being grateful

The last few days have been pretty wet and dreary here in Glasgow (though perhaps a good op to capture some good rain photos - see previous blog post) and I have been racked with tiredness, but my days have been pretty full and I'm lifting my eyes up and remembering the beauty and the goodness I have experienced over the last wee while.

I got one of those once in a lifetime chances to play in the band in a minority languages competition described rather favourably here. It's a long time since I've seen such incredible views on a flight and every single one of our four flights had them, one breath-taking sunrise, plains-worth of clouds from a top-down view, two lots of spectacular mountains! Udine itself was a medium-sized, quirky, Italian town nearer to Slovenia than Venice, friendly (sometimes too friendly) locals, delicious hams and wines, some pretty architecture - and we had a lot of fun there!

In Udine and in other places there has been much good music, both getting to play, getting to listen to and getting to dance to enjoyed. Genres to dance to have included some crazy drums at a jungle-stylee worship night, and Austrian Croat reggaerockrap.

After about 6 weeks without it, thanks to a belated visit to the doctor's, I have finally regained my sense of smell. I am soooo appreciating this right now. I had been drinking mostly hot ribena because tea smelt of nothing and tasted bland (heart-breaking when you have a large and eclectic tea collection) I hadn't realised how much the lack of smell was affecting my taste-buds (there's a thought in that!), I've been bowled over by just about everything I've been eating - and I'd like to keep that level of appreciation up!

I also am very grateful for the variety of good times spent with good friends. I love every moment I get to spend my with my Chinese mums esol class:- I always come out of there with a massive smile on my face! I am feeling very appreciative of my roomie right now having spent most of the last 2 weeks without him.

I am also especially grateful to have a God who doesn't give up on me and who is always always always faithful and loving - flipping amaaaazing!

a few small discoveries

This week I learnt/re-learnt that

- With 4 weeks of training it seems my husband is able to jump from barely scraping half an hour runs without near exhaustion-induced collapse to being able to run a half marathon in an hour and 58 minutes (proud wife moment).

- Meeting and making new friends is amazingly fun!

- But really really good friends are hard to part with.

- Nougat from Montelimar is far too good to just eat a small chunk of, humnumnum

- To my surprise (though it shouldn't have been that much of a surprise) my old flatmate with almost non-existent French and new French friends with very little English have proven that with a little bit of effort and one or two common interests, language barriers don't stand up for long.

- And even more mysteriously, mediocre Scottish fiddle music can sooth the souls of pensioners inclined to bouts of grumpiness.

This is my first year sans advent calender :"(

I roughly estimate that I spent the run up to Christmas doing

countless hours of studying
almost as many hours of celloing
several hours of singing carols at the top of my voice
8 hours of cleaning the flat
7 hours of 12 hour cheesy pop, (of which 2 hours were spent watching It's a Wonderful Life, 3 hours were spent boogying on at the headphone disco (quality concept!) and 2 hours spent chatting to randoms and not so randoms at the stall)
6 beanscene visits (most of which were to "chat about the critical review")
5 hours of mince pies and mulled-wine consumption
4 christmas carol services (to date)
3 and a half ceilidhs
2 exams
and 1 critical review

And after all that and some more that I couldn't fit into 12 verses, I am back in Edinburgh again for a proper break! It's roasting inside (having Sri Lankan parents means the heating is on ALL day!) and baltic outside (frost, unlike anything we ever get in glasgow, woopwoop!) Actually getting a proper break, except from celloing... in exchange for being fed I am playing in 3 church carol services avec les parents. A cellist's work is never done.

a little hyperbole

Just back from the cinema to see Stardust. I loved it... my pragmatic flatmate (of the emerald isle variety) on the other hand wasn't so convinced by the romanticglowingstarloveconqueringall nonsense. "Too much hyperbole" were her exact words. Personally I like a little hyperbole from time to time, though I'm glad real life isn't like that. Those witches were scary!
We did however enter into the spirit of adventure, rushing down the tallest cinema in the world to catch the last underground and then rushing back up again, rooting under chairs to the soundtrack of the cancan in search of pragmatist's gloves, until we realised that she hadn't actually brought them with her in the first place. So we legged it back down again and made it in time (just) to catch the last underground... Ah we do know how to spice up the mundane antics of normal life! And who needs to put the heating on in the flat when a little exercise is all one needs to keep warm!

Bon degustation

There are times when I get odd urges to do something random, whether be running down a hill with my arms pretending to be a plane or hugging a friend for no apparent reason. Last Saturday morning (or rather afternoon. Staying up late the night before was for a valid and valuable cause!) I woke up and decided I wanted to make some kind of chocolate mess.

