Trains, trains, trains

Well, I had an adventure yesterday. I journaled about it in French but I will be nice and translate it into English for you :-)

---7:53 en train- The man next to me is doing some kind of design (it looks like civil engineering) WITH POWERPOINT! What dedication! What a horror! That is a man who really needs the Gimp.

This morning I woke up an hour earlier than I had planned (3:30) and after half an hour I heard the sound of heavy rain. That made me really nervous because I don't have a jacket that is truly water proof and I have to walk around outside a lot today. Therefore, I got up and started looking for a large trash bag or something else I could use as a poncho. I couldn't find anything. I thought then of taking the bus down to the more distant RER station to avoid the 15 minute walk in the rain. I jumped on the RATP website and got the hours for the bus. Then I ate super fast and ran out the door. This whole time it had been raining fairly hard, but when I went out the door it was barely drizzling. That was a huge blessing, because when I got to the bus stop I found out that, thanks to road construction, the bus wasn't stopping there today. So I ended up doing the 15 minute march after all. I speed walked and just as I was getting to the RER station it was starting to drizzle harder again. Thank you, God, for keeping me relatively dry!

I didn't have any problem with the metro. Au contraire, it was easy today, and so was getting on the train at the station. The train is currently on time, which is a blessing because I have to catch another train in Besoncon just 5 minutes after this one arrives. For now, I am doing my homework and watching the pretty countryside. Yes, France is pretty when you can escape from Paris! Ooh là là! a castle! I just saw a castle perched high on a hill above a village.

--- Haha! I just saw a sign- "Hamburger Restaurant." It wasn't small either. It was huge, and permanently attached to the wall of a train station. It's really strange how English sneaks into France sometimes.

--- We have stopped. In the middle of nowhere. The conductor just told us that we will be here for about 10 minutes. Jesus, please, get this train moving again, RIGHT NOW! Amen.

--- Okay, about 10-15 minutes later (I forgot to check my watch) we are moving again. I saw several SNCF (French nation train company) vehicles with the word "signale" written on the sides. So I'm guessing maybe we had a problem with the signal system.

---And just now the conductor has announced that my next train will leave at 11:47, so I will make my connection. Thank you, God!

---*ahem* I didn't use my brain when I wrote that. The train I was supposed to catch left at 9:35 like it was supposed to, and we dragged in at 9:48. The next train between Besancon and Mulhouse is at 11:47. I certainly won't be visiting the train museum in Mulhouse, but that is the least of my worries. L will have to wait for me in that station at Mulhouse for more than 2 hours! Maybe his friend (who is driving him to Mulhouse) won't be okay with waiting around that long.

--- Alors, Besançon. After an experience with a less-than-private toilette and an incident with a glass door which left my glasses, the door, and my face all in various states of disorder, I have stumbled to a nearby park to re-shape my glasses in peace. I have a mark next to my right eye and my glasses are still crooked. To complete the scene, it's trying to rain. But the village is really pretty. [here is a video and several photos]:



It is (or at least, was) a fortified village because it guarded an important bend in the river. I love the numerous buildings that look like castles. There are also a lot of big stone walls.




---Fortunately I thought to get a ticket for the new train. My French was pretty rough when I talked to the lady behind the counter but she understood me anyway.

[view from 2nd train]


---location: unknown station- I am so glad I thought to bring my Minnesota driver's license! On this second train the SNCF guy asked me for an ID card, which they normally don't do. Then, just now, our train has been boarded by the police! I have no idea why, but we have been stopped for 10 or 15 minutes at a train station and the police have asked all of us to show our IDs.


---Finally, Mulhouse. And I found L! Yay, and a huge thank-you to God! We had a very good conversation. He showed me several things that he has done, the same types of things we will be doing together when I get there. We also talked about French some. And now, I have three hours until my train leaves. Not enough time for a museum, so I will wander around the city and see what I can see.


--- There is a pretty square. There is a big, beautiful protestant church. Closed. Bummer. I walked along the river for a while. It's like the Seine, but small. Then I ate my PBJ sandwiches and an apple that I brought with me. The rats were interested in my sandwiches but I didn't give them anything. It's against my values...

