Happy birthday to our favorite person in the whole world!

Here's a video tribute to the best mommy in the whole world. 

Picture of the week - exhaustion

So I was checking on Addie the other night and this is how I found her.  She loves to read at night, but apparently it was just too much for her that night.  I showed Wayne the picture and he said "That's how I feel when I read French too!"  It's true, learning a new language is exhausting.  No matter how many hours of sleep I get, I still haven't really felt rested.  When I finish class every afternoon, the last thing I want to do is to do my homework, I just want to rest!  I sit in a chair all day, but by the end of the day, I am exhausted!  We were wondering when we started why we have a week of vacation after the first 7 weeks of class.  Now we know and we can't wait for our week off! We love what we are doing now, but boy is it hard work.

And a bonus picture this week, just because I love it, and I love them!

Life without a car

We don't have a car here in France, and in some ways it's great...no repairs!  But in other ways, it's tough.  Life is a little less convenient without a car.  For example, let me tell you about my day.  I decided yesterday that I would go to IKEA today with a friend because our mattress is really hard.  We decided to get a mattress pad so that I wouldn't have to sleep in the living room on our spare bed.  I looked online and found what we want and they said online that they came rolled, so I thought "No problem!".  Well, Elise and I hopped on the bus this morning with our little cart and headed off to IKEA.  Well, first of all you should know that IKEA is about 15 minutes away by car, but by bus it takes 45 minutest to an hour.  Well, we were not deterred and even found a way to cut 10 minutes off the trip by walking a bit and making a different connection.  We would have made in less than 45 minutes if the bus we first got on went the whole route instead of going out of service 6 stops into our trip. So we hopped off and waited for the next bus (about a 10 minute wait).  We finally got to IKEA after about 50 minutes.  I found what I wanted, asked the IKEA lady in my best French how much it cost (it still took us a while to communicate even with my best French) and she printed off the receipt for us to pick up our item.  Here's the catch, you don't pick it up downstairs, but 1 km away at the IKEA pick up location.  I almost said "Are you kidding?" but I don't know how to say that in French.  I told her that we took the bus and she sort of gave me a "good luck" smile and we headed off to check out.  I told the check out lady the same thing "I took the bus and walked here" (in my best French) and she drew me a little map and told me how to get to the place.  I recognized enough words that I thought I knew how to get there.  Well, we made it to the other IKEA building, and picked up my mattress pad.  It was rolled into about a foot and a half diameter and was about 5 feet tall.  They put it on a cart I think to take it out to my car, but I just smiled and pointed at my little cart.  I tried to use my best French with the man there too, but as soon as I opened my mouth, he started talking in English to me.  So, we loaded it onto our little pull car and secured it with some packing tape and back out on the street to the bus stop we go.  I'm not quite sure what people thought as we rolled it onto the bus, so I tried not to look at them.  We made a quick stop at ToysRUs on the way home too.  I got some really funny looks as I wheeled my cart and pad and all into the store and asked if I could leave it at the counter.  One man was nice enough to try and understand what I was saying and then even joke with me about the nice gift I brought him.

Soooo...4 hours later, we made it home with my new bed.  I guess Wayne should just be glad that he didn't have to go buy me a whole new mattress, that would have made an even better story.  But the strange thing about the whole morning is that it wasn't even that stressful.  We had a great time chatting, the 45 minute bus ride didn't even seem that long, and I wasn't even that bothered that I had to lug a mattress pad home on the bus.  It's amazing what you get used to!  So while life with a car would be more convenient, God has given us the grace to adjust to life as it is without.

Never let your schooling interfere with your education

This quote (I think by Mark Twain) was advice given to us last summer during our 2 week training on language acquisition techniques. The main point of the quote for language learning was, don't forget that your goal is to communicate with other people, not to ace a verb conjugation test (although conjugating verbs correctly does help get your point across to people better). Thus, don't spend all of your time doing homework and studying for a test. Get out and talk to people!

One way that I've been able to do this is by basketball. I've begun practicing with a team and it's been great so far for getting practice in both listening to French and speaking. 

Probably the neatest part of this opportunity though is that the coach is from the same city we're moving to: Thies, Senegal. Last night, she was trying to teach me some Wolof phrases (the main African language in Senegal) using French (she doesn't speak English). Needless to say, we didn't cover much.

It's pretty cool to think that playing basketball is a great way for me to achieve my main objective in France, learn French. It doesn't hurt that I'm getting back in shape at the same time either (actually, it does kind of hurt today). 

I love Wednesdays!

I love the French system.  No school on Wednesdays!  We have been using Wednesdays to spend some time together as a family as we often get busy on the weekends with language learning activities, especially church on Sundays. 

Today we took the metro to a park in the next suburb.  Parc de Sceaux is kind of like a mini Versailles (I think anyways).  The gardens were created by the same person and we were quite impressed with the place, even in January.  I can't wait to see it in the spring and summer!

Here are a few pictures from our day together.  It was a cold one!

I'm not no account, just ignorant

One of the main struggles right now, is feeling no account. I can no longer do many of the things I could do with a decent degree of competency back home. Back home, if asked to preach a sermon, no problem. I'm not saying it would be anything great, but I could do it. But in French, it's not possible. To express even the simplest of ideas in French right now requires a great deal of effort.

Before this experience of language learning, I don't think I realized how much I relied on my competency to feel important. I found significance in being an engineer, a good student, being able to preach/teach, etc. Now that my competency is gone, I'm needing to find significance in something else. I'm being reminded of a truth that I've known before but had not fully appreciated. The truth is that I am "in Christ." 

The Bible speaks often of the Christian being "in Christ," which is truly a loaded statement. One aspect of being "in Christ" is that my significance is now found in the fact that I'm associated with Christ. The fact that through faith I am associated with Christ and therefore a child of God, I don't need to find significance in my competency. Regardless of how my situation changes, I will always have significance because of my relationship with Christ. 

This truth has proven to be extremely encouraging as I don't see myself becoming very competent again real soon. And finally, pray that as my competency slowly increases, that my feeling of significance does not simultaneously shift back to competency and away from God.

Picture of the week - adaptation

What you do when the washer and dryer cost 2 euros each and they're not that big!  The unused top bunk, a drying rack and a dehumidifier worked great! At least when we get to Senegal we won't have any problems.  I believe the forecast is hot and dry at least 360 days of the year.