Us Seniors

Elder et Soeur Arn & Jody

Saturday, January 26

Tourist Spots

Today (our 'P' day) we visited a medieval town that's a little over an hour drive from Bordeaux and ate lunch at a French restaurant there. On the way there we passed through a village that was originally a prehistoric site with houses built right into the sides of the cliffs and hotels with names like "Cromagnon." One place was called "La Grotte de la Grande Roche" or "The Cave of the Big Rock." We didn't stop there but plan to sometime soon. We drove on to the medieval town called Sarlat. They have cool old buildings and little narrow streets just wide enough for pedestrians and people on horseback. The old church has been turned into a closed-in market place. Which is unfortunate for the old church, but there is also a "slightly newer" but still very old cathedral about a hundred yards from the older church. The French countryside is beautiful to drive through around here also.

Bordeaux is full of lots of neat old buildings including its own "Statue of Liberty" and an ancient Roman ruin that is similar to the Coliseum in Rome.



















Toulouse is not too far from here, about a three-hour drive. The guy that is the head archivist at the archives where we work is an expert on Toulouse history and has written three books on the subject. He gave us copies of all three of them and wrote the cutest dedications to us in each one of them. His name is Christian Cau pronounced "koh."
We took this picture one day at the archives. It was in the summer and the weather outside was hot, so some of the ladies that work there made these cute bonnets to protect their faces from the sun. They are made from the paper we use to wrap the old documents in. Mr Cau walked in to talk to us and mischievous JoAnn stuck one of the bonnets on his head just before Arnold snapped his picture. Being a good sport he left it on and just kept reading what he had in his hand while his picture was taken. One of the workers there said the bonnets look like what the Nuns used to wear in France so he dubbed the picture "Soeur Christian Cau" "Sister Christian Cau."

Thursday, January 24

MY EYE!

We just came from the doctor. JoAnn was having what we thought were migraine attacks that were causing her to see flashes of light from time to time. She had that happen again a couple of days ago. Then yesterday she started seeing a shadow off to one side in her right eye. That alarmed us, so today we made an appointment with an Ophthalmologist who came highly recommended by Sister Defranchi (the family we stayed with when we first got here) who had a cataract removed by him a couple of years ago.

He examined JoAnn’s eyes and found a slight tear in her retina. The retina did not become detached; it just has a small tear in it. We have a lot of confidence in this doctor. She is scheduled to have it repaired by laser surgery procedure this coming Tuesday, January 29, 2008, at 8:45 am. It isn’t serious because we caught it in time. If we had let it go, it could have led to a detached retina which could have lead to partial loss of sight or even blindness in that eye. We just thank Heavenly Father for giving us the warning in time to have it fixed.

UPDATE:

Well, JoAnn's little escapade with the eye doctor turned out well. It was definitely an experience. Something like being in the midst of a battle in a Star Wars movie. Zap, zap, zap, zap - about 100 times. The Internet article we checked out beforehand said there would be one or two zaps. We guess the doctor just wanted to be sure that the tear was really secure. The procedure was done in his office - down in the dungeon - a small dark room downstairs. It didn't take long at all for the procedure and was relatively painless. Everything was finished around noon and we were back at McDonald's that afternoon doing indexing.

All in all, we are very blessed to have caught it early and had it taken care of so competently. Thank you all for all your prayers and well wishes. It should only take a few days to get back to full speed and then a check up in a month.

The best thing is that here in France any medical procedures are so much cheaper than in the US. The whole laser surgery cost about $140, including 3 office visits and a prescription for eye drops. Not bad.