--- 10:57 And once again, a late train. This time the train arrived in Mulhouse 25 minutes late, so it left again almost 20 minutes late. I hope the folks in the US are praying. I think that we have made several of our stops quickly and we may be almost on time again. I don't know. This is the 1oth hour that I have been on a train today, not counting the hours of waiting in the train stations. And I have at least another hour to go. I have almost finished my homework. I have studied. I slept a little, thanks to an almost empty train car that allowed me to take up two seats. I and I have taken several pictures through the train window.

What will I do now? Hm.. I am going to read the Bible (in French, of course!)

[that was the end of the journal]

About half an hour later I realized that the train was still late. In fact, we got to the train station almost 25 minutes late. Fortunately I still got all of the metro and RER connections I needed without any problems and was able to walk home from the RER station under a clear sky. I finally walked in the door at about 1 am. I ate some corn bread, washed up, and finally crashed at about 2 AM. I then slept until 12:30 today, which honestly surprised me.

In conclusion, I was able to meet with the man I wanted to meet with and we had a very good conversation. Even if it was not a journey I would care to repeat, God got me where I needed to be and kept me safe.

*note: Most of the journal was actually written at 10:57 as if I had been writing it at the time. It starts with the *ahem.* Then, when I translated into English I changed some parts of it a little. I know you probably don't care, but I feel obliged to tell you anyway :-)

MMMmm!

I surprised myself in the kitchen tonight. So here's what I did.

-Dump some flour in a bowl. Maybe about a cup and a half.
-Sprinkle some salt on the pile of flour (1 tsp?)
-Splash some water into the bowl. NOT TOO MUCH! The goal is to get all of the flour into one big ball, but it should not be at all sticky.
-Cover with a wet plate (because I didn't have a wet towel) and let stand for 10ish minutes.
-Turn on oven to something between not hot and really hot. It was about halfway.
-Grease up a cookie sheet with butter.
-After 10 minutes, roll out the lump so it's kinda thin but not super thin. A rolling pin works best for this but I didn't feel like washing a rolling pin, so I used a drinking glass. Then put it on the cookie sheet.
-Use a fork to poke a bunch of little holes in it so it doesn't puff up as it bakes.
-Put it in the oven!
-Now we have a dilemma. What we have done so far, as near as I can tell, is made unleavened bread. Or a fat tortilla, if you prefer. But what should we do with it? Here's what I did:
Find the finest flour you can get your hands on. The stuff I used was probably almost more like corn starch. Mix a little bit of this with a little bit of water and a bunch of sour cream. Or you can use milk and a little butter rather than sour cream and water, but I didn't have any milk. Also add into this concoction some Basil and- most importantly- something HOT! I have "pimente forte," which if I remember right is primarily Cayenne and Chili peppers in powder form. I used... um... quite a bit of it.
-Once the stuff in the oven has been hanging out in there for about 5 minutes or so, take it out and pour on the new concoction. Stick it back in the oven.
-After 5 minutes, take it back out and put on lots of grated cheese. Stick it back in and leave it there until the cheese browns nicely.
-VIOLA! Homemade white-sauce cheese pizza. Or something like that. Completely without any recipe, too, which always adds to the fun.

PATRICK

"I entreat those who believe in and fear God ... that nobody shall ever ascribe to my ignorance any trivial thing that I achieved or may have expounded that was pleasing to God, but accept and truly believe that it would have been the gift of God."

As I read about St. Patrick, I am left in awe of all that God did in and through him. I will attempt here to set forth a relatively brief summary of Patrick's life, using largely his own testimony.

"I, Patrick, a sinner, a most simple countryman, the least of all the faithful and most contemptible to many" was born in 385 to a deacon in the Catholic church in Gaul (Great Britain). Despite the Godly influence of his father, he followed the majority of his countrymen in rejecting God. He writes that when he was 16, "I was taken into captivity in Ireland with many thousands of people, according to our desserts, for quite drawn away from God, we did not keep his precepts, nor were we obedient to our priests who used to remind us of our salvation."

