My urge to blog has increased tenfold in the last week and I do believe this may be directly correlatable with the fact that my workload has also increased tenfold in the last week. But what to blog about...

- I could tell you about the exciting bits of homework I have to do for next week.
- Watch 3 french films made in the 1920s
- Translate 2 texts from english to french and french to english
- Read 3 research papers on psycholinguistics and be able to summarise them in tutorial
- Catchup on lectures notes (caused by lecture clashes)
- Read 4 chapters of a french novel l'usage du monde by Nicolas Bouvier
Ah the joys of studying for an odd combination of a degree.

- I could also tell you about my lovely new flatmates and the banter and copious amounts of chocolate that have been consumed in this last month, though I think I might leave that till I have some incriminating photos...

- I could tell you about the trouble I have with saying no to things. I want to be a part of everything, and not saying no to doing things was something that kept me busy in France but here I just get swamped to the point of silliness if I don't!

- I think for now I'll stick to talking about the weather... Rain, dristle, changeableness, the fact that one day it's really warm and the next it's baltic! What's that all about?!

- I miss french cheese... :(

the joys of academia

Today was my first day of academia and what did I learn...

- That to do a joint honours in a subject one has to be exceedingly organised (timetables are handed out and one has to fiddle and sort out clashes and make sense of them on one's own.
- That sorting out timetable clashes is more stressful than studying

So when do I get to start learning real stuff!?

I want to be a tree

I want to be a tree

Trunk broad, boughs long

the epitomy of life whatever falls

Rooted in good soil, reaching for tall

I want to be

a tree by still waters

that just grows, grows, grows

Yet is patient to wait

till the season for fruit

till I deepen my roots.

Patient to wait through the winter, bare.

Won't panic when leaves fall

Thrills when the buds form

No hurry, never ever, at all...

I couldn't pretend to be something I'm not.

I'd be happy in purpose

in bloom and in want.

I'd be happy just being.

These Magic Changes

Yesterday I made a scrapbook of my year in France... It was both satisfying and disconcerting to reduce what was a year of my life into 20 pages of random bits and pieces of junk I've hoarded... kinda sad really. Still... I'm back in Glasgow indefinitely and excited by the prospect of starting back at uni, though looking at the course details for my joint honours coursem am feeling eversoslightly scared... what have I let myself in for?! A dissertation and a maxi project!?

As for the summer. Well that finished with a bit of a bang... The day after I finished at good ol H of H, I was jetted off for 3 days of glorious surreality in Lewis with the Potential Strangers... thankyou BBC! Here are some of my photographic highlights...

Sound-checking in the studio...

This pic (that Dol Eoin's 7 year old sister drew for the occasion) reminds me of this lovely welsh band that I fell in love with, not only for there ace music and genius lyrics (those that I could understand anyway) and the fact that the 4 of them sing in harmony at various points of each song but the fact that are genuinely nice boys :)

It's not an exaggeration... Harris though a little cold and windy, at least when we were there, really is stunningly beautiful.

Trop trop trop

I've been watching far too many films lately, in the same way that I used to consume books in my younger geekier days, I have relished escaping but I think I might be taking it to extremes.
Over the last few weeks I have watched
- Billy Elliot - several times. Best facial expressions of any film I've ever seen.
- I bought the sister High School Musical and Bugsy Malone - now that was a mistake.
- That gem of a musical West Side Story twice.
- Along came Polly - why?!
- fractions of Princess Mononoke. Think I might need to watch all of it before I understand it.
- A bbc production of Woman in White with my dear mother
- Amelie - for the first time in about a year believe it or not!
Been to see
- The Bourne Ultimatum - now that was good :)
- Hairspray. Twice I'm not ashamed to say. Second time was even better!
- Shrek 3, Harry Potter 5 - disappointments
- A random french-canadian film at the Edinburgh international film festival - Dans les villes - the blurb promised light-heartedness, the film delivered the opposite. Though I must admit the enlightening chat with director/producer afterwards improved it.
Oh and I saw one festival show quite possibly better than any of the films I've seen of late... I blame the changeyourmoodinablink atmosphere and amhaaazing soundtrack!

ticktockticktock just over a week to Glasvegas and return to a TV-less flat... wooo! :)

saying that, it never stopped us from watching copious amounts of Dawsons Creek

Un éclat

I like this photo because of the memory I have of the moment when I took it. It had been raining for days and when it rains in Grenoble it snows on the mountains (up until about April that is) so you can't see them for the thick white clouds that obscure them. The mountains are a constant and familiar presence in Grenoble. You can see them looming behind all manner of buildings in almost every direction. So it's a kinda eerie feeling, not being able to see them. I was waiting at the bus-stop to go to school and then spotted that tiny gap in the clouds and that stunning turquoise blue patch of sky against fresh snow-covered mountains made me catch my breath! I just had to snap it! It was just so beautiful to see and even more so because it felt as though I was seeing blue sky and mountains for the first time! I felt as though I had forgotten what they looked like.

I had another one of those gap in the clouds experiences just recently though it didn't involve mountains or clouds.

My hope had been leaking for a while... I didn't notice at first, and then after a while I started noticing a pit-hole kinda empty feeling when I was alone, something which I hadn't experienced in a long time and it didn't feel like something I could stop. I suddenly had so many questions that made my head hurt. It was kinda like having my vision obscured by impenetrable clouds.

See I had forgotten what God is like. Somewhere along the line I had lost perspective and so lost heart. It seemed to me that He was letting people slip through His fingers that shouldn't be slipping through, people that I really cared about or who had grown to care about. I had the initial gap in the cloud experience because of a few words that made me realise God wasn't letting things slip through his fingers at all. That He truly cares. And once realising that I found my eyes opening to other situations and people that God was working in and through. This week I'm helping out with kids and youth work with my home church. This week is "launch-week" of a church-plant in a small town Kirkliston, the next nearest town to where I grew up. The very fact that God has put so many passionate inspired gifted people in the area and is enabling this to happen is evidence of the fact that He doesn't let seemingly hopeless areas, people, situations just slip through His fingers even if everyone else seems to have given up hope.

I'm not going to give up on Him, Christ Jesus our Hope.

A beeeeyooootiful morceau de franglais :D

a leeetle bit of context...

The 2 frenchmen each having found an RAF man in completely separate situations have been told to go find their officer in the baths... they've been told they'll recognise him easily due to his beeeeg moustache by humming the code song, which is "Tea for two". I think that's all you need to know
Enjoy :D

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! :)

?!?!?!?!?!

And now the sun is shining

blahweatherblahblahweatherblah

We Scots spend far too much time talking about the weather... I don't know how I didn't notice it before. The people I meet at the bus-stop, the bus driver, every customer that comes in, shop assistants, my friends and family... no one seems to stop talking about it! Having been away from the country for 9 months really has shed new light and in this case irritation, onto things. Yet despite having ranted to several people recently about how annoying I find it, I'm going to go back on what I said. Because sometimes the weather merits being talked about. Like today, at this very moment, in the centre of Edinburgh, at the end of June, it's hailing...

Surprises

Today was a relatively eventful day... as I stood by a roadside waiting to risk my life to cross the scariest-ever road to catch my bus I was hit by a lorry-fueled tidal-wave leaving me running around with smelly wet socks at work for the rest of the day. Still recovering from the shock of this (and mildly distracted by the excitement of the severalth reading of the third Harry Potter book) I managed to leave my purse on the bus. (which I discovered at lunch). This resulted in my having to trek across to Linlithgow to the bus station to pick it up (thankfully it had been found and handed in) instad of heading home this evening, spending a total of 2 hours and 45 minutes travelling. (It seems in spite of Linlithgow and Queensferry being so geographically close, when it comes down to public transport, they are really badly connected) I did not expect my day to turn out that way. I did not expect to spend 4 hours in travelling when I went to bed last night. I may have had even more trouble getting up in the morning if I had known that that would be the case.

I do like those little surprises though. Working at H of H is full of them... What with those surprise customers that require many runs up and down the stairs, lack of tea spillages on my part (that is an event I assure you) and the moment when the Quinnster says no to the biscuit (ok perhaps that one's more of a hypothetical surprise). And then every now and again, we receive a call which requires bellowing down the phone and though these can quite often be expected when one works in a place which services those who have hearing difficulties, they are a surpise nonetheless.
And then there are the events unconnected to the workplace... unexpected phonecalls on the bus, a frenchman preaching at Findlay on Sunday morning, the rain stopping...
what can I say... I like surprises :)

Cloud appreciation

In response to this tag I'm gonna cheat... Instead of listing 5 "non-books", I'm going to share 5 pictures of one of a non-book that I never tire of reading on almost a daily basis.

The heavens declare the glory of God;

the skies proclaim the work of his hands.

Day after day they pour forth speech;

Night after night they display knowledge.

There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard.

Their voice goes out into all the earth,

their words to the ends of the world.

Tu te souviens quand c'etait difficile?

Was inspired by this, to think about active listening... When I first started going to church in France I used to understand and take in something between 5 and 40% of the sermon. (I could probably understand more of it if I tried, but at the end of an hour and a half long service my brain would normally be a little fried linguistically speaking) Yet I could and would still get a lot out of the few phrases that stuck in my mind. More often than not there would be just one that I heard and made my mind wander. It really required me to do my own head work afterwards though, I couldn't just sit and be a consumer, having everything explained to me. No bad thing really. Being back in Scotland I am finding this all the more harder. I understand every word of the sermon. I don't have to think as much when I listen... but it's going to be so easy to become complacent. Listening to a sermon in english I'm realising should take just as much head and heart work as in french...
I guess this applies to my whole year... first semester especially was tough and maan did I need God. I didn't have much else to rely on... but being back in this beautiful country where I have my family and sooo many friends, where I have no real language barriers and don't get confused in group banter or struggle to understand sermons, I'm fighting against complacency.
So I'm going back to an old lesson, and I'm going to actively remember

Home again; the "first" days

Literally. I feel like I've just moved from one home to the next to the next...


About an hour before I left on Wednesday I suddenly realised I couldn't shut my suitcase. After some panicked packing and repacking I arrived at the station wearing 4 tops, a pair of shorts and jeans, with 2 jumpers round my waist, 1 summer jacket, 1 winter jacket and a scarf. I did have a fleecy flowery full-length dressing gown to add to the menagerie but fortunately had that taken off my hands by the lovely christian lady who gave me a lift and saw me off at the station. The journey was uneventful, there were a couple of babies to entertain, an excited phonecall, one over-limit baggage charge (since apparently french scales are kinder than british ones), a touch of reverse culture shock (I could not help but eavesdrop every conversation I heard and read every sign I saw in english) and in spite of everything there was buckets of God-given peace. I was welcomed home by one excited family, a wonderful curry and a snap taken underneath the UK arrivals sign!
And then the next day after the mandatory shopping trip with the mother (which is bound to be the case if I wear clothes till they fall apart or until she bullies me into buying something new). I headed through to Glasgow for 2 and a half days of wonderful madness... labradors and picnics and flowers and tea and birthdays and nice meals and a million hugs and great chat and dancing and museum trips and swords and chippies and bowls and deckchairs.





Things I'd never noticed before/forgotten about Glasgow


- Very very friendly people. I got raced up the escalators by a good-humoured random middle-aged weegie after I hurriedly cut in front of him.
- Accents... min I cannot stop imitating the Northern Irish accent. It has been approximately 5 months since I last heard it!
- The seats in the underground are surprisingly comfy!
- It is a common occurence to walk past someone reeking of drink
- Lots of people are about on the streets at night
- When it rains it doesn't necessarily mean a thunderstorm
- That most buskers in the westend are really good!
- That one does not have to walk far to find some free live music
- That one does not have to walk far before bumping into someone one knows or recognises
- My friends are positively banterously wonderful :)

God is ridiculously good to me

The last days

there were concerts, a baby and goodbyes

some walks and icecream too

there's a pedalo and there's silly shining there too

On Goodbyes and Airport Amusments

I have spent this last week feeling very happy and very sad at the same time... tis a strange feeling. Very heavy is the only word I can use to describe it... I can't wait to see folk again but everytime I say a goodbye, I'm aware of the heaviness which accompanies the parting. I do like the french. No falseness and saying things you don't mean in goodbyes... so many phrases that can be used "bonne continuation, bonne retour, bon courage" are a few of