In Barcelona

Hello all, I just wanted to put up a short post saying that I made it safely to Barcelona. We had a beautiful five-hour bus ride from Montpellier to Barcelona this morning, during which I was too excited to sleep more than a couple minutes. This afternoon we checked into our hostel, which, other than its name, blows the Peace and Love out of the water on all fronts -- friendliness, facilities, space, price, character. If you plan on visiting Barcelona anytime soon, I´d love to pass on the name and address.

You might be wondering who I´m referring to with this first person plural pronoun business. My American friend, Parham, and I are staying in this hostel; my two Polish friends, Aneta and Alexandra, will be staying in this hostel starting tomorrow night; and my friend Sarah is staying in another hostel in town. We´re going to hit the sight-seeing scene hard tomorrow, so I better go get some sleep -- perhaps after one more stroll around the neighborhood.

-your man in Spain

Alive and Well and Active

Okay, calm down everyone. There's no need to send me hundreds and hundreds of urgent emails at 3 in the morning (your time, not mine) pleading for me to put up another blog post. I know it's been a little while since I've posted on here, but come on, be reasonable!


Well, it's not exactly true that I've received hundreds of emails asking for more blog posts. Come to think of it, I haven't received one such email. Still, I'd like to think that there are at least a few frequent readers out there, and to those members of my audience, I apologize for the two weeks that have gone by since my last post. One of the conundrums not only of blog-writing but of writing in general is that it's an act done in solitude which concerns the world at large. The man who stays in his room writing all day won't have much to say, and the man who constantly experiences the vastness of life will never settle down and write. For someone in a foreign country for five short months that are already flying by, I am face to face with this conundrum perhaps for the first time. My blog posts have become less frequent, and so have my journal entries. I've integrated to one degree or another into a new culture, a new society, with new people to meet and new places to visit and new sights to see. If some time passes between my blog posts, then, don't worry. You can pretty safely bet that it's because I'm experiencing life in Europe, life in Montpellier -- and how much richer my blog posts will be because of that!


So what have I been experiencing? Here's my Top 5 experiences of the past several weeks, not really in any particular order:

5. Sports. I've been playing basketball a couple times a week with some people that live in Vert Bois, my dorm community. The founding fathers of these pick-up games were Parham, an American who's become one of my better friends here, and Bertrand and Sylvain, two guys from Cameroon. Parham played for a year at his college, and he's an absolute powerhouse, often driving to the hoop against three defenders. Bertrand is also good and plays quite physically. It seems like every time we play something bad happens to Bertrand. The first time, his watch broke; the second time, his shoes started coming apart. There was one day he got elbowed three times in the face, got a finger in his eye, got hit in the stomach, and to top it off, after we were done playing an errant ball landed square on his head. We all felt bad for him yet couldn't help but laugh at his unlikely misfortune.


In addition to basketball, I've also been playing Frisbee. As strange as it may sound, there's actually an Ultimate class here at the university. Apparently students have something called an "Option," kind of like an elective. A French student told me that for l'Option, they can choose between a foreign language class and a sports class. That's quite the option. Anyway, I go to the class to play, but I'm not taking it for credit. Ultimate is worlds more popular in the US than it is in France. When I tell people I play Ultimate, they usually have no idea what I'm saying, and it's not because of my accent. However, there are some decent players here, and in fact, we are going to play in France's national university tournament in Lyon in a few weeks. The university is paying for our lodging and food for two days; all we have to pay for is gas money. So I guess I'm a sponsored Ultimate player in France. Not bad.

4. People of the world. I believe I've already mentioned on my blog that Montpellier is a diverse city. While I realized this the first week I moved here, I still marvel at how many different responses I get when I ask people where they're from. The other night we had a potluck sort of dinner in my dorm, a very frequent event. We probably packed over twenty people into a kitchen with no opening windows, a social and sweaty arrangement. As usual, there were people from all sorts of countries there. In this picture are (from left to right) Bertrand the Baller from Cameroon, Rachel from Manhattan, Kansas, a French girl with a weird name I can't remember, Karien from Louisiana, and Constanza (Sp?) from Italy.








Here we have Parham making a goofy face (as he often does). I won't name everyone in the background, but there is another American, some British folks, my friend Katarina from Slovakia, a French girl, some Italians, an Iranian, and maybe my friend Anna from Mexico hiding behind Parham.

As I'm typing this, I hope it doesn't seem that I'm trying to flaunt this diversity, like the ethnic equivalent of name-dropping. It's simply delightful to know people from such diverse backgrounds, and equally delightful to be unified with all of them through the French language. And another plus is that the Italians usually do the cooking for everyone. That night Lucas made some delicious rice dish with slices of fried zucchini. Delicious!



