This morning, my host mother shook her head and laughed as she buttered a chunk of French bread. The radio on the kitchen counter crackled out the morning Catholic prayer, and my host mother smiled as she lamented, "You'll go back to the United States and tell all your friends that you lived with crazy people who listen to morning prayers."

She was joking, of course, but one of the things that I really like about this semester I'm spending abroad in France is that I've gotten a chance to really dig down deep and think about my faith in a pretty lonely context. France historically is a Catholic state and today tries to practice a sort of secularism, so living with this conservative and practicing Catholic family is sort of a miracle. But the real blessing was spending a week in a village with a Protestant woman who practices her faith with a love that is both remarkable and neverending. And because this semester is a sort of repose from the stresses of ordinary university life, I've been able to really reflect upon the implications of life, love and faith, in contexts that are both ordinary and extraordinary.

So while learning French has been a great product of this semester, I feel certain that I have learned more about how life really works by listening to the morning prayers of my Catholic host mother and by observing the intense love of my new Protestant friend. Revitalized and reconvinced that love and faith, in fact, can literally change to world and the ways in which we look at it, I feel more confident in our ability as human beings to be the agents of that change. And that's not too shabby a lesson to learn from a radio's crackle.

Hillary is a junior at Macalester College in St. Paul, MN. She is a member of NNPCW's Coordinating Committee.

Hillary,

This is such a great description of your time in France! I can't wait to talk with you when you get back and hear more about your time there and your thoughts about faith and love.

Peace to you,
Noelle