Well... 
I haven't gotten around to writing thus far as.... well, there wasn't much going on with the program until now. We had our first 2 days of class Thursday and Friday (the 17th and 18th). The previous Sunday, we received some bad news. Elise Andreweski, a 12-year old girl from the Lille Church, whom I knew from camp, fell off a horse and went into a coma and didn't come out. 9 of us attended a funeral up in Lille, a 10-hour drive, but that wasn't a big deal and I was glad we could make it, we left friday after our classes and got home saturday late. It was really one of the sadest things I've seen, but I've never seen people follow through so well with something they wanted to try and keep positive as a believing family. I know that would be unimagineably challenging. After we got back, it was off to the Ardèche region on Sunday afternoon to Orientation. There we talked about our responsibilities, finances, schedule and the like. We also spent a fair amount of time trying to get to know each other because it was one of the only times where we would be only in our own company, which isn't a bad thing, but it can be if we don't kick things off well, so I'm glad that we did. Tuesday, when we finished our Orientation, it was time to set up for the Golden Age(Âge d'Or) retreat which was a group of around 12 of ages 60+. The retreat was amusing to us and we enjoyed their company. During the retreat, we helped out a little with tiling the new rooms that were built by the Pittman church (I'm pretty sure) and did the dishes and helped Denise Heroux out with the kitchen work. Who is "us"? The 3 other Cemistes this year are Constantin Tertov (my roomate), Emily Young, and Maylis Blasko. Something the Cemistes have to take care of is helping plan the Youth events at church. There are 3 younger groups, Foi en Fête(5-8), Foi en Folie(9-12) and AdoRation(13-17). Saturday night we had an AdoRation progressive meal where we visited different people's house for each course of the meal. Today we had Foi en Fête which was interesting considering I hadn't seen a game of "mother may I" since I last played it. Tomorrow is the first day of Chorale Harmonie which is cool for me because I like to sing and love music. We also are helping organise our own group where we will participate as peers which is the Young Adults Group(18-25). Today we also had soccer practice for the church team which was fun but once again enlightened me to the fact that I need to be playing soccer more often, it's exhausting. Throughout the summer I didn't do a whole lot. I spent some time with Denise Heroux (whom I have already learned a lot from)..she will be leaving to go back to New Hampshire soon. I spent 2 weeks with Jess (and my mom and Patrick in Paris for a few days) which was great. I also get sorted out in the appartment and had a lot of time to do some cleaning. Smaïl is the third guy in our appartment. He is the uncle of Kahled's kids and the brother of Didjiga. He is still in highschool in an "electrotech" program in what I understand to be a sort of tech highschool. He is 19 and plans to get baptized next Spring as JeanCarlo (Swiss), A guy he is close to from camp will be in town then to baptize him. He was raised muslim and is Algerian but from the Cabille region and speaks Cabille as well. Well that's alot of what's going on...feel free to ask me questions through this thing(website and program haha)...miss you all. 
-Derek