3. Conversation. I actually feel like a decent conversationalist in French now. The typical conversation with a new acquaintance covers name, country or city of origin, if he or she is a student, year in school, mutual friends, what he or she is doing later that night, and an exchange of phone numbers. Other than exchanging phone numbers -- which is really quite common here for some reason, even with people you might not intend to call -- these are generally the same components of basic English conversation in the US. I encounter and re-encounter these same topics almost daily, yet I continue to delight in them for the mere fact that they're in French. I'm actually speaking to people in French! Sometimes I realize mid-conversation how cool that is, that years of mostly theoretical learning has become entirely practical. And I do have more significant conversations than mere chit-chat. Last weekend, for instance, I went to a house party with my friend Anthony, and I talked to the same two girls until four in the morning. By that point I was about ready to die of exhaustion, but it was certainly worth the effort and lack of sleep.


2. Funky Musak. A few nights ago we went to l'Antirouille, a bar/music venue mostly known for reggae. The first night we got there really late and missed the main act, but we stuck around and danced to the DJ's music. The next night, though, we made it for most of the show. It was a fundraiser concert for Haiti, and it featured hip-hop, reggae, folk, funk, and rock. The band in these pictures was from Senegal, and the guy on bongos was out of his mind.

Last night we went to a bar called La Pleine Lune (Full Moon) where there is a gypsy jazz night every Sunday. Gypsy jazz sounds to me like a mix between swing and Spanish or latin music. The instrumentation was bass, electric guitar (with a rather acoustic sound, though), an acoustic guitar, and a violin. Apparently some of the musicians actually are gypsies, and you can see them playing in the downtown center square sometimes. It's been fun discovering the musical side of Montpellier. I found out last night that The Cranberries are coming to town, and I know that there is an upcoming performance of Carl Orff's Carmina Burana at the opera house.



1. God. If it's not obvious, I feel much more comfortable and settled now than I did the first few weeks in France. As I alluded to earlier in this post, the turbulence of the first leg of my trip prompted a rather prolific amount of writing on my part. What's more, it prompted me to lean on God more than perhaps ever in my life. Every moment of those first weeks felt like a lesson in humility and trust, as if I was walking in utter darkness and yet could be totally sure of my steps because I knew who was with me. I have the impression now that that darkness has lifted. I do wonder, though, if it is anything more than an impression, an illusion, this restored self-confidence. I think we are wholly dependent on the Lord every single second of our lives, even if we feel in control most of the time. I believed that -- at least theoretically -- before I came to Montpellier, and I believe it more strongly now.


Yet the illusion of control is often quite convincing. Now that I know the city better, now that my French is improving, now that I know where to go to church, where to get my groceries, how to access the school intranet, now that I have contacts in my cell phone and euros in my French bank account; it seems as if I can loosen my grip on the Lord's cloak, that I can stop clinging. On the one hand I am thankful for some stability; on the other hand I am wary of trusting myself. And even as my life here has settled a bit, the Lord has continued to bless me on a daily basis. Basketball with Bertrand, friends from all over the world, legitimate French conversations, great live music -- these highlights didn't start with me or my will. Even if I don't feel the need for God as strongly as I did several weeks ago, I am no less sure of His presence and His goodness.


In just over five hours I'll be leaving to catch a bus to Barcelona. I've never been to Spain, and I hardly speak a word of Spanish; maybe I will feel once again how small and desperately dependent I am. Whatever happens there, though, count on one thing -- our Constant -- and expect some more stories on this blog once I get back. My love to all of you.

Ski Trip (no joke)

I had a rather eventful few days here in southern France this past weekend. Now that I'm sitting down to write about it, I realize that I need to get better at taking my camera with me when I do cool things. Darn. Luckily I do have a few pictures, and for those moments that went uncaptured, I guess it's a good thing I'm a writing major. Descriptive abilities, fire at will!

[first unphotographed event] Friday night a group of six or so made dinner together in my dorm. The kitchen on my floor is right across the hall from my room, which makes cooking quite convenient. It also means that I am the go-to guy for cooking supplies, a responsibility I enjoy; it's really my only way to express hospitality here. We had quite the mélange of food: some left-over soup/casserole thing I made the other night with lentils and white beans and angel-hair pasta which we affectionately dubbed "angel guts;" some spaghetti with ham, onion, and sauce; baguettes with roquefort and brie; scrambled eggs; really cheap German beer (39 cents for a half-pint; I don't know how that compares in the US, but here that is ludicrous); and hot chocolate made with actual chocolate. A savory evening by all accounts.

[second unphotographed event] We ate and talked and lounged until after 11. It's common here for a meal shared with others to take a long time. It never feels like it takes a long time, though. It doesn't feel like it takes any time at all, in fact; it feels like it gives you time, time to enjoy food, enjoy friends, enjoy life. I've heard a lot of people talk about the difference in conception of time between the US and other countries, notably those of Latin America. For the first time in my life I'm able to actually experience that difference, and it really is a special thing to enjoy the presence of others without worrying about or even considering how much time passes. And what a great word that is, "enjoy." In my opinion (or perhaps just my limited body of knowledge) there isn't a great translation of "enjoy" in French. You can say "have pleasure," "take pleasure," "profit from," "amuse yourself," "be entertained," "like," and "love," but not exactly "enjoy." The word seems incarnational to me: let joy be born into whatever you're doing.

[third unphotographed event] After all the food and conversation, my friends Rachel, David, and Romain and I decided to go out and try this place called La Couleur de Bière (The Color of Beer). It almost instantly became one of my favorite spots in the city. It's not downtown like most hangouts are, so it seemed more "local" than other bars or breweries I've been to. La Couleur features beers from all over the world -- yes, even selling Michelob, Miller, and Budweiser (yet, sorry to say, Colorado, no Coors). There were easily two hundred options. The beer expert I am, I chose a 10.5% Belgian beer on the merit that it's name translated to "Golden Dragon." Between the four of us we tasted beers from Belgium, Poland, Brazil, Australia, and -- in my opinon the best -- Quebec. The place was packed, so we drank outside among a diverse array of beer bottles and beer drinkers, including a group with a tambourine and a love for French drinking songs.

[fourth unphotographed event] My friend Sarah had arranged for a Frisbee game the next day. The five of us that went were disappointed at our low numbers, but after a while a group of about ten guys wanting to play soccer showed up and we played with them almost the entire afternoon. When I got back to my dorm I was happy and sore, and as I unlocked my door, my neighbor David asked if I wanted to go skiing with him, Romain, and Rachel (my beer buddies) the next day. And thus the fifth unphotographed event.

Actually, I did take a few pictures. That night we stayed at Romain's house in a little town called Sauve, located northeast of Montpellier. It was fantastic to stay at a French home. French television, French kitchen appliances, French art -- you can't really duplicate it in the US. You especially can't duplicate French Simpsons. The voice they use for Marge is horrendously coarse, and a good number of the jokes simply don't make sense to a French audience. Even if it was a bit strange to watch The Simpsons with French dubbing, I delighted in every little detail of that house. We could've sat around watching the weather channel all night and I would have been happy. All the commercials for perfume and cologne, the 26 old volumes on each of France's regions, the nude photographs displayed in the bathroom, the automatic yet delicate manner by which Romain rolled his cigarettes, the kitchen table next to the window looking onto the rolling hills and mountains of Les Cevennes -- I loved every bit!

Here is the kitchen. The photo doesn't capture how wonderfully quaint it is, but let me put it this way: the kitchen was wonderfully quaint. Notice the Nutella on the table. I sure did.

To the right is a picture of the house. His parents built it about 30 years ago. Their town, their street, and their property all bespeak peacefulness.

And to the left is the view from their back yard.

[fifth unphotographed event] We left on Sunday morning for the slopes. I should explain that the mountains of Les Cevennes are certainly no Alps. They're mountains, and there's snow, but in terms of grandeur they can't compare to Colorado. One big plus of its small size, however, is the effect on the price. To rent all the equipment I needed and to ski for the day cost 18 euros. That's ridiculous. On the slopes I rediscovered something that I had learned as a kid: skiing is freaking fun! When I tell people I'm from Colorado, they often ask me if I ski, and I say no, and they say, "No way!", and I say, "Well...", and they say, "Get out of town!", and I explain that I skied as a kid when my family paid for me, but that I stopped when I got to an age where I'd have to pay for myself. I'm not even sure that's true, but it's just what I've always told people. On my first run on Sunday, though, I seriously questioned why the heck I'd stopped skiing. It's beautiful, active, liberating, and thrilling. Of course, when I tried the first blue, I remembered part of the reason I might have stopped skiing: it's also freaking scary! I only fell a couple times the whole day, though, and I was so glad I'd said yes to the invitation.

[Okay, so it wasn't an entirely unphotographed event. This was where we rented our equipment. As you can see, it was a really nice day.]

