Happy New Year!

I just got back from Germany last night at 1 a.m. I had a wonderful time there and met some really wonderful people. Vielen dank zum Wagners! I spent all day today doing laundry and going through virtual paperwork (nearly as thrilling as real paperwork but with a smaller chance of paper cuts) so I haven't even gotten the trip pictures from my camera to the computer yet. Tomorrow, tomorrow...

But now it is officially 2010 in France, so happy new year! I thought about joining the madness in Paris but decided to stay here at school and enjoy a quieter party with my friends. Here is a short YouTube video showing the last 30 seconds or so of the party in Paris.

Germany

Early tomorrow my train leaves for Germany. I'll be there until the 30th visiting friends. See you after that!

I cut my own hairs.

I was looking in the mirror the other day and thinking, "I look like a girl." I had to fix that. I wasn't planning to go so short, but then I realized that this marvelous buzzer that I rescued from the freeby table only had one attachment- 1/8 inch. So it was all or nothing.

O Viens Bientôt, Emmanuel

This is one of the songs we sang for our little mini concert. However, because the vocal parts were so tricky, our directrice just split us into two groups. The tenors sang with the sopranos, one octave down, and most of the basses sang with the altos one octave down.
I wanted to know what the song would sound like with all of the parts. So, after a whole lot of work and learning quite a bit about music (like primarily that I am really bad at it), I got myself a general idea of what it is supposed to sound like. Unfortunately, I had to once again create a movie so I could trick blogger into playing it, and I forgot that my movie software doesn't like MP3s. So there are some pops and such. But then, it wasn't that great to start with!


Here are the words:

O Viens, Bientôt, Emmanuel.
Nous délivrer du joug cruel
Et du péché briser la loi
Ton peuple entier s'attend à toi

Joyeux, levez les yeux aux ciels
Voici venir Emmanuel.

translation:

Oh come soon, Emmanuel
Deliver us from the cruel yoke
and from the sin that breaks the law
Your entire people waits for you

Joyful, lift your eyes to the heavens
Here comes Emmanuel

And, of course, it is a French remake of Oh Come, Oh Come, Emmanuel.

To create this, I had to play each of the four parts separately on the piano, using a metronome to hopefully keep myself on the same tempo. That didn't work perfectly, as you can tell from the final product. I then had to edit the four clips separately in Garageband and get them to line up as well as I could. The final result sounded less then great. I was hoping that if I sang slow enough it wouldn't be so noticeable. I quickly realized that my goofed-up tempos on the piano pieces were going to wreck this if I actually sang along with the music I had. So I memorized each piece, got the starting note, and then for half of them muted my piano track and just sang from memory, at least for the first couple lines, again using the metronome to try to get my pace to match. This was especially difficult because I lost my sheet of music and I was doing all of this by ear. I feel like I'm half tone deaf, so I really depend on being able to look at the paper and say "Oh hey, it's going up a note!"
Anyway, it was kind of fun to play around with 4 part harmony. I hopefully won't have to do it again between here and Africa, at least not when MY voice is being recorded.

I have a long way to go.

I was walking across the lobby at church when I saw a woman out of the corner of my eye. A very strong part of me wanted to pretend she wasn't there. Something about her didn't quite look "right." In an instant I wondered if she was a gypsy. Because if she was, she probably spoke very little French and was probably at church in hopes of begging things off of people. She looked like a person who would mumble, and when a French person mumbles it really doesn't matter whether they know French or not, because I can't understand it. For all of these reasons, I had a strong aversion to acknowledging her.
BUT, though I do a horrible job sometimes of letting him work, God does work in my life, and for that reason I simultaneously had a very strong drive to talk to her. Maybe it was for the simple reason that the few other people left in church all had someone to talk to and at that moment, she didn't. Or maybe there was more to my urge than just pity...
However, because I had two very strong inclinations warring within me, I performed my standard lame compromise. I made eye contact, smiled, said "Bonjour," and kept going, as if I was very busy and had somewhere I had to be. I ducked around a corner and took stock of the situation. Unfortunately, I didn't stay there long enough to pray through any kind of plan. So when I went back to the lobby I ended up talking to somebody else. She got up to leave, and I quickly said farewell to her as she headed out the door. I never even asked her name. She paused in the entry way. Again I considered going up to her and talking to her. But how would I start? It's incredibly awkward introducing yourself to somebody as they are halfway out the door. She exited. As she walked away from the church I went to the door, half considering running out after her to try to make up for my failures, but I wasn't wearing my winter jacket and it was quite cold out. As I stood there, contemplating, she turned for an instant to look back at the church- I have no clue why- and then kept going.
Who was she? Does she normally go to church, and I just haven't noticed her? If not, why did God bring her to church today? I may never know. And that tears me apart. Unless I completely misread the situation, I was supposed to talk to her. And I failed.
What do I do about that? Well, I acknowledge my failure, ask God to give me courage and a second chance, and prepare myself through prayer for next time. I have to wonder what would have happened if I had prayed before church this morning like I was supposed to. I was talking to my family on Skype until almost 3 hours after my bedtime last night, so it was easy to justify getting up at the last minute before church and putting off my daily time with God until later... but decisions like that have consequences.
I share this with you largely to show that I'm not special. I'm human. I struggle with the same fears and insecurities as everyone else. Please pray for me!

