Välkommen till Sverige

That's right, I will make you google translate the title.

I've officially been moved out of my apartment in Rennes for a week now!  Last Friday morning I caught the early train to Paris, took the metro to Gare du Nord, took the Eurostar under the English Channel to London, caught a train to East Midland Parkway, and caught a bus to York!  I spent a wonderful week (ish) with Lauren, a friend from Hope, sleeping on her floor, meeting her friends, and exploring the charming city.  I have two new loves: clotted cream, and a British show called "Miranda", which is on youtube if you're curious.  Start with season 1, episode 1, and do it right. :)

I arrived here in Stockholm, Sweden, yesterday evening, and I'm spending the next week (ish) with some relatives that I met three years ago when my family did our family-tree trip, who thankfully speak English.  There are two blonde girls, ages 7 and 9, who make me think of what it was like growing up with Gretchen.  (As in, awesome and really goofy.)  We've eaten a good amount of salmon so far (yay!), and this morning I took a bus into the city center and wandered around.  I was mainly concerned with rediscovering my memories from three years ago, like eating a shrimp and egg sandwich with lemon and dill, or those wonderful ginger cookies I can't spell.  My favorite part was when I turned a corner in Old Town and discovered the exact square that we'd seen last time on Swedish National Day.  It's small, but there's a grocery store, a little cafe where we ate, and a short statue of some poet or something, and last time I'd taken a picture with little girls with flags in front of it!  All in all, great fun.  The younger daughter and I have been engaging in sneaky tickle wars while watching TV, and the older one has started playing the cello and has a concert tomorrow on a farm!  Ja!

Well, I'm going to show my "aunt" Facebook, so I've got to go!  Until we meet again, enjoy summer weather if you have any!  It was terribly cold (12 degrees C) and windy today, but it's still light out, and it's 21:30.  Night!

I Am Channeling Rick Steves.

Dear blog readers,

Some days I go onto this blog just to stare at the statistics.  It doesn’t tell me who you are, don’t worry, but it tells me that I get over 2 views a day this month.  And it’s been a month since I’ve posted.  Got to love the internet.

Well, I’m back from my wonderful two weeks of break!  It’s actually kind of finals week right now, and I have tons of stuff to be doing, but I looked at the blog and thought, “If there are really two viewers checking this every day” (Hm, who could they be?) “…then I can’t disappoint them!  I’m going to write!”  So here is a very short summary of my vacation.  I have meticulous travel notes, but I can’t type them all up right now. :P

Ireland

I left on April 23 with 7 other friends for the far-off Ryanair airport in Beauvais, near Paris, and after a very long day of travel, Dana, Bri, Courtney, and I arrived at our destination, a monastery located near Moone, near Dublin.  It’s a small country town with lots of ancient ruins and cows.  I tasted the incredible Barry’s tea (I brought 158 teabags home), frolicked around with my friends, and celebrated Easter in the chapel with the monks (the sweetest, most generous people in the world).

We then spent a night in a B&B and saw Blarney Castle (kissed it!), then spent a night in Galway seeing Kylemore Abbey (awesome), and returned to Dublin for a night in which I got to see Jess, Leah, and Lauren from Hope, who were also in Ireland for break!  I ate lots of toffee and bought a wool scarf and ate lots of black pudding and generally loved it.

Scotland

Bri and I went to Edinburgh, missed our second train, and ended up stranded in Glasgow for the night.  It was pretty much heartbreaking.  Non-refundable train and hostel reservations.  We were crushed.  Neither of us had phones that worked there, and our iPods were dead.  We finally got walking directions to a hostel that were pretty vague, but on the way we saw an…

APPLE STORE

Can you hear that music playing? 

Yeah.  As much as I already loved Apple (which is a lot), now I owe my safety to…  Well, God’s using them to give us a safe place to stay, but still.  Awesome.  We went in with our backpacks and rolling suitcase and looked on hostelbookers.com.  We found a hostel, checked into the cheapest room they had (14-female dorm), and stumbled out to eat.  We found the Crystal Palace, a classy pub with a football (soccer) game on.  It was also curry night, and cheap.  The crumble was amazing too.  God can sure turn things around, can’t He?  I admit to having down some serious praying.

Anyway, the next day we camped out there again and watched the Royal Wedding, and then we went to Edinburgh and spent a few days there.  One day we took a bus tour through the Highlands (Loch Ness!), and we had a nice guesthouse to relax in for the evenings.

