Written Sunday the 7

By my calculations, it has been about a week since my last update. A lot can change during a week, but then again, a lot stays the same. So for this post, I’m writing what comes to mind and I’m throwing structure and style to the wind (which doesn’t always come naturally to the English majors).


First, some exciting news: I found out what the boys were building in the back yard. Some of the wood on the outside table had rotted and they replaced it. It looks pretty good to me. I asked my host sister about it and she said her dad and her brothers liked repairing things. In fact, they often buy things broken so that they can repair them. Case in point: take another look at the pictures I posted last week. Notice that white car in the backyard? That’s an old Renault they bought. It doesn’t work now, but it will before too long. Another example. Right now the youngest brother is riding around the back yard on a motorized bicycle…you guessed it, they added the motor (or repaired it, or something along those lines). And so as of now the mystery of the sawing noises is solved. The rest of the mysteries remain mysterious.
Another change this week was that I began my classes. As far as I can tell, there seems to be very little rhyme or reason to the scheduling, but at least I’m doing something - an improvement to sitting around my host family’s house like a mute. I’m in the advanced French class, a scary thought, but I’m enjoying it a lot. My class is made up of all foreigners learning the language, which means the only other Americans are three girls from my program. The rest are made up of a girl from Poland, a man from Lebanon, another man from China, and two girls from Mexico. It’s neat to speak French with others learning the language knowing that you can’t fall back on your English when the other person doesn’t understand you.


For my last change of the week, I went to church today. I met some Americans living in Toulouse and met up with them to go to church. It’s a Protestant church and very different from normal French fare – it’s simply decorated, rather small, and…well, Protestant. It was really great seeing the body of Christ worshiping God in another culture. So much of our preferences in worship and service style is cultural and change from region to region, but there are also things that transcend cultural differences. In today’s service, the songs and the sermon style was different from what I am used to, but there were two baptisms and communion today and that was very much the same. All in all, I had a great time and I cannot wait until next Sunday.


After church, the Americans I went to church with and I were invited to a French student’s house for lunch and she prepared a feast for us! She began the meal with veggies, pigs in a blanket, and toast with goat cheese melted on top. She then followed with this great bread/cheese/tomato/zucchini soufflé thing and a salad. After the salad she made a pear crisp with ice cream, and we ended with un café. Needless to say, I was impressed.


Those were the changes of the week, now for things that stay the same. Really, one in particular…the language barrier. I realized today I have two kinds of not understanding. In the first, I understand the sense of what was said but not the details. In the second, I understand the words but not the sense. I find the later particularly frustrating. Yet another example for you: there is one question people ask me all the time and I rarely understand what they want from me. It’s “Tu a fait quoi?” Which translates to “You did what?” Sometimes it’s varied to “Tu fais quoi?” which means “You do what?” Simple questions, right? Not in the context I’m getting them in, nor in the sentence structure for that matter (it’s definitely not what the books teach for proper question structure). When people ask me the first, I think “When? Today? Yesterday? In the US? When?” I really don’t know what to say in response so I stumble and look like an idiot (pretty common these days). The second is usually asked when I’m meeting someone for the first time. The people asking generally already know I’m an American student studying in France, so I’m not sure exactly what that question means. Sometimes it seems to refer to what I’m studying (but again, in France or in America?), other times it seems to mean “where are you studying?” I may never fully learn how to respond correctly to that question, and that’s something I’m resigned to. C’est la vive…en France.

PS. I found out yesterday that the bus drivers were striking on Monday. Fantastic.