Snow in Paris!

Parc de Sceaux

Yesterday I rode the bike to a nearby massive estate that has been turned in to the "Parc de Sceaux." It was a cloudy day, not my favorite shooting conditions, but I hoped that the moody weather would help accent the moody look of trees that have been stripped of their leafs. What do you think?

French is Complicated.

I was in an analytical mood this week, and so I decided to compare two roughly equivalent sentences in English and French and figure out which one is harder to say. Here they are:

I was responsible for the good health of the team.

J'ai été responsable pour la bonne santé de l'équipe.

I chose this sentence because my French friend said it to me the other night and I later realized that I'm not exactly sure how he said it. I could understand perfectly what he meant, but for all I know the sentence above is wrong. If I need to say it to somebody French, they might not even understand me. But let's look at the English first.

"I was responsible for the good health of the team."

In order to speak this sentence you need to know:

-1 pronoun (I)
-2 nouns
-2 adjectives
-2 prepositions
-1 article (the)
-1 verb that has 2 possible conjugations for the required tense (was, were)

There is one decision that has to be made, whether to use the plural or singular conjugation of the verb. The correct usage is determined by the subject, which has already been spoken (I), and therefore you will have heard yourself speaking it as you are deciding which form to use. In the same way that it is easier to sing one note after another in a scale rather than just hitting one note out of the blue, I think this makes a huge difference.

Summary: You need to know 10 things and make 1 decision with oral aid.

Now, lets look at the French. You need to know:

1 pronoun (Je)
2 nouns
2 adjectives, each of which has 4 possible forms
2 prepositions, one of which has 3 or more possible forms (I'm not sure)
3 possible articles, along with another shortened form
1 verb tense form
1 verb with 6 possible conjugations

There's a lot to talk about here. Where do I start? Let's start with the articles. French nouns are masculine, feminine, or plural. If they are singular and start with a vowel or silent h, they receive a shortened form of the article (l') So for both santé and equipe, the speaker has to consider whether they are masculine, feminine, plural, or start with a vowel or an h. This decisions have to be made BEFORE the speaker actually says the noun in question, so there is no oral aid. Just so you don't get lost, all of this is in place of saying "the."

Now we can look at adjectives. Adjectives are required to agree with the noun they modify. Fortunately we have already come up with the gender, number, and form of santé in order to create the article, so now we just have to pick which one of the 4 possible adjective forms corresponds (bon, bonne, bons, or bonnes). Fortunately in this case, and honestly in most (but not all) cases in French, all four of those forms are pronounced the same, so if you say the wrong one it won't sound wrong. If, however, you pick wrong in writing, you lose points on a test...
The other adjective is acting as a direct object, so I think it is supposed to be in agreement with the subject (Je). This, of course, will change based on whether the speaker is male or female. And this time the key has already been spoken, so you do have oral assistance. (To keep on pace, we have now found the equivalent of "good" and "responsible")

One of our prepositions is also variable based on gender and number. "De" with a feminine is "de la," with a masculine is "du," and with a plural is "des." Except, of course, for certain circumstances when you drop the article entirely and just use "de." And I am not at all clear on what those circumstances are. So I'm not sure that I got it right, and that's the main reason that I if I spoke to a French person they might not be able to figure out what I am trying to say. (We now have "of.")

The other major difficulty is the verb. I have used passé composé here because I think perhaps that is what my friend used and that is the only vaguely appropriate tense I have been taught so far. However, I'm thinking that based on the context it should probably be a verb tense called "imparfait" that doesn't really have an equivalent in English. But let's look at passé composé, since that's what I know.

Passé composé is a compound verb. The second part (été, for "to be") has only one conjugation, but the first part has 6. Technically the key is spoken first, HOWEVER, because the conjugation for first person singular begins with a vowel, the "je" turns into "j." So you actually have to know the conjugation you will use before you say the noun.

quick disclaimer- I didn't include picking the correct verb tense as a choice for either language. So you could add to each 1 more decision without oral aid, if you wish, and a massive number of words (more massive in French). However, I consider it to be more vocab than decision. "Was" and "to be" are technically two forms of the same word but they don't generally rest that way in my head. So, quick comparison of the two with that disclaimer in place:

English: You need to know 10 words and make 1 decision with oral aid.

French: You need to know 25 words, make 1 decision with oral aid and 5 decisions without oral aid, and even knowing all that I'm not sure that I'm correct.


In short, in English you can start talking and make up the sentence as you go. In French you have to know everything you are going to say before you say it, make a bunch of executive decisions very quickly without oral cues, and then you get start thinking about liasons. That's the way the French don't pronounce their words one at a time. Instead, they often say the second half of one word along with the first part of the next one. The result is a beautiful, flowing language... whose speakers can't understand a foreigner who pronounces words as they are written.