Italy

Then I went to Italy.  Our family is friends with an amazingly welcoming Italian family in Padova, near Venice, who picked me up, gave me an amazing room, and fed me and translated for me.  There’s so much I could say about that week (They’re such wonderful people!), but I guess for now I’ll just tell you where I went.  Venice, the Dolomites, a cherry orchard, lots of picturesque Italian towns…  It was fabulous.

And now I’m back for my last week and a half of classes.  There are tests and papers and teaching internships and stuff, but I feel so relaxed and energized after my trip that I’m not too stressed.  I mean, I’m also feeling that (although I am making an effort) the grades are such a small, banal part of this experience…  Well, I like it.  I’m also planning to spend some time in Sweden with relatives (I love it when people take me in!), and in London with a friend, and some other plans are shaping up.  My FAMILY will be here in 3 1/2 weeks to visit me and explore the country of France a bit.  Traveling the world is cool and all (really really cool), but that’s the trip I genuinely cannot WAIT for.

Please pray for my relationship with my host mother during my last week here.  Things are a little… stiff right now, and that makes things harder, and I don’t want that!

Brissac, Villandry, Chenonceau, et Amboise

I really like bullet points.  They’re neat, they keep me relatively concise, and I can spit out a whole bunch of information at once without scaring you away with large paragraphs.  Plus I haven’t started my homework for the weekend, and it’s 23:13.

My program went on an overnight trip to see the chateaux (castles) of the Loire Valley, which were really pretty and photogenic, if a bit smaller than I had imagined.  It was a fantastic trip.  It was fun to sleep somewhere different for a night, eat quality food paid for by the program, see everyone at once, and look at the gorgeous castles.  A few notes…

-Our bus was driven by Georges, a Frenchman with a semi-bald head and a ponytail in spite of that, who had spent five years in England and refused to speak French there.  He’s been driving this group-travel bus since 1988, if I heard correctly.  He was quite a character.  I sat next to him at lunch today, as well as Daniel and Staci, our program director and administrator, respectively.  Good times.

-Staci took two semesters of French in college, dated and got engaged to a French guy, and decided to move to France to get married.  She’s been living here for about 20 years now, has two  kids (and a husband) whose primary language is French, and thus fascinates all of us.  She told us that she didn’t speak very much French when she got here; now she’s fluent, but she doesn’t speak English on a daily basis, and she misses it so much that she dreams of going to England for a weekend to see a play en anglais.

-Another fun fact about Staci: she got married in a little church by the mountains, which was gorgeous but very crowded considering that they invited a standard amount of people.  She loved the location, but she didn’t understand all of the ceremony.  (DUDE.  This woman is intense.)  Their wedding cake was a French one, which means no tall slices.  All French pastries and cakes are no taller than a pie.

-The castles were really pretty, (I know I keep saying that), but after a while hearing about ceiling detailing got a little old.  We invented a human version of the board game “Clue” (Cluédo en francais) right at the beginning; I guess that shows our interest level in ceilings.  I got to be Mrs. Peacock, and among others, our director was chosen Mr. Green and murderer, and one of the French monitors was deigned Mr. Body.  We didn’t tell the program director, but we did tell the monitor, and he didn’t get it at all.  All I heard of the conversation was “OK.  You’re dead.”

-Five of us hung out in a room at the hostel last night and talked about our lives, and Courtney received her first back massage.  It was an interesting night.

-I recently discovered the Tenth Avenue North song "Beloved", a love song written from God's perspective.  It's in 3/4 (waltz rhythm), starts with a piano solo, and is really sweet.  It's been in my head all weekend, which just made everything better.  The best part was when I got to wander around the famous gardens of Villandry with it playing on my iPod and worship in the castle gardens.  Never thought I'd get to say that!

-Dana and I (among others) sang Disney songs for a large part of the afternoon bus ride on Saturday.  Funny how I can always find people to sing Disney songs with me…  I like what that says about humanity.

-I am totally getting better at speaking French.  Hooray!!!  However, I unknowingly traded in my efficacy in English to accomplish this.  Even as I type, French words are attempting to make their way into this blog.  Not in an italicized, let-me-teach-you-a-word sort of way, but in a random and confusing way.  For example, I typed the word “same” only after having thought “même" in my head.  Always an effort to be made in some form or another, I guess.

