into each other's hair, promising that we would see each other again, whether it be in October, next summer, or some other time -- mais on se reverra.

And after that, we talked, we danced, we sang, we went back to what we had been doing all night, but we also cried incessantly. There was something heavy and sad but powerful...a friendship that I hadn't thought possible in a week. Sometimes, in a situation like that, when the moment is over, the feeling falls apart, but not that night. That night it stayed, just until I went upstairs at the house and fell asleep, that house that became chez moi in a way, even though it was chez Cassandre. Before going home, we cleaned up and talked some more, shared photos...

When I got home I finished packing and went to sleep, and maybe even then that moment hadn't broken...