The young boy was taken to Ireland and sold as a slave to a chief named Milcho. He was placed in charge of the sheep and had many hours of solitude. This was much to his advantage in one sense, because "there the Lord opened my mind to an awareness of my unbelief, in order that, even so late, I might remember my transgressions and turn with all my heart to the Lord my God." He did not have anyone to train him out there, but he spent as much time as he could talking directly to God. " I used to pray many times a day. More and more did the love of God, and my fear of him and faith increase, and my spirit was moved so that in a day [I said] from one up to a hundred prayers, and in the night a like number; besides I used to stay out in the forests and on the mountain and I would wake up before daylight to pray in the snow,in icy coldness, in rain, and I used to feel neither ill nor any slothfulness, because, as I now see, the Spirit was burning in me at that time."

One night, after about 6 years, as he slept he heard a voice telling him that he would soon depart for his home country and that his ship was ready. He escaped from his captor and made a 200 mile journey through unknown territory to the coast "by the power of God who directed my route to advantage (I was afraid of nothing), until I reached that ship." Just for context, 200 miles would take 2 3/4 hours in a car on the freeway. That's about the distance between Minneapolis and Alexandria, and Patrick walked it without having any clue where he was going. After a journey that possibly took months, Patrick arrived on the exact day that the ship was leaving.

He asked to go aboard but the steersman refused. Patrick turned around and started to pray. Before he had finished, he heard one of the men shouting after him, "Come quickly because the men are calling you." So he boarded the ship.

Three days later they reached land and started walking. 28 days later they still hadn't reached civilization and their food ran out. The steersman, who apparently still didn't want Patrick along, started to mock him. "You say your God is great and all-powerful; then why can you not pray for us? ... it is unlikely indeed that we shall ever see another human being." Patrick, who had evidently been preaching to his crew mates for last month, replied, "Be converted by faith with all your heart to my Lord God, because nothing is impossible for him, so that today he will send food for you on your road, until you be sated, because everywhere he abounds." Sure enough, within a short time a heard of pigs wandered across the road and the crew was saved. It was just in time, because many of the men had recently fainted and would have been left beside the road to die. For the rest of the journey the crew had food.

That very same night as Patrick was sleeping "Satan attacked me violently... and there fell on top of me as it were, a huge rock, and not one of my members had any force." Patrick did not know what to do, but called out. He writes "I believe that I was aided by Christ my Lord, and that his Spirit then was crying out for me." He quotes from scripture, "In that hour, the Lord declares, 'it is not you who speaks but the Spirit of your Father speaking in you.'"

After 10 days the crew reached civilization, just as they were about to run out of food again. Patrick returned home, though historians believe that most of his immediate family had been killed in the raid. His kinsfolk asked him to never leave again. He had not intention to! But then he received a vision...

TO BE CONTINUED!

Just for funzies

On Tuesday we had a comprehension exercise that was hard to comprehend. Not so much because of the French, but because of the exercise. You can find it in French here:

http://ecole.toussaint.free.fr/lafouine/lafouine.htm
Click on "par numéro" and then choose #56.

This is one of those classic who-done-it stories that often have flaky endings. My dad thoroughly enjoys reading them, deliberating on them for several minutes, reading the answer, and grumbling loudly and with much feeling about how the given answer is far too simplistic. I also enjoy this past time. This story, however, is a little too much for me.

It is copyrighted, so I can't translate and repost it here in English. However, you can copy and paste it into google translator at

http://translate.google.com/

and I will correct the errors that will come up :-)

The biggest one is that Google translator sometimes translates names into English equivalents and sometimes doesn't. The characters in this story are Lafouine (the inspector), Jean, Louis, Benoit, Paul, and Lawrence

1) The French have no word for "it." They use the word for he or she. Google translator therefore sometimes translates he or she as "it," as in the start of the second sentence.

2) The four people with his phone number are Lewis, Benedict, Paul, and Lawrence.

3) You will notice that French is often backwards. "You know all of them?"

4) He gave Paul his phone number, not his actual phone.