-On the bus back today, a few of us invented alter egos (as in total opposites) for each other.  It was really fun, and it also showed how well we've gotten to know each other.  I recently bought a little floral purple scarf that I wear in a bow around my neck (think flight stewardess), which makes Bri think of Nancy Drew every time she sees it.  Thus my alter ego is named Nancy, always wears scarves tied in bows, is always on time (no, early!), and has to plan everything in detail.  Watch out!  Maybe she'll post someday.

-We stopped at the same gas station that we went to on our first bus ride into Rennes, right after many of us had been told about our host families and others were still waiting to hear.  I remember feverishly demanding to know the housing logistics of people I barely knew, and being really nervous about living in a downtown apartment with only my host mother during the week.  The store had the Breton waffles in the same place (hopefully not the same waffles), which I had wanted last time and bought this time.  It was a very strange, mixed experience, in that it brought some closure to my semester here.  Not that I’m gone yet, but it’ll be here soon.  This time, though, I sat and talked with my friends, knowing where I was returning home.

I will be leaving for Ireland, Scotland, and Italy, respectively, in  6 days.  If I don’t post again, think of me on Easter weekend.  I’ll be in that Irish monastery.

Prayer requests:  God has been really present with me this week.  Praise Him for that!  It’s been amazing.  Please pray for safe travels for us coming up!  Also, my sister is in Mexico with her high school for the week.  Please pray for her (and their) safety, as well as God's intimate presence during the week.

Non, je ne regrette rien.

The frightening thing is that I’m almost done.  This experience has been very challenging, demanding, interesting, so much so that I’ve concentrated all of my efforts on “settling in” and “starting off well”.  Well, I realized at church today that even though it was only my fourth time there (given vacations and visits to other churchs), I won’t be there for another month, and I’ll only have two Sundays left.  (I’m going on a program excursion to the Loire Valley to see some castles next weekend, and then I have two weeks of spring break.  When I come back, I have two weeks of school left.)


This led me to more panicking.  You always have so many ambitions when you first start out on a big project.  Some of those never happen.  The important thing is to let them go and realize that you don’t need to have crossed everything off your list.  I may not have taken my language notebook to every meal, but I’ve still had a lot of good meals!  I haven’t had long enough with the people I’ve met here, French and American alike, but with only one semester here, that’s the way it’s supposed to feel.  I have taken pictures, explored, read, sipped, inhaled, watched, helped, wandered, learned, talked, listened…  I have done a lot this semester.  I have pictures and stories to prove it.  It isn’t over of course, but it’s nice to remind myself that my time here hasn’t been a waste.  And of course, it kicks me into higher gear, to do everything I want to fit in!

Little side notes:

-I cooked Chinese food with two Chinese friends last weekend.  We spoke French the whole time, and I have recipe notes.  Unfortunately, I had a slight reaction to something we cooked with.

-My new favorite music is by Nolwenn Leroy.  Look her up!

-I ate my first large piece of foie gras tonight, with toasted bread.  I enjoyed it.

-I also took a book for class to the park today, snuck over to a bench by the playground, and fooled the surrounding parents into thinking I was watching a child while reading.  I miss kids.  They make me laugh when they put gravel on slides.  Not so much when they throw it into the air.

-I will be gone for the orchestra concert this weekend, so I won’t have played in one.  I have to skulk back tomorrow and give them their cello back.

-The parks in Rennes are giant and beautiful.  And numerous.  I’m just discovering that now, but the weather’s great for it!

-I’ll be in a monastery in Ireland in two weeks, for Easter weekend.  My mom finds the best travel books.  Also on the horizon are Scotland and Italy.

-My host parents were gone on Saturday night, so I took the opportunity to open all the windows, drink some juice, sneak out onto the balcony, and look at the stars.

-I’m planning on finding some French comic books to bring back to my American bathroom.  Unfortunately I don’t have enough postcards to line the walls, and I don’t have a radio or wooden man on unicycle riding the toilet paper roll, so my bathroom can’t be as cool.  Told you it was my favorite room, remember?

-Oh yeah, I’m in some classes too.  They’re all right, I guess.

Prayer request:  Joy in every day!

A Spring Fling and a Cultish Ceremony

The Fling

This weekend was interesting.  Obviously.  After getting back from a daytrip to Carnac and Vannes on Saturday, which are both really interesting and beautiful but left us all very tired, Courtney and I decided it was time for dinner.  After a unique (okay, not that unique) series of events in which we kept postponing the meeting time, I hustled to the wrong meeting point, Courtney called me to tell me she was lost and powerwalking down the Rue de la Soif (the bar street), and we were told the vegetarian Lebanese restaurant was full, we ended up…at an Indian restaurant.  Which is where the weekend first earned its permanent spot in my memory.