[sixth and final unphotographed event] And what better way to top of a weekend with friends than to watch the Super Bowl at midnight with French commentators and no commercials? Well, that's not exactly what happened, because we were too tired at halftime to stay up for the rest of the game. The next morning, Romain and I got up before David and Rachel. We'd stayed at Romain's house one more night than we'd planned because David was too tired to drive back, but I didn't really mind missing my Grammar and Geography classes. I heard plenty of correct grammatical usage on the TV, and I had my own personal geography lesson in Les Cevennes. Romain -- who had never watched American football before this year's Super Bowl -- got out his computer to see who won the game. "Oh," he said as he read the article. "And which team was New Orleans again?"

Enfin, un étudiant étranger

Between this post and last week's post, I became a French student. I've been looking forward to my studies in a French university since I was a junior in high school, and given all that anticipation, French classes are turning out to be just okay. After all, school is school. A student has to go to class, listen, read, absorb, work hard; for the most part it's neither exciting nor novel, two words that aptly describe all the other aspects of my trip so far.

I think part of the let-down stems from the general indifference of French students and even professors. Most (or perhaps all?) French students go to university with significant financial support from the government. While this may help university enrollment numbers, it also means that a lot of French students don't care all that much about their studies. (I suppose the same phenomenon of indifference happens in the US, but it seems to occur even when the students' or the students' families are paying for college from their own pockets. I've never been able to understand how someone could pay 15, 20, or 30 grand a year just to slack off, party, and drop out.) People show up late pretty regularly, and only the students near the front of the class listen attentively to the professor; the ones in the back feel free to talk to one another, occasionally even picking up a cell phone call as if class were taking place at a bus stop. The weirdest thing is that most professors don't do anything about it. They simply keep on talking, apparently unperturbed by the many conversations going on among the audience members. Of course I take the students' talking as a sign of disrespect, but based on the professors' reactions, it's completely normal.


All that to say, I have not entered into the most serious or competitive of academic environments. And that's fine with me. I've decided to take only integrated courses, that is, courses that French students take. There were some other options: a set of classes taught in French but designed for exchange students; some basic French grammar classes also created with non-native speakers in mind; and, as some exchange students have opted to do, I could have enrolled in an English class here. Always in pursuit of cultural and language immersion, though, I knew the best experience would be in the integrated courses. Since these will be fundamentally challenging because of language difficulties, I'm perfectly okay with a somewhat less rigorous university setting.

Due to an odd registration system that allows students to try out courses for the first two weeks, I actually don't know for sure which classes I'll be taking this semester. A few that I'm pretty sure of are a comparative literature class focusing (separately) on the fairy tales of Charles Perrault and the story of the return of the prodigal son; a poetry class about contemporary French poets, namely Philippe Jacottet; a grammar and phonetics class; and a philosophy class on Spinoza's Ethics (l'Ethique). The last slot could be Geography of France, History of Music: The Modern Period, or maybe something else entirely.

One convenient feature of French classes is that there is a small amount of reading and an even smaller amount of homework. Besides my grammar class, I will probably only have one or perhaps two assignments for the whole semester, in addition to a test. On the one hand, this will allow me to take the time to understand what I'm reading. On the other hand, it will require a good deal of discipline on my part to continue studying in the face of so little accountability. I think it could be quite easy to let my classes go by the wayside in exchange for a leisurely semester in Montpellier, or in exchange for more communication with friends back home, or in exchange for all sorts of things. I recently wrote in my journal (in which I've been writing almost every day -- my thanks to Hanna Griffing for making it for me. Of course, that journal is one reason I don't write more on this blog; it harbors the majority of my reflective and creative impulses.) about what sort of experience I want in the next four months: "Do I want the European experience, traveling as much as possible, seeking out adventure? Do I want the French academic experience, excelling in my classes? The international student experience, bonding with other foreigners and making all sorts of transnational ties? The Montpellier experience, becoming an expert of the city and a friend of French folk? Sometimes I feel torn."

If my life -- or just life in general -- were as simple as one of Perrault's fairy tales, I would either make a bad decision or a good one as to what kind of experience I wanted, and after all was said and done there would be a neat little moral in verse. I'll be sure to post that moral once I figure it out.

Boring Stuff

Don't worry -- there's a reason for the smiley cookies. Those little guys, as seen on the package, are called BN. I have no idea what BN stands for ("Biscuit National?" -- National Cookie?), but I am certain of one thing: they are quite tasty. Not only are their strawberry jelly insides delicious and nutritious, but they also represent my welcome to Montpellier. The first night I got here I was starving, so I got a quiche (another food I've found I really enjoy) and a box of these from a store down the street. They provided the sustenance and comfort that I needed so badly after a tough day of travel. Furthermore, I appreciated their weird little smiles. Some of them even wink at you.

BN cookies are rather plain -- not the flavor of BN cookies, mind you, but the subject matter of BN cookies. It is, however, largely in the plain things of life that life takes on meaning. In my displacement the last two weeks I have found this to be true over and over again. The way people drive is different here, the hats they wear, their mannerisms on the tram, their method of grocery shopping. It's all boring stuff to them, I'm sure, but to me every detail of normal French life warrants the closest of examination. Their culture consists almost entirely of boring stuff! (So, too, does ours. I think I will have a much greater appreciation for the little idiosyncrasies of our culture when I return to the states.) In light of this newfound appreciation for the great value of normal things, I want to dedicate this post mainly to explaining what my normal, day-to-day life is like in Montpellier.

First of all, you should know where Montpellier is. It's almost directly south of Paris, all the way to the Mediterranean Sea. It's located in the Languedoc-Roussillon region of France. I believe Montpellier is the 8th-largest city in France, with somewhere between 500,000 and 600,000 people in the metropolitan area. It doesn't feel like a big, bustling city, but it does sprawl a good deal. There are two tram lines and many bus routes, and I bought a pass to use either mode of transportation as much as I want. The city is home to the three branches of Montpellier University -- the law and business school, the school of science, and the school of arts, letters, and humanities -- which have a total of about 50,000 students. Because of this high number of students, demographically speaking it's a very young city. Taking the tram at night, people 40 and over are typically a minority.

As you can imagine, then, this is a lively place. The night life especially is very active. I've gone out a number of times, and I've had fun on every occasion. "Going out" is not something I'm accustomed to doing. At Whitworth, especially having been on leadership the past two years, most activities seem to take place on campus. And in Denver, my friends usually prefer hanging out at someone's house rather than going out. The drinking age makes a big difference, too. Up until this year, the adult night life has been mostly off-limits to me and my peers. Here, however, bars are the place to be at night. I'd guess there are 50 bars downtown, in addition to cafes and clubs or discotheques where people would drink.

And people sure do drink. Every time I've gone out at night I've seen at least a couple people totally drunk, stumbling down the streets or falling face-first onto them. Two nights ago I went out with some Americans, my neighbor David and his French friend, and some other French people. This guy, Thomas -- who was already drunk before we left -- kept telling me how much he loved alcohol. As we got off the tram at La Comedie, the downtown tram stop, he smiled stupidly and pronounced proudly in very French-sounding English, "I am an alcoholic." Thomas was quite funny, actually, and I didn't mind at all hanging out with him. On the other hand, I am completely unattracted to the lifestyle he leads. I asked my American friend, Anthony, how often he and his friends went out last semester. "Pretty much every night," he told me in all seriousness. My immediate reaction to such a notion is a financial concern. The cheapest beer usually costs at least 3 euros, and any other drink will be more like 6 or 7 euros; that's 10 euros a night (if you drink conservatively), times 7 nights a week, times twenty-some weeks in Montpellier; then you think of the dollar-euro exchange right nowadays, and you have yourself quite the investment. But even if it was all free, I know that I don't want to go out to the bars every night. It makes me wonder, though: What will I do instead? A difference between the dorms here and the dorms at Whitworth is that people really don't hang out in the dorms in France. Indeed, people in the dorms don't talk to each other much at all. That's quite the shift for me as a recently retired RA at a community-focused university. All that to say, I predict that I'll have many a social decision to make during the semester, trying to balance my social life with my moral convictions and general introversion.

At the same time, I should reiterate that I've had lots of fun when I've gone out. I went to a club where the dance floor was raised a good two or three feet off the regular floor, and there were ledges and barrels to dance on that were raised another two or three feet above that. I got up on one of the ledges and danced in full view of everyone. It felt like I was in a movie or something ("Order 'Chris Gone Wild' while you can!!!"). Another time we went to a bar that was so packed with people that my friend had to take off his glasses because they fogged up. It was kind of gross, but wonderfully novel as well. I also heard of this pirate bar called Redbeard (well, Barberousse, actually) that is shaped like a pirate ship and only serves rum. In honor of Whitworth, I'd say it's a must for me to check it out.

During the day I lead a rather simple life. I eat most of my meals in my room or in the dorm kitchen. For breakfast I have croissants and Nutella, a combination to which I am utterly addicted. Actually, I think it's just the Nutella I'm addicted to, because every morning I finish a croissant or two and then get impatient and just start spooning Nutella into my mouth. That stuff is simply too good. For lunch I either make something simple on my own like a ham sandwich, or I go to the dorm cafeteria. The food isn't bad, and it costs less than four euros. I almost always make my dinners, usually either pasta or rice. I've come up with some pretty tasty dishes (last night was rice with onion, yellow pepper, ground beef, and salami in a mushroom marinara sauce), but I've also had some far less successful culinary experiences (such as forgetting to remove the sticker from the bottom of the pan I bought. Yep. I actually did that).

Of course, now anyone reading this blog thinks that all I do is eat and party, which isn't the entire truth. It's remarkable how a whole day can go by while tending to everyday business. I go shopping for food, I walk around and explore, I play soccer on Saturdays with some Africans, I research classes I can take. It's all pretty normal stuff (perhaps with the exception of playing soccer with the African guys; that's a bit out of the ordinary). But, like I said at the beginning of this post, it's the normal stuff, the boring stuff, that makes up the majority of life. And perhaps the most important difference between my life in the states and my life in France is that I appreciate the normal and the boring much more here.

For some more normal and boring stuff, here are a few pictures from around campus:

Here's my dorm, the back side of it, anyway. There are several dorm communities ("Cites Universitaires" or "Cites U" here) which all contain many buildings. I live in Vert Bois (that's my Cite U, pronounced kind of like "vair bwa," which means "Greenwood"), and the building pictures above is one of seven in Vert Bois.

This is my room. It really is about as narrow as it looks in the picture. It's simple, but sufficient. The door on the right goes to the bathroom (also small, simple, and sufficient), and behind the main door is a closet. In front of the chair with the jackets on it is my desk, where I'm typing this post and where I do much typing, reading, and even eating.

To the right is la laverie, or the laundry room/shack. I'm including this picture mainly because I think it's a funny little building, just how dumpy it looks. I haven't even used it yet. In order to save money and to up my resourcefulness, I recently started washing my clothes by hand in the shower. The first batch is still drying; I'll have to give another update as to how it turns out.

What you're looking at here is indeed a ping pong table, and it is indeed outside. This indicates two things. One, the weather must be pretty nice in Montpellier all year round. Two, these people must take ping pong pretty seriously. This second conclusion was further validated when I saw a couple playing outside my dorm last week. They were table tennis maniacs! I think I have some training in order...

And finally, pictured to the right is, perhaps surprisingly, a soccer field. It's called a terrain stabilise (stabilized field), and it's basically made of sand. I don't particularly enjoy playing on it, largely because I fell on it and scraped my leg playing rugby, and both times I've played soccer I've fallen again and reopened the wound. I've yet to see a grass soccer field, though, so I hope one of these weeks I can manage not to fall on my knees.

Well, it takes about thirteen years to upload each of these pictures, so I'm ending here for now. Thanks for making it all the way to the end of this post, and I'll be sure to put up some more boring stuff sometime soon!

Un Melange: Sleep, Friends, Americans, and Prayer

The internet has been down for a few days, or else I probably would have posted something since last Monday. In the last week I've had plenty of free time. I've been sleeping a ridiculous amount -- I suppose because of all the new input I'm processing -- typically going to bed a little after midnight and getting up around noon. I feel lazy, but I guess it's what my body and mind need. Besides, once classes start next week, I imagine I'll fall into a more regular rhythm, hopefully one that won't allow me to sleep away half of every day.

I've continued to get to know some of the people I mentioned in my last post. Chadie is always very polite and says hi when he walks by my room (he seems rather intentional in his use of the formal "vous" address). David (my neighbor) and I talk a couple times a day, and he even showed me around downtown when I told him I needed to go shopping for a coat (I just had to buy a black coat. As I mentioned in an earlier post, almost literally no one wears white coats in France, at least not in winter. Plus, French clothes are generally much cooler than American clothes). And Clemence invited me the other night to play rugby, of all sports, with a couple of her friends. In typical French fashion, she smoked on the way to the field and smoked after we were done playing. I found that pretty funny.

I've also continued going to the church/house down the street, and, amazingly, that place already feels like home. That church is a bunch of characters! On Sunday evenings there is an English service so the French-speakers can practice their English, and what a backwards experience that is, to speak my native language to a bunch of francophone people in France. I can't get over how strange it feels.

I don't mind speaking English with them; I sort of see it as a way of thanking or repaying them for being patient with me when we speak French. What I have very little tolerance for, however, is extensively speaking English with Americans. In the past week I've met a number of American exchange students. The first ones I met, I enjoy quite a bit. Anthony, Sarah, Rachel, and I had a great time making dinner and going downtown for a few drinks on Friday night. But as the week went on and I met more Americans, I started to feel more and more hesitant to reach out to them at all, to the point where I think I'd rather act aloof when I meet them so that they don't really want to hang out with me. My hesitation stems from my reason for being here: I want to learn French, not just the language but the culture, too. Hanging out with a bunch of Americans will hinder that. It has come as a totally unexpected challenge, not knowing how to distance myself from the people with whom I'd probably fit in best. And the stereotypes that the French hold about Americans, while by no means absolutely true, find their origins in actual observation. Today I came across a group of about ten American girls, standing outside the entrance to my dorm, talking loudly about where they were going to go shopping. It was an innocent enough conversation, but even before I heard them speaking, I thought to myself that they must be Americans. There's something about us taking up space, or congregating conscpicuously, or perhaps our ignoring that some of the world doesn't speak English, that simply doesn't sit well in France. It was really the first time on this trip I felt embarrassed to be an American.