5) Louis - "I have got nothing to do with this story [...] it was me who picked up the phone [when it rang]."

6) Benois (Benedict) - "he must have been gone." Also, the proper translation would be, "I certainly did call Jean..."

7) Lawrence, who is mute, used signs...

"Lafouine found the culprit"

... but I haven't. What a convoluted mess! If Louis was at Jean's house, why didn't Jean say so? And why on earth did he mention Louis as one of the people who had his number? If Laurent is really mute, why would Jean have included his name as one who could have called and made a death threat? The stories of Benoit and Paul do almost nothing for us unless we get a chance to corner Jean again, because I'm pretty sure he looks like the most suspicious one of the lot! Louis isn't the brightest bulb in the pack either to say he has nothing to do with the story and then follow it up by saying that he is the one who picked up the phone.

So, you tell me. With what we've got, is there any possible way to explain their responses? I'm thinking several of them are guilty of attempting some kind of plot and failed to communicate with each other what their story was going to be. If that is the case, which of them are innocent?

Patrick.

I am having a really unproductive day. On the upside, it has been very inspiring. I have been reading about St. Patrick. I first read through what he had to be said about himself. You can find an English translation of the original Latin here.

Then, on the same website, there is a very interesting account of his life written in 1945. There are many legends surrounding Patrick, so it is hard to know how much of it is true and how much has been created in legend in the last 1500 years. But I would consider it much more accurate then most of the legends floating around on the internet. Much of it is supported, if very briefly, by Patrick's own writing. You can find the story here.

There is a really good chance I will be posting a summary of Patrick's life and some reflections later today. But I have a lot to do, so it might not happen until tomorrow. Or this weekend. :-)

All of Paris

I took these from the Arch de Triomphe last Sunday after church. It was the last free Sunday for the Arch until next fall, so I'm glad it was nice and sunny! It took 3 panos- one of the east side, which is the middle of Paris, one of the newer part of Paris, and one all the way around. First, the one all the way around. Because the arch has a big old structure in the middle of it (the arch is huge) I couldn't stand on the very middle. Therefore the all-the-way-around picture was impossible. My software did the best it could. You get the general idea, despite one of the streets showing up twice and another one being almost blotted out.


Here is the new part of Paris, with a modern arch


And here is the most interesting part, old Paris. Click on the photo to make it bigger so you can see the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, the National Opera, the Sacré Coeur, the Grand Palais, The Champs D'Elysee (right down the middle), the Louvre, and the American Church in Paris.


I have taken cropped portions of the full-sized pano as well. Here is the Sacré Coeur:


And the National Opera of Paris (it's the tall building in the middle of the picture sitting at an angle with the pointy roof):


The Champs Elysees with the Louvre on the end. If you look very carefully you can also see the smaller arch de triomphe (du carouselle?) in the courtyard, so to speak, of the Louvre. It kind of looks like a huge front door:


Just to the right of the Louvre you can see the glass roof of the grand palais. If you look just above the left side of the roof you can see the two towers of Notre Dame and the steeple poking up between them. On the other side of the picture you can see the dome of the Senate building:


This picture also has three objects. The most obvious one is the tour Montparnasse, which the Parisians hate for obvious reasons. After it was built, Paris banned subsequent skyscrappers from being built in this part of town. To the lower left you can see the dome of the chapel at Les Invalides. Napoleon is buried there. In front of the dome is a spiky steeple. I'm quite sure that belongs to the American Church in Paris, the first American church on European soil. They still have services in English. Though I've never actually gone there myself, I've heard it is good. The building is very pretty, right on the bank of the Seine.

Conjugation

Last week's conjugation contest ended in a three way tie. We all got one wrong. Thank you to H for forgetting the accent circonflex on "plaît" or K and I would have had to do a tie-breaker! A tie-breaker consists of randomly choosing a verb out of the book that we have never studied and guessing at the conjugations.
K and I made the same mistake- and it was a bizarre one. We both conjugated the participe passé of "vivre" as "veçu." That isn't even remotely close. The correct conjugation is "vécu." Okay, to an American that looks close, but it isn't. I think we both messed up like that because last week we studied "recevoir," which has "reçu" for its paricipe passé. Anyway, you now feel like you just read an article about a Scrabble tournament. My apologies.