Our waiter served us little champagne glasses of something light pink as he handed us menus, which led to, “I wonder what that is.  Courtney, will you ask?  I wonder if it’s free.  Courtney?”  Fortunately, we were assured that it was white wine with cherry syrup and was in fact free.  The waiter then brought me little samosa-like pastries with an accompanying centerpiece of carrot flowers on toothpicks, wedged into a tin-foil base.  I was so excited to see pieces of carrot that big (It’s been a while!) that I had polished off three flowers when it happened.  The toothpick wouldn’t come out of the base.  Until suddenly it did, launching the carrot flower across the table in a high arc and into the mirror next to us, where it bounced and landed in some fake ivy.  Oops.  Then the waiter came to take my plate and said, “Those aren’t good!” with deep consternation in his voice when he saw I’d enjoyed the decorative vegetation.  Double oops.

The meal finished with us waiting at our table for the check, then deciding we were supposed to go upstairs.  Oh, but we weren’t.  We stood awkwardly next to the cash register while the waiter tallied up our meal, then had a long, hushed discussion about correct change (not tips- you don’t give them here).  I guess all this made him sympathetic, because when we handed him the money he said, “Thank you, that’s very nice of you.”  Three strikes, and we booked it out of that restaurant, deciding we’d definitely earned the title “Stupid Americans” that night.

The Cult

I’ve been going to a student Bible study on campus, so when my friends there told me that they all went to the same church, I was pretty excited to check it out.

Nota bene:  Based on the title and first sentence, you’re probably freaking out.  Let me tell you right now that it is NOT really a cult, they do love Jesus, and I was perfectly safe.  Okay, let’s continue.

Sunday dawned, and Kylie and I took the metro to the end of the line, where we met some other students and the man whose family hosts the Bible studies at their apartment.  We piled into their cars and drove about 20 minutes into the countryside before turning onto a dirt road and parking in front of a secluded farmhouse.  We walked around to the back, and inside we discovered a modern-looking auditorium complete with Bible, fold-up chairs, and congregation.  The service was good and the weekly potluck that followed was great, but Kylie and I were laughing the whole time at her mental image of us running out screaming and bleeding, robed in white.

I promise it was a real church.  But the story is pretty great…

Prayer Request

In other news, Gwen, my friend from high school is arriving tomorrow for a week-long visit!!!  This is terrific, but unfortunately I've been feeling sick all day.  Not terrific.  I've cancelled everything I can to give me time to rest up before her arrival, but prayers would also be much appreciated and more effective!  Thanks!

Happy Two-Month Anniversary, France!

It’s been an abysmally long time since I’ve posted, I know.  Long story short:  I went to Spain and Italy for nine days, and one of my travel buddies sent me a 20-page blog post that she had written about it.  I was going to write my own off of hers, but then I just didn’t, I guess.  Maybe later, but now it’s time to write about what’s happened since, or I’ll never use this blog again!  If you're really curious, I've attached Rachel's blog post here.  http://franglais2.blog.com/2011/03/08/frangespagnitaliono/
Just remember, I warned you that it was long!

Part I:  WWII and Something I Didn’t Eat

            I think the following is a pretty good example of host mother-daughter communication.  At 19:30 on Friday night my host mom said, “We’re going to Saint-Cast tomorrow.”  (Googlemap it; it’s where they have a summer cottage, and it’s really pretty!)  I said okay cool, and then wandered back into the room after a minute and said a couple sentences about the trip using very pointed “you guys” verbs until she added, “I mean, you don’t have to go if you have other stuff,” at which point I said, “Oh, I’d love to go if you guys don’t mind,” to which she said “Oh, well for our part, we’d be delighted to have you, of course.”  Well, at least we communicated.  So I went to Saint-Cast for the weekend, and it was gorgeous (even though rainy).  It’s a little coastal town that must have quite an interesting WWII history because it’s right across the Channel from England.  When I asked later, Béatrice said that her dad was in the Resistance, and that a family member was a doctor during WWII, but he was killed by English soldiers when driving his car without a Red Cross symbol on it.

We had (as usual) a five-hour dinner party with some coastal friends of theirs while we were there, too.  This was actually an important moment for me.  When I left for this semester I vowed to eat everything, but I backed out this time.  The delicacy they offered me: bone marrow from the spine of the cow we were eating, still in vertebrae.  I stand by my decision.

Part II:  Tulips and Fanny Packs

            Now that I’ve gotten your attention with that title, let me tell you about my week.  Monday I got out of class at 12:30, sat a couple hours in front of my computer screen, and then decided that such actions should be outlawed while in France.  So I took a walk.  Not a run, not a power walk to a destination, not a desperate search for a smoothie or a hamburger, a walk.  This was big.  I ended up sitting on a bench in my nearby park and people-watching and praying.  (They look pretty much the same.) :) 

            First a nice white-haired Frenchman walked past and joked about having taken my picture, I guess because I looked posed.  Then a mother walked past, followed by a toddler with the most luminous, gray-blue eyes I’ve ever seen.  I literally had to do a double-take when I saw him, and then I had a really hard time not creeping his mother out with my stare.  Then I walked past another white-haired Frenchman with a hat and walking stick and under some interlacing tulip trees (magnolias, I know).  It was refreshing after rushing to pack, rushing to do a group project, rushing to lesson plan, rushing to travel plan, rushing to sleep (that’s just not okay), to just enjoy the day and share it with God.  I took that peace back with me to my computer and travel planned.

            Monday nights are orchestra nights, which leads me to announce a new blog feature.  From now on, I will try my best to give all of you back at home an accurate, honest look at the French culture and people by featuring…Laurent’s wardrobe!  Laurent is the first-chair cellist in our community orchestra.  He’s forty-ish, a cello wizard, and the craaaaaziest dresser I’ve ever seen.  Case in point:  This week Laurent came in (carrying his coffin-shaped cello case) wearing oatmeal-colored corduroy slacks, a green-yellow corduroy jacket, an overlarge blue polo shirt sporting a very 80s plaid design, and a FANNY PACK.  Which he left on for the two-hour rehearsal, even when the orchestra accompanied him through the amazing, incredibly difficult Saint-Saens cello concerto.  Maybe he’s not the stereotypical Frenchman, but nonetheless…  I was feeling outlandish wearing a long blue skirt without tights underneath, a pale yellow shirt, and a bright pink sweater, but then I noticed that two people next to me on the metro were wearing red pants, so I decided I was all right.

Anyway, prayer requests:  A balance of patience with my language abilities and enthusiasm and perseverance to get the most out of this experience.  Also, I still don’t really have any French friends yet, and (while not a necessity, all people are valuable!), that would be cool.  Thanks!

Glimmers of Things to Come

I was sitting at my desk eating the world's smallest granola bar (all they sell here) and listening to the click of my alarm clock (the one that tells you that you got up twelve hours ago), and I realized it's been a while since I've blogged.  The reason for that is pretty simple:  Travel plans.

We get one week off in February and two weeks off at the end of April and beginning of May, and everyone tries to make plans before their friends become unavailable and the prices go up.  This means that in the month of February I went from not having any plans to booking a massive amount of plane, hostel, train, and bus tickets.  We're ALMOST done, and I am really excited to have time to do homework before midnight again.  I've learned that you really earn the money you save through the hours of research you do on cheap tickets.  I don't think it's minimum wage (at least not in CA), but it's still worth it.  (I told my mom this week that I feel like a part-time travel agent.)

Anyway, that has consumed my life to the point where I've forgotten to be excited about my trips.  As someone who absolutely detests spending large amounts of money, I've had to chant "You're only in Europe once" constantly.  I realized today that I'll be in Barcelona one week from tomorrow, and my reaction was to stare blankly at the wall and wonder if we'd finished all of the necessary reservations.  The new challenge:  recapturing the excitement of getting to travel!!!  (Feel free to help.)  ;)

My inspiration for the title of this blog was a Tennyson poem that mentions "Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough / Gleams that untraveled world..."  I've already experienced living in France for a month.  I remember leaving the airport in Paris, getting onto the metro, and staring avidly out into the dark morning, when every glimpse of a graffitied shack or a light in a house made me excited.  I remember walking off the metro with my giant rolling suitcases, pausing when I reached the sidewalk, and then casting my gaze every which way as I rolled off down the street, glorying in the lampposts and the billboards.  I get to do that in Barcelona, Rome, and Florence in ONE week.  In a monastery and a castle in Ireland, in Scotland, in Venice, in two months.  Praise God from whom all blessings flow!!!