If you feel at all inclined to pray for me, this situation with my American identity would be a great thing to pray about. I don't want to be mean to anyone, but I'm really not here to make friends with Americans or English-speakers at all. At the same time, I also don't want to feel embarrassed about my country. Ask that the Lord will guide me in whom I spend time with, and in whom I meet in the first place. You can also pray for the registration process here. I'm pretty sure we're choosing classes tomorrow, and those choices could shape the upcoming semester in a variety of ways. Pray that the Lord directs my choices, so that I can learn what I am supposed to learn and gain what I am supposed to gain.

And one last thing you could pray for is something I don't often ask prayer for. However, recently I've been feeling like I should share the gospel with people. It's kind of funny timing for such a feeling to arise, since most people I know speak French, and I'd have to explain the gospel in a second language. Then again, I don't think God typically bases His will off of what would fit conveniently into our particular stages in life. I've already seen potential for sharing with David, my neighbor, and Sarah, one of the Americans. Pray that I enter these relationships humbly, knowing that I am a visitor in this place and that I just recently met them. And pray that I would follow God's leading hand in full confidence of His goodness, knowing that my vision is nothing next to His vision. And if it is God's will that I share with them about His love, pray that He gives me the right words. It makes me think of Moses, actually, when God first tells him to free the Israelites from Egypt. In the Message translation (my only English Bible here), Moses objects to God's plan, saying, "Master, please, I don't talk well. I've never been good with words, neither before nor after you spoke to me. I stutter and stammer." God: "And who do you think made the human mouth?...I'll be right there with you -- with your mouth" (Ex. 4). So pray that God would be right there with my mouth should the time come to testify to His goodness, because, as far as I can tell right now, I will have no Aaron to speak for me :)

Big Update

Well I feel like I could write for pages and pages about this trip, and I've only been in France five days! This conundrum makes me realize in advance one of the inevitable frustrations of studying abroad: it's simply impossible to relate an entire experience to people who don't share in that experience. Then again, I should have no excuses as a writer; writers are supposed to condense, select, eliminate, elaborate, and so on and so forth in order to make even the broadest of experiences readable. I'll see what I can do here...

I arrived in Montpellier on Saturday sometime around 6 or 7 pm (which in France is 18h00 [dix-huit heures] or 19h00 [dix-neuf heures], a conversion with which I still have much difficulty. I'm becoming more comfortable with people speaking a language other than the one I'm used to, but when they say the time, it's as if they're speaking yet another language, some third and totally foreign language. The metric system also seems just about impossible in my mind. In theory these conversions really aren't that difficult, but when I'm trying to do them in French they might as well be thermodynamic physics.). Overall it was probably my most stressful day so far. I mentioned in my previous post that I became quite comfortable with the metro, but trains are, for some reason, another story. I got on the train in plenty of time, but only after a few moments of mild panic and three visits to the info booth. What was far more stressful, however, was that the southbound TGV was experiencing delays of up to three hours due to snowy weather all over the country. I usually wouldn't care about a delay, but I had arranged to pick up the key to my dorm at a certain time, since the residential offices were closed on Saturday. Thus, I spent a long ride on the TGV not knowing if I'd have a place to stay once I arrived in this completely unfamiliar city.

My train arrived after dark, and I got off with my huge suitcase, backpackers' backpack, briefcase, and school backpack (the combined bulk and weight of which made me feel equally foolish, annoying, and conspicuous). I managed to find the tram, painted blue with white doves, and packed to the brim with young people. Nearly everywhere I looked, on the tram and in the city, young people abounded, shopping, strolling, laughing. A place for students, it seemed to me. And already I could tell people were a bit less tightly wound than Parisians.

I got off the tram so I could take a shuttle bus to my dorm. I asked a young man how much it cost to ride, and we got into a bit of a conversation, really my first one with a total stranger in France. Vincent was his name, and he was also a student at Montpellier III. Eventually I got around to telling him about the pickle I was in, i.e. that I wasn't sure I'd have a place to stay. Then he did something totally unexpected: he gave me his phone number and offered me a place to stay if I couldn't get in the dorms. After two and a half days among the seemingly frantic and antisocial people of Paris, I was amazed, and so very grateful.