Scrub-A-Dub

Do you ever think back to when you were a child? Today I was transported in my thoughts through time and space- and into the bathtub at our old house. My brother and I were in there together, racing cars up down each others backs and doling out dramatic nautical deaths to the passengers of our toy boats. They should have known better than to navigate so close to the treacherous coast!

I don't think it occurred to either of us that a bathtub is meant for getting clean. Every time we hopped in the tub mom would toss a wash cloth at each of us with the soap and say, "Don't forget to scrub yourself at some point." We probably did, but I don't remember it. I do remember that the washcloths, when not being wasted on hygienic missions, made excellent bogs. They would float like an island on the water until an unsuspecting victim stepped out onto them. Then SHOOOP!!! down they'd go, like quicksand. Mwahahaha! Washcloths were also good for at least one water fight each bath.

When the summer Olympics were on my brother and I would each kidnap an unsuspecting Fischer-Price person and have diving competitions. The scoring was based on a combination of how many times they turned around in the air, how big a splash they made when they landed, and how much they clunked when they hit the bottom of the tub.

Probably our favorite bathtub activity was laying on our backs with our ears under the water. If you closed your eyes you were instantly transported into a parallel universe with bizarre hums and moans and whirrs. Only our flotilla of toys clanking endlessly against the sides of the tub reminded us where we were. We didn't like being reminded where we were, so we tossed the drippy things overboard (mom and dad could never quite understand how we managed to get all that water on the floor) and then tried to lay as quietly as possible in the tub.

This, of course, aroused the suspicion of our mother. No one was pleading with the sea monsters for his life. No one was getting all 6s and a 4.5 from the Russian judge. Surely something was amiss. So she would call through the door the line that she inherited from Eve, "Don't forget to wash behind your ears!" We would giggle, not so much because of all the parts on a little boy's body she was worried about the backsides of our ears, but because when we were listening underwater it sounded like she was talking through a toilet paper tube into a milkshake.

Sooner or later the dreaded would occur: the water would stagnate. Sometimes this would be a gradual thing. We had a rather leaky drain stopper and we helped it out at regular intervals to lower the tides, either to accomodate larger hurricanes without incurring parental hurricanes on account of the overflow, or to give us an excuse to add more hot water. But we could only add hot water so many times before the soap was completely diluted. Eventually the whole tub felt like it contained the nastiness that used to be on us. Sometimes, before my brother was potty-trained, the stagnation of the water would be much more sudden and jarring. We would be lying there on our backs, in our parallel universe, and suddenly I would realize that we had company.

All good things come to an end. Each of our baths did, and unfortunately close in chronology to our bed times. Kind of a double-whamy. I don't remember when our last bath together was. We eventually were lured into the concept of showers. You can sell a kid almost anything for the sake of novelty. What a rotten deal. Some people dream of mansions and cars and islands. For me, when I retire I hope I can go back to taking baths.

The Lamb who was slain

I have started reading a devotional in French each day. One of them caught my attention early this week, so I went ahead and translated it.

"In antiquity, the edicts of kings were sealed. When someone opened the seals in order to read the edict it was a very solemn proceeding. In the last book of the Bible, The Apocalypse (Revelation), a question is posed: "Who is worthy to open the book" that is in the right hand of God, sealed with 7 seals? This book contains the divine decree indicating the judgments that will fall upon unbelieving humanity. It's content has long been concealed. With patience, God was waiting for men to come to Him. But the moment has come to exercise His judgments, to prepare the arrival of His kingdom.
The book must be opened by someone qualified to do so. No one can open the book nor look in it. Who can, if not God himself, proclaim the end of the period of the Gospel of Grace and the commencement of judgment? A voice said, "The Lion of the tribe of Judah, the root of David, has overcome to open the book." The only one who could open the book was the Lord Jesus. He appeared in the middle of the throne in the form of a lamb who had been slain. The lamb of God: this title says that Jesus suffered and that he died on the cross, rejected by men, carrying the sins of many. Now Jesus is the judge. He alone is worthy. Why? Only the perfect man who never sinned can judge guilty men; but above all, before being the judge, He demonstrated his love: He gave his life for those who accept him." [1]

