Today we celebrated the birthday of Saint Jeanne Jugan. We found out a few weeks ago that a large group of students from Catholic University would be joining us for a service day, so we were able to take advantage of their presence to plan a carnival in honor of Saint Jeanne. Each of the five games was related in some way to her life:
Fishing Game: because Jeanne Jugan’s father was a fisherman. The Residents themselves made the fish for this game.
Wine Bottle Ring Toss: because, after all, wine is the drink of France!
Boat Races: because Jeanne lived on the Bay of Cancale and went begging at the regatta. The Residents made and personalized the boats for this very popular game.
Find the Black Sheep: Jeanne was a shepherdess in her youth, so this game made everyone a shepherd trying to find a black sheep in a barrel of packing peanuts.
Crêpe Tossing: Real crêpes were too fragile to throw around, so we tossed brioches at paper dolls in Breton costumes. The object of the game was to knock them over!
The entire women’s lacrosse team from CUA showed up to help animate the afternoon, so while pairs of students ran the games, another team served hot dogs, pop corn and ice cream in the café and the rest of the girls chauffeured the residents around and helped them earn lots of prizes!
Everyone really enjoyed the carnival. The boat race seemed like the most popular game, and those who succeeded at the ring toss wanted to carry off the wine bottles as their prize … maybe next time. At the end of the day one of the Residents suggested we have a carnival every month, and the CUA students wanted to know if we do fun things like this all the time. They’ll be back for sure!
We Little Sisters all agreed that Saint Jeanne Jugan would have been very pleased to see the Residents so happy!