Amsterdam (vacances part 3)

As I was leaving France to start my vacation, my host mom called out to me from the house, "Remember to change the clock back on Sunday! Méfie-toi." I guess I should have méfied myself. In any case, my long day of travel from Sheffield, England to Heiloo, the Netherlands was made even longer as I got to the station an hour early. No biggie.

I rode easy-jet into Amsterdam, passed quickly through border control (nothing like the UK customs lines) and figured out my train into the dark, unknown territories of Holland. It actually was very dark--my plane was delayed an hour and, of course, it was the end of daylight savings. The good thing about traveling in the Netherlands, though, is that everyone speaks English. Everyone.

Once on the train, I realized that I was nervous, and I little scared to continue this part of my fall break adventure. I was excited to be visiting another good friend from Capernwray, Rebecca, but all I knew was the town she lived in and her phone number. It sounds kinda silly now that I was worrying, but I really felt like I was going into the middle of nowhere, never to return. But I got off the train, called the phone number, was relieved that Rebecca picked up, and that her fiancé was waiting at the station for me, and I was welcomed with lots of food, a fresh brew*, a game of Settlers, and a nice warm bed.
* I relearned a lot of English whilst in the UK. Other favourite words include "to fancy," "dodgy," and the correct pronunciation of "Monty Python."

The next day I went back into Amsterdam, where I had just enough time (after getting pretty lost) to visit the Rijkmuseum. Most of the museum was being renovated, so they had moved all the famous paintings into a small corner. I found two of Rembrandt's paintings, Anna the prophetess and Jeremiah lamenting the destruction of Jerusalem, to be particularly moving. It was a beautiful day. Overcast and autumnal and first, but then, in fact as I waited in line to enter the museum, the sun broke out. I took time on my return to grab some gouda and look out over the canals as the leaves fell all around me.

That evening Rebecca and made for the beach on moped, arriving with time to walk on the beach as the sun set. It was so good to spend time with yet another Capernwray friend and catch up on each other's lives.

The next morning I headed back to Tours...riding in the first class car (somehow it was the cheaper ticket when I bought it). I always find it amazing how the staff on international trains manage. For instance, when I was served breakfast, the woman approached me saying, "Guten morgen/goedemorgen/good morning/bonjour." "Bonjour," I replied, and we continued on in French.

So it was a great trip with lots of new things to experience and lots of old things to remember. I have only about a month and a half left in France.

the North (vacances part 2)

Well, as I believe I noted, I did not board the train for Hogwarts on Friday, but I left London for Sheffield, where I was to meet my Bible school friend Dan. Within minutes on the train, I was surrounded by the English countryside I fell in love with three years ago. And it only got better from there. That afternoon Dan and I went for a walk in what he called the Peak Country. Fall was finally taking hold in the trees, and our path winded through the woods, up hills, across meadows, and along a little creek, leading to a nice little pub at the top. I had a mushroom, steak and ale pie, and he had the biggest plate of fish and chips I've ever seen. It might have been a little dangerous, but we fumbled our way through the dark forest that night, making it back for the train with enough time to take in the stars. Creatures live in British forests, you know. Werewolves, dragons, centaurs...one can never be too careful.

Together with Dan and another good friend Nathalie, I returned to Capernwray the next day, the "castle" in England that I studied at three years ago. At times it felt so normal to be back, to sink into the chairs under the stairs, to warm myself by the radiators in the lounge, to descend from the road to the dining hall. Other times it felt so strange...there's not much that has changed since I was there May of 2009...was I really at Capernwray again? Some things were very hard, like walking through the Beehive where I lived for many months...definitely some sad memories. However, for the most part, I was flooded with good, fond memories of God's work in my life, of friendships I had, of all the fun things we did (Christmas concert, work days on the farm, American football games, camping out on the big hill to watch the sunrise.)


I also spent a lot of time drinking tea that day, chatting with the staff. It was funny how they would recognize us as old students, then when we ran into them again (it's a small campus), they'd recall our names. So good to catch up and to hear how things were going at my school. I hope to return again sometime (i.e. Capernwray 10-year reunion...not my idea, but it's happening, y'all.)

In sum, it was necessary to return to Capernwray and recognize how important this piece of my life was...and it was equally meaningful to see Dan and Nathalie, and many of the Capernwray staff again. I'm very thankful for this opportunity.

And the next day I made my way to Amsterdam...next blog coming soon.

London (Fall break part 1)

Hey friends, I just got home a few hours ago from the best vacation I could have imagined. For those of you who I asked to pray for me as I traveled, thanks! Although I'm in the middle of moving into my third bedroom this semester (apparently to make room for the Uzbeks), but I'll take a little break to share about the first leg of my journey.

Some highlights from London:

1. Wandering out of customs to be met at the airport by my good friend Rochelle (a Bucknell student studying in London). We caught up as we took the tube to her flat in the very pretty neighbourhood of University College London. We also shared a pizza in Gordon square that night. It was fun to see another Bucknell face.

2. Occupy London. Thursday afternoon, I went to St Paul's Cathedral to check out the growing number of indignant Londoners who had started camping out in front. In other cities (Amsterdam, for example), this kind of protest is a little more welcome, but things were tense in London. The police were making stronger threats each day to force everyone out. In fact, the church had to close for a few days, and a leader in the cathedral resigned his post because he didn't want to play any part in a violent removal of the campers. Bearing in mind my study abroad program's interdiction of political protest, I just walked around reading the posters, poems, and artwork. It felt a little weird to be enjoying tourism in England during one of the most critical weeks of European history, where the success of all the reconstruction since WWII is on the line. History happens here too. I'm just trying to take everything in.

3. We saw a disturbing play about human trafficking in London, put on by Only Connect, a theatre company for prisoners, ex-offenders, and at-risk youth. It was stage in a black box theatre, with most of the action behind a square of screens, where video was also projected. We walked home a little scared that night, with an expanded view on UK immigration and London crime. We found that it was important to pray before going to bed.

4. Thai food. Green cury. The uzh. It's the real reason I travel to big cities.

5. Platform 9 3/4. Look for pictures on facebook. My last morning, we met up with Faria, another Bucknell student, to try to get to Hogwarts. There was a Brit who was a little embarrassed but equally enthusiastic about the platform, and we encouraged him to pose for a picture in front of it. We also had full English breakfasts--eggs, bacon, sausage, hash browns, baked beans, tomatoes, and toast, before I left for the (admittedly Muggle) town of Sheffield.

I'll try to post about the rest of my trip soon!... à bientôt...

Two French families

This week it finally worked out to meet two groups of French people with whom I've been making arrangements for awhile. One was the family of a four-year-old girl, who want me to teach English to her, and the other, a French student who the university here set me up with (as I'm an exchange student.) They call him my parain (godfather.)

I'll start with the English lesson.
This family was very nice. They've just moved from Paris and they have three kids with almost ridiculously old-fashioned first names, Mahaut, Arnaud, and the baby, Baptiste. The first time I went to eat them, they served me coke, potato chips, and local, seasonal radishes. The girl I'm teaching, Mahaut, was very shy, but she opened up as I asked her if she's a good student in Kindergarten. When I asked her to compare her school this year to the year before, she paused for a second and then said, "Let me reflect." When I returned two days later for the first lesson, she was very excited to start. I taught her a song I wrote called, "Hello. How are you? I am good." (These happen to be the lyrics too, but I think I'll add different vocabulary each week if she does well at remembering.) It hadn't occurred to me before how difficult it is to pronounce a phrase such as "How are you" if you speak a language without diphthongs. Often, I would introduce a new word, and she, catching on quickly that I wanted her to repeat it but not wanting to make an effort, would simply say, "Oui, c'est ça. Exactement." One time I got her to repeat a phrase perfectly and after congratulating her on her hard work, she said, "C'est presque paraît" (It's almost identical.) Furthermore, I was very impressed when I used a situation in a story I was reading to teach the phrase "I am lost." She said, slowly, "I...am...GOOD." It's doubtful that this is evidence of a conscious connection between this phrase and the very similar sentence she had sung earlier, but it does show me that she had processed these sounds enough to recall them with automaticity. Next time, I hope to use activities which will help her see the meaning of English, that it can actually be useful to communicate. I'm open to any suggestions you may have.

And my day with my parain.
It was ended up being really fun. We met near my house (in fact, in front of a bar where filled with disappointed rugby fans) and he drove me to his nearby village, where we had lunch with 10 members of his family (Dad, brother and sister, dad's girlfriend, her three kids, grandma, uncle and his daughter.) Because my host family this semester is pretty much a household of international students, I told them I was happy to meet a true French family. They cut me off to say, "Well, we're not really a true family. Well, what we are is a modern family, a big modern family. C'est pas grave." And then we sat down and had another one of the best meals of my life. Raclette (cheese we melted individually--as if we were roasting marshmellows), with lots of deli meats and bread and wine. I learned the expression, "une main lourde" (a heavy hand) when the Grandma, who sat next to me, kept pouring me champagne without cease. It was like the biggest shock in the world if I told her I was fine with what I had. Needless to say, I often acquiesced to her heavy-handed heavy hand.

