Inside a French Reitrement Home

So, let's start with the sad news: I've had to change my About Me section. I'm now a 25 year old Indianapolis native. Good grief. Getting old...
Summer here in the Paris always brings plenty of visitors. A few weeks ago, there were some 20 people living here at the house. (Thankfully, that was only temporary, and now, we're settled into the more pleasant 4 housemate situation). But now, at my church in the Paris banlieue, a group of Canadians have come through to help us with some of our church tasks.
Yesterday, we all headed to a Catholic-run retirement home in Noisy. Before going, we were informed that the living situation at this home would be quite different from the living situations in retirement homes in the States and Canada. I know retirement and nursing homes. I worked almost 6 years in a retirement home in Fishers, Indiana. We called it The Palace. It had lush carpets, chandeliers, and a pretty hefty monthly fee. But I also did marketing for this particular retirement home, and so, I'd traveled around to the surrounding homes. I'd seen the bottom of the barrel (the state-run, Medicare and Medicade paid homes) and the cream of the crop (the private pay homes where one had to wear a suit or dress to dinner).
But the home we went to yesterday was like any retirement home I'd ever seen. The aides and employees all seemed very cheerful and kind to the residents, but the home itself looked like a church from the outside, with its wooden paneling and crosses carved into the walls, but a hospital on the inside. It was very basic, very sterile, very un-homelike.
We brought along our instruments and our plates of diabetic friendly and unfriendly cookies.
I played a few songs on the flute, and actually had difficulty focusing, because the woman in the front row kept tossing me kisses and exclaiming about how wonderful it was to have music. We also had trumpet and guitar music and we sang a variety of songs.
After, we wandered around and greeted everyone. I talked a long while with a woman who usd to work with her husband in a pharmacy. She hadn't been licensed, but still sorted pills and did odd jobs for her husband. Once, her husband (who was a licensed pharmacist) had gone out to buy things for the store, and an inspector had come in. She's had to distract him for a good half hour or so until her husband had come back. She was just the most jolly woman. When they handed he a half full styrofoam cup of Coca Cla, she lifted it to the ceiling and started singing an old French drinking songs. And then, she started reminiscing about the old days--the days when she and her husband had gone walzing every night and worn their finest clothes.
There was another man there--an Albanian man who could speak any language. Once he heard I was from the States, he spoke to me in Engish. To his French nurses, he spoke French. To the Italian gardener, he spoke Italian. And apparently, although his memories are almost entirely gone, he can still speak 6 languages. It was really amazing.
The group of Canadians with us are all actually Chinese-Canadians. They began speaking to a few of the Chinese residents in Cantonese, and the residents' faces lit up and they all replied in Cantonese. One Vietnamian man even started speaking Cantonese with them, followed us out to the car, and begged to come with us. That was actually quite sad. I hate that part. The leaving part.
When I stand there in a home like that, I always start thinking about how it'll be for me in 50 years or so. Where will I be? What will I be doing? I'm not so keen to think about that...
In the meantime, however, the director asked those of us living in the Paris area to come back and play our instruments as often as possible. I said I'd really like to come back and play some more songs on my flute. Maybe I'll even get my ukelele up to speed and bring that along.
I'd love to go back and learn more about the almost-pharmacist, the Albanian polyglot, and all the others.