Thankfully I didn't end up having to call Vincent; there was someone at l'Acceuil (Reception) who could give me my key. Vincent's kindness toward me, however, was indicative of the sort of guidance and security that God has given me on this trip on almost countless occasions (indeed, so was the fact that someone was working at l'Acceuil that night). It's amazing how many times I've had no idea where to go, no clue as to which street to turn on, which person to ask, and then direction suddenly comes out of nowhere. Or maybe not direction per se, but rather a directive intuition. I simply go one way or the other, choose a street to turn on, or spot a person to ask, and nearly every single time, this intuition has led me to the right place.

What happened yesterday is perhaps the outstanding example of this intuitive force, the guiding hand of God. Saturday night when I got into the dorm, I noticed a flyer for an Evangelical Protestant Christian church service. France, as with most of Western Europe, is considered by most if not all Christians to be spiritually dead. Over half of the people are Catholic, but less than half believe in a god. Catholic World News estimates that 3% are Protestant. That I should find a flyer for an Evangelic Protestant church just a few blocks from my dorm was therefore highly unlikely. But it gets even more unbelievable. I followed the directions and ended up at a row of houses. I didn't write down the exact address because I figured the church building would be obvious, but I did recall seeing the number 18 somewhere on the flyer. On the patio of house #19 was a woman smoking a cigarette. Before I'd finished asking the question, she told me to go next door. Sure enough, a ten minute walk away from my dorm, there was a group of Christians meeting in someone's house. As I met the four or five people already there, I learned that they had posted the flyers months ago, and that they were under the impression that students had torn them down almost immediately. Philippe, the pastor, called it a miracle that I'd seen one of their flyers. Then I learned that Philippe and his family were from Michigan, and that they'd been leading a church in France for 20 years. And soon after that Philippe, his wife, Sally, and I realized we had a mutual friend: Jerry Sittser! (For those who don't know, he's a theology professor -- a very beloved one, at that -- at Whitworth.) The three of them had gone to college together (Hope College, perhaps?) back in the day. The whole situation was utterly implausible.

I ended up spending almost nine hours at their house yesterday -- four and a half for the morning service and the subsequent lunch, and then again almost four and a half in the evening for their English service and subsequent dinner. On Wednesday I am going to help their family unload some donated kitchen supplies into their house, and on Saturday I think I might play soccer with a guy I met named Jonas who goes to Montpellier III. And this coming Sunday, I'm pretty sure I know where I'll be for most of the day. The whole day was a huge blessing and a magnificent answer to prayer. I'd suspected that getting involved with a church would be a great way to connect with people and to remain grounded in Christ while abroad, but I never imagined I would find one so quickly or so fortuitously. An absolutely stunning day.

I could go on and on about my church experience or about how good God has been, but instead I'll phrase it this way: rest assured that I am in good hands, with this church, yes, but more importantly, with an almighty God.

As for some more practical details, my dorm room is a single on a co-ed floor in a building of about 150 people. It includes a bathroom, bed, desk, closet, mini-fridge, sheets, and this weird cylindrical pillow. Right now I just have wireless Internet (this guy named Chadie down the hall let me borrow his access code), and it's a pretty weak connection, but I plan on buying a cable so I can plug in and make Skyping a possibility.

The dorm is really quiet right now because most students are still gone for break. Some have finals this week or next, and then, two weeks from today, Spring Term classes will begin. I have yet to register for classes, I have no idea which ones I'm going to take, and in fact I don't even know where the academic buildings are. Some research is in order, I suppose.

Because of my extended stay at church yesterday, I have only begun to explore the city today. I went out on foot, and to be honest I'm not really sure where I went. I did, however, find a Carrefour, which sells just about everything. I bought some food and a cell phone. Unfortunately, international calls outside of Europe cost almost 3 Euros a minute, or about $5/minute. In other words, don't expect a call from me until June.

The dorms being quiet as they are, I've only met three people on my hall: Chadie (whose name I don't know how to spell whatsoever), Clemence (a girl who probably thinks I'm a total idiot because I couldn't figure out how to open the door to the building), and David (my immediate neighbor who is from Poland and who I just met tonight). People have been very kind to me, both in the dorm and out in the city (and certainly in the church as well). It seems to me that they find it novel or charming or something that an American can speak French as well as I do. While this is flattering in a sense, I also feel extremely inarticulate pretty much all the time. For a guy who loves to communicate, this is frustrating. But heck, that's why I'm here -- to improve my French language abilities.

Well, this post is becoming outrageously long. (Kenny Dill, only you can say that sentence as it ought to be said.) I'll put up some pictures sometime soon. Until then, friends, teachers, mentors, family -- I miss you all. Lots of love from your Montpellier man.