Well I expected it to come out as chocolate mess. Actually it turned out to be a beautifully delicious and perfectly formed chocolate pudding :) This made me and my flatmates and all others that entered our flat walls this weekend very happy

We do know how to do "bon degustation" in our flat that's for sure

almost better than snow

I love autumn and I love Kelvingrove Park. En bref I love Kelvingrove Park in the autumn

- the trees

- the colours

- the leaf-fights

- and just general silliness

Excuses for not blogging

First there was my cousin's wedding



and that whole seeing the crazy extended family from the four corners of the earth together for the first time in several years (actually twas the first time in 17 years that my dad and his 5 siblings were in the same country at once!) Birthdays were celebrated, a memorial service held, lots and lots of music has been played, and heated discussions had on everything from, what culture is, to how a video should be converted to dvd...

And there was SU music camp... Lots of musicmusicmusic, mind-blowing singing, seeing parables with fresh eyes, good chat, silly chat, late nights, early mornings, tiredness, awesome food, challenges, competitiveness, birthdays, balloons in my bed, surprises, sleeplessness, insane laughter, emotional 12 year old girls, illness, headaches, bollywood dancing, realising God doesn't work quite the way I expect Him to...

Voila some of us younger members of the team after we let loose the campers on their day out

you need that level of sanity to hack that kinda week with that kinda company I can tell you :D

Oh and there was Harry Potter... a surprisingly satisfying read I must say!

and those are a few of the many reasons why I haven't blogged in about a month! :)

Provence

Spent 5 nackering days with 2 lovely french girls...

Day 1 - a nice medium long trek and then one night ocamp in the alpilles (after the alps they really do seem tiny)


Day 2 - A rather much longer trek from town to town near to Miramas where we stayed the other 3 nights (done on v little sleep and in very dry 30degree heat= not so helpful) NB The nearest town is almost always further away than you imagine.


Follow that, the next day, with a loooong (by my standards anyway) bike ride, all 3 or us on matching red bikes complete with neon green helmet (isn't it beautiful!), handy handlebar bags which we crammed full with all sorts of goodies such as biscuits (yes Quinn I hear you :P) and strawberries mmmmm and yellow plastic-tasting water bottles which we got to keep...


Then riding and wading waist high in the sea in the Camaragues (Day 4)



Finished off by a tourist stop accompanied by self-downloaded audioguide (a million times better than those museum ones) in Arles

Recommended activity for any trip - get those card games out, anywhere, when or how :)


Add on the no space to breathe and think english, ever... and this made Dish a very very tired girl indeed... Thank goodness for bandes dessinées... I think I might have exploded otherwise. :)

A highly recommended experience... looovely memories made :)

Things I've enjoyed the most here...

French cuisine - Tis no myth, French food really does beat British food by a long way!

Le feu - a church-funded, fulltimeworker-supported, building-equipped christian organisation for student ages and up which I stumbled across just a couple of months back, just when I really needed it, despite living just a short walk away. After spending 8 months in a foreign country, being able to hang out with, eat, pray and study the bible in french and my native language with folk in a similar situation as me is such a gift, even if it has only been for the last couple of months.


Savouring french eccentricities like little kids carrying baguettes as long as themselves, bereted old men playing ptonk, music rehearsals where more time is spent in discussion than in playing, listen to very interesting political rants from some v intelligent french people about how Sarkozy is the new Blair/Hitler/just generally a fascist and seeing giant fish heads in the supermarket



The international banter here, especially with the other assistants... cooking for each other, slagging off each other's accents, the odd bit o dancing...


Baebar, this lovely chap beside me ------------->
Have had a bit of a lovehate relationship with him over the past year, but I have made some great friends because of him and he's helped me integrate into french society... it will be sad to say goodbye.

one month...

Goodness me... this has to be a non-blogging record! What excuses do I have...?
Well in the last month I've had several highs and lows, 3 lots of visitors, 3 Glasgowers (none of whom got to see les Belledonnes due to mist!) and the family... that makes 2 bastille trips, several café and restaurant stops, various mountain trips, a ridiculous amount of tea received, far too much musicing (I'm learning to say no), stolen bags, police station visits, concerts, many communal meals, the odd spillage...
Throw in there the usual record-long phone convos, some jamming at church, cooing over toddlers in the street, discovering a Christian community I didn't know existed and finally having some proper deep chat in french has made for an interesting and educational month of March.

And this week...
- A fruitless trek to find an open functioning swimming pool (ok so waterslide may have been on the specification list but it honestly wasn't me that made it!) with 2 near giants in which we found a random tower unmarked, unlabelled and ungoogable apparently and this ----------->
...apparently one of the 7 wonders of the Dauphiné region! hmm


- Saying the second of what will be many sad au revoirs to a lovely allemande in Lyon (à mon avis quite possibly the loveliest city in the country!)

- Being a visitor myself, to a little town of Tournus, NOT Toulouse, but Tournus, a little town in the region of Burgundy.
- Spending time there with fellow Glasgower and assistante Rebecca, sitting in sunshine, drinking tea and laughing at her being toilet-papered by her terminale students on muck-up day! :)

The days are swimming by, the temperature steadily rising... Il reste une semaine des hols, deux de school, un mois de randonmness et puis... c'est tout, fini, le fin, the end! Crazy!

I will blog/flickr related photos soon... just when I remember to bring my cable to the internet café!