I love Minnesota

This week a classmate said that one of her friends is Minnesotan and really, REALLY loves Minnesota. She asked me if I was the same way. I never did get a chance to answer her question, so I am going to respond to it now. Yes, I REALLY love Minnesota. And here are some of the reasons why:

Minnesota is green.

Minnesota is farmland.


Minnesota has TONS of lakes
And we know what to do with them. Unfortunately I don't have any good pictures of the swimming, skiing, fishing, sailing, surfing, boating, skating, driving, racing, jet-skiing, or snowmobiling that goes on, on the surface of Minnesota lakes and rivers.


Minnesota has guns and girls who know how to use them (in this case, my cousins). To an American, a gun is a symbol of freedom and also the way we keep the freezer stocked.

When I think about America, this is what I see in my head:

Minnesota has wildlife. Lots and lots of wildlife. And you don't have to pay money to see it.



Snuggling up to a campfire is the greatest way to spend a fall evening.


Which brings me to one of the greatest reasons I love Minnesota: it has 4 seasons. I love the fact that the weather changes every 5 months or less. I also love the fact that the longest season is cold, which means...

Beauty

Snow Forts


Sledding

Hockey

Did I mention snow forts?

Did I mention sledding?

Did I mention hockey?

And the single biggest reason I miss Minnesota is all my fantastic relatives who live there. Here are a bunch of them who came to see me off:

And here is a glimpse of some of the silliness my cousins come up with:

French Is Easy #2

Our "French is Easy" series has undergone a dramatic facelift, including a new celebrity host. Today he tackles the issue of French Chemistry (no, not the type that happens along the Seine in the moonlight)

note: This video is linked from the YouTube website, so I have no clue what videos will be offered when my video is done playing. I wouldn't recommend watching them. You are probably already familiar with YouTube; I'm writing this in case you aren't.

Title?

Last night, rather than going to sleep, I sat up and had a wonderful conversation with my friend about life, scripture, and how the one needs to be understandable in order to impact the other. We spent a long time discussing translations, both in French and English, which ended in us "reading" the Vulgate to see how much Latin we can figure out just from our knowledge of English and French (and his knowledge of Spanish).

a life in my shelled nut

Greetings! I had a fairly peaceful week. I have joined a little mini-choir that will be performing a few songs at a local nursing home on the 15th. I haven't ever sung in a group, other than theatrical performances where I was masked by everyone else, so being one of the three tenors is a challenge for me. It is doubly challenging because I have to memorize both the words and the music. Until I have at least memorized one or the other, I can't even read along! I am also learning a little guitar, memorizing simultaneously the names of various chords in English and French. 

The French is going quite well. I talked with my teacher today about advancing to the next class after Christmas. She sounds optimistic about it. I will be talking to the directrice about it Monday or Tuesday, so please pray that God will grant me favor with her. Meanwhile, I am going to start working 2 units ahead of my class so I have a jump-start on the catch-up work I will be doing over Christmas break.

I will hopefully be getting some kind of seasons greetings sent out in the next couple of weeks. I want a picture. It is evading me. I really want a picture of all the lights and booths and action and color on the Champs D'Elysee, but the Arch de Triomphe is currently closed due to a strike, thus hampering my plans to take advantage of "free Sunday" this week.

and... I should take a quick shower (I am all sweaty because I just rode a mountain bike all over a forest on the side of a large, steep hill and I learned precisely how much tailside I can get with that particular bike on muddy leaves and it was marvelous), eat something, and go to the worship service being held tonight at a local church.

SWEET!

I had a fantastic dream last night. I was watching TV and a short feature came on celebrating a recent conference meet victory by my former high school swim team. (this was fictional, the season has just started in real life). It was a well made promo video. It captured the spirit of a swim meet, the energy of an upset victory determined by the 400 free relay, and it looked cool. As I watched it, I was impressed and wondered where our local station had come up with the creativity and time to produce an ESPN-quality video for a team few people back home even care about. Then I woke up and was hit with the sudden reality that the promo video was created by ME. It was 100% out of my imagination. I didn't know I had that much creativity. I knew I could watch that kind of thing and marvel but I never thought I could actually create it myself. Now I know that I can- I just have develop the skills and software knowledge to make it happen in real life. There is a ton to know and it's a lot of work, but now I know that once I develop those skills I have the imagination to use them well.

I praise God for giving me that dream. I needed it.

I've had similar dreams with music also. I've heard entire worship bands playing songs I've never heard before but when I wake up I can never remember the melody, to say nothing of the bass line and harmony. I'm not sure that I'll ever be much good at music, though I enjoy playing the four or five chords I've picked in the week and a half I have had my guitar. But at least I can literally dream it up once in a while.

Paris Shots

I wandered around Paris all day with this dude
Before we went into Notre Dame we noticed the name on this building and figured that maybe this is where God stays when He visits Paris.
The nativity in Notre Dame
This is the Paris skyline to the North from the towers of Notre Dame, featuring the Sacre Coeur. (Yes, HDR and enhanced) Here is the view 90 degrees to the west, featuring the Eiffel Tower and downtown (slightly enhanced)
Here is the same view with a little more digital work.
And this was taken through a narrow little window as we walked the winding stairs back down to the ground.