This was the day after I read Psalm 76:7-11 "You, even you, are to be feared; and who may stand in your presence when once you are angry? You have caused judgment to be heard from heaven; the earth feared and was still when God arose to judgment, to save all the humble of the humble of the earth. For the wrath of man shall praise you; with a remnant of wrath You will gird yourself. Make vows to the Lord your God and fulfill them; Let all who are around Him bring gifts to Him who is to be feared. He will cut off the spirit of princes; He is feared by the kings of the earth." (NASB)

Then, in Bible study, we talked about the parable of the vineyard. The man leading the Bible study was trying to get us to contemporize it and apply it to our lives. I was getting more out of it for what Jesus originally intended it to be. It is in Mathew, the gospel written to the Jews. Jesus is addressing it to the Jewish religious leaders- the guardians of the the faith. In the story, a king puts his vineyard in the care of a certain group of stewards. When the time for the harvest has come, He sends servants to collect the harvest from the workers. Rather than complying, the workers beat the servants or kill them. Finally the king sends his own son, thinking that certainly they wouldn't dare to touch his son. But they kill the son also, guided by the deranged logic that somehow the king will allow them to inherit the property in place of the son. Jesus then asks his audience what will happen to this unspeakably cruel tenants. They say that the king will surely come and kill them all, and give the vineyard to others.

Jesus then proceeds to make it very clear that He is the son and they are the tenants. God set apart his vineyard, His kingdom on earth, in the people of Israel. It was they who carried His name and the messianic line. They seemed determined to ignore God but He would not give up on them because of His grace and His faithfulness to the promises He had made to Adam, Abraham, Issac, and Jacob, and David. He sent his servants, the prophets. The people killed them. More specifically, the leaders of the people generally did the killing. It was as if they thought themselves more powerful than God. They wanted to replace God's plan with their own. They wanted to take over the vineyard and take the fruit themselves (the honor and glory and praise, most specifically).

Finally, God sent his son. Sure enough, the very men to whom Jesus was talking thought that if they got rid of Him, they would be able to maintain their control over the people of Israel. So they killed Him. And, lest I point a finger, I must remember that it was my sins that killed Him as well. Then what happened? Did the king kill the wicked tenants? No. He didn't (at least not immediately) because He is God, and He is merciful. But He did give the vineyard to others. This story is now, without allegorizing or modernizing or contemporizing, directly about the modern church. We are a part of the vineyard, and we are accoutable for it. God cares deeply and personally about His kingdom and we dare not treat it lightly.

The Son who was dead is now alive and powerful beyond imagination, the firstborn of the resurrection. He is not just a nice guy who did nice stuff once upon a time. May we live in respectful observation that "He who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; but on whomever it falls, it will scatter him like dust." (NASB)


[1]La Bonne Semence 2009, 3 mars (back side of the 2 mars page -NL le 25 PQ le 04 61-304 2009)
La Bonne Semence - 30, rue Châteauvert BP 335 26003 VALENCE

Pictures!

Yay! My friend sent pictures from the night at her house. Sadly, my face isn't in any of them. My hand is, however! Here is my hand in the process of creating a rhinoceros along with my teammate.

Here is the rhino, all said and done.

Not bad, considering we were moving fast, had to alternate laying pieces, and weren't allowed to table talk. That last rule was helpful for me, I think, because I can't table talk quickly in French anyway!

This picture was taken from right next to me, so I'm not in it :-(

For people who like speed and such

Here is a link to a YouTube video from a camera attached to an Olympic skier doing the 2002 Olympic Downhill course (Grizzly, in Salt Lake City). Despite going 90 mph at the finish, he gives a running commentary the entire way"



And here is a Skeleton helmet cam. Notice how the g-forces on the corners push his head down. How on earth do they react fast enough to steer?



And here is luge: