TUESDAY
It’s not just the metro that’s on strike, it’s the entire public transportation system, buses and everything. So it feels like the entire city is shut down. Basically people have two choices to get to work: taxi or bike. We’re the fortunate ones. Our apartment location ensures that life can continue as normal.
Social lives are canceled for the week as people who normally spend twenty minutes traveling to work will easily spend two hours one-way. So we are hosting a Thai dinner night Wednesday since we know that people are going to be stir-crazy.
At first we thought it might just be a “center-city-dwellers” night out, we started by inviting people in walking distance. Then we found that other people who work in the neighborhood are also dying to hang out in the neighborhood after work, just to do anything with friends.
I’m planning on fixing a great Lemongrass Soup that my sister taught me how to make when she visited us here in Paris. It’s a spicy soup. Hopefully the Vietnamese folks that run the Asian grocery down the street live in the neighborhood, we’re counting on their store being open in the morning to do the shopping.
WEDNESDAY
Here are some photos of our time together. The dinner was delicious. 
After dinner the folks wanted to sing so we settled on the couch and played karaoke.
Lots of the invitees were from the gospel choir. If you haven’t seen the video of our jam session you have to check it out. The sound quality isn’t flattering, but it’s so fun to see them having such a great time singing and hanging out together after practice.
click HERE
THURSDAY
We got up this morning and waited for the bus to go to the Martin’s for our weekly prayer meeting. When the bus arrived it was so full that the bus driver couldn’t get the doors open to let people get out! One or two people eventually made it off and the bus driver wouldn’t let anybody new on. So we decided to take the metro. We were a half an hour late for our meeting, but it was a great meeting.
Then we tried to take the metro home, but there were no more trains! The station master announced that there would be no more service on our metro line for the time being. So we checked out the buses. They expected the earliest a bus might arrive was over a half and hour. So we walked the 3 miles back to our home.