There was an interesting connection to my time in Normandy that came up while we were eating. The adults were reflecting on the number of Americans who know everything about WWII, who know more about the Normandy invasion that the French. They said that in French school, when that time period is taught, it's more about the conditions that give rise to Fascism. I offered that Americans might especially want to commemorate WWII because at least on the European front, it's relatively simple and without controversy (compared to Vietnam and Iraq), something truly to be proud of. They agreed. It's always a compliment when a French person agrees with you.


After lunch we played laser tag at a nearby arena (not something I would expect, but exactly the same as in America). And after returning, I took a long walk on the other side of the Loire as the sun set. I even discovered the entrance to an island park I've always wanted to find. It was a good day.

Thoughts and experiences in Normandy

I recently remarked on facebook that I feel like I came back from my excursion a little older. It was a heavy weekend, and through all my experiences and conversations and continuing reflection, I notice a particular deepening with regards to my views on peace, American identity, and cultural transmission of history.

(Also, I apologize for the fact that I may have written this blog more for me than for readers, another step in reflecting on my experiences up North. Hope some of it's interesting.)

We started in the city of Saint-Milo (which, as a French guy reminded me today kind of snobbily, is technically in Brétagne). Even though the city feels old, with a medieval wall surrounded it, and fortresses on the ocean, most of it was reconstructed after heavy bombing in WWII. This was the case with many of the cities we visited, as they were either attacked by the Axis powers or they suffered during the American invasion. I noticed, for example, that the cathedral's stained glass windows were very modern. The cathedral still had the smell that only a really old church could have.

This is sort of an embarrassing story: There's a famous French writer, Chauteaubriand, who is buried on an island only reachable at low tide. When it was getting time to rejoin the group, the tide lowered enough to reveal the little path to his final resting place. I raced down the beach and across, and, as I had to pee, I ran up the hill before all the other people crossing over to do my business on the other side of the island. After having done so, I turned a corner to see his grave, marked by a sign which read, "Here lies a great French writer. He wanted only to hear the sound of the wind and the waves. Please respect his wishes." Oops. When I returned to the bus a little late, my professor said, "Well, visiting the tomb of Cauteaubriand is a good excuse for being late." I didn't tell him how exactly I paid my respects.

The next day, we went to the "plages de débarquement." As I decended onto the beach at Arromanches (where the Allied forces built their artificial port), I instinctively picked up handfuls of sand and scattered it as if it were grain all the way to the ocean (a ritual I would repeat on the Utah landing beach.) I hastily wrote in my notebook:

It's just a little beach
and now I have the sand of Normandy
plastered on my jeans
after I sank my hands into the cool earth
and sprinkled it back in the sun,
the shadow, and toward the waves.
in the same way, several children beside me
stick their shovels into the sand.

In a museum, we read the quote of Private Henry Parker, who described his touching down onto Omaha beach, saying, "As our boat touched sand and the ramp went down, I became a visitor to hell."

I added to my journal: "I didn't feel like a visitor to hell. I didn't even feel like a visitor. I hope that's the point." Echoing these sentiments was a French poem in ridiculous rhyming quatrains that said, "See the laughing children / Playing in the sea / Today's sun / Dries Yesterday's tears." I don't know if this is true.

But I had a long to to reflect on this that day as I ran along the marine terrace outside of the town. From the highest point of the cliff I could see miles of green coastline in both directions. I asked these questions: Why is it necessary in every museum to juxtapose the horror of battlefield photography with the serene beauty of Normandy today? What does war do to a region's culture? Is Normandy still grieving? How could D-Day and its deaths have been avoided? What does this mean for violence and intervention today?

I kept thinking and talking with others as we visited the American and German graveyards, walked along the beaches and cliffs marked with bomb craters, and returned that night to Caen, another city utterly destroyed as France was saved. I felt at the same time proud to be an American and disturbed by the footage from the 40s, where political and military leaders used the same language in describing WWII intervention that Americans use today when they speak of military action around the world. However, after our visit to the Museum of Peace (which situated well the D-Day invasion in its context of war and totalitarianism, French cooperation and resistance, genocide and poverty) my thoughts sunk a little further into place. In the end, D-Day seemed to me to be simpler than all the debate and questioning. It requires grieving and thanks for the sacrifice of the soldiers.

And so I returned Sunday afternoon with the weight of a deepened understanding of just how devastating war is and how widespread violence is in our world. But I also carried with me a new appreciation for the value of human culture and its power to create and preserve, to look back in order to move forward, and even to save.

German history

I have a class each Thursday from 4:30 to 7:30, straight lectures, by a German professor on Franco-German relations in the 20th century. It's often not that bad, however. Apparently they won't have tests till January (after I'm gone), so I guess I keep going for the pleasure of it. It makes me reminisce about being a high school student in AP European History.

And things even got a interactive for a moment (and just a moment). In his discussion of the Dawes Plan, the professor paused, wondering if there were any anglophones in the room who could verify the pronunciation.
"I think it's DOS," he said (like two in Spanish), "le plan dos--"
"DAWWWS!" I thundered from the back of the classroom. Everyone sort of giggled.

The French students in general have trouble understanding his accent, and they are very kind in asking me how I'm doing in that class. "In fact," I tell them, "a foreign accent is easier than a French accent." "Mais non," they reply, "This is central France. No one here has an accent!"
I'm sure, in a way, we're both right.

But while the girls around me continued to snicker at poor Monsieur Beck's accent and write down every word he said (French students are a little crazy when it comes to note-taking), I kept looking out the window to my left across the river. And I started to write some poetry (translation will follow):

la forêt de l'autre côté est ravissante
dans le vieux soleil, cette fin d'après-midi.
les feuilles se colorent dans cette heure tranquille
grâce à la colère du nouveau automne
et bientôt, l'eau de la Loire devient cendre
de ce feu peu feroce qui souffle dans
le vint du soir.

Pourtant, pendant que les oiseaux
rentrent aux nids, les braises respirent en haut dans les arbres,
les dernières feuilles de feu contre le soir.

(okay, this isn't the best translation)

the forest on the other side is ravishing
in the aging sun, at the end of this afternoon.
the leaves color in this peaceful time
because of the anger of new fall
and soon, the water of the Loire becomes the ashes
of this small, weak fire that blows
in the evening wind.
But still, while the birds
return to nests, the embers breathe high in the trees
the last leaves of fire against the evening.

Good night :)

afternoon at l'Opéra

This afternoon the Tours Opera opened its theatre doors to the public. Since I have this weekend unexpectedly free (long story), I decided to go for the dress rehearsal of the staging of their season-opener, Thaïs. I wasn't familiar with this opera, but here's what I gathered today in terms of synopsis:

Thaïs tells the story of a young woman who, while mourning the loss of a beloved friend at a cocktail party, decides to become a nun. In fact, she is persuaded to do so by a quick-tempered monk, and to the great chagrin of her wild, party-going, flamboyantly dressed compatriots, she walks off with him to the monastery. Although the woman bids him adieu (literally) as she begins her life of celibacy, the monk falls so tumultuously in love with her that he seeks her out at the garbage dump where the nuns worship. (She had warned him personally of her impending death in a sexy dream sequence.) He arrives just in time for a richly layered duet before the woman, claiming to glimpse heaven, dies in his arms on a pile of trash.

And that was only Act II, and there's still another act left!

Other things made it an enjoyable experience. As it was a rehearsal, the "metteur-en-scène" would stop the steadily-mounting action quite abruptly to fix things here or there. At the end uproarious end of the first song, the main character yanked down a curtain of strings that hung across the stage. While she was untangling the strings from her costume, the director shouted out from the house, "In the silence, Thaïs, don't pull it down during the music." The soloist apologized: "I beg your pardon, I just always get taken by the rhythm."

The curtain of strings was in fact a very beautiful touch to the scenery at the beginning of the second act. While the light white cords allowed a projection of a recently deceased character, with a mourner grieving just behind, they also moved me to reflect on the transient nature of life and the thin veil that separates our world from the next. Rich, tender chords from an unseen chorus complemented this concept in a touching way. Yes, the acting was awful (it's opera), but I am stunned by the design concepts that the opera has at its disposal.

After the rehearsal, there was an échange, a Q & A session. I was pleased to see even the diva soloist stayed to answer audience questions. And everyone on the staff had a very charming sense of humor. They all seemed to really believe in their craft. The staging director said something funny when talking about the authoritarian nature of her job. She explained that they don't have the luxury of time that theatre possesses, so they can't explore alternatives. She just gives blocking, "and if a soloist opposes me, it will cost them dearly." I don't know what she means by that, but the audience applauded her comment.

So my new ambition in life is to do vocal training and enter the world opera. It won't be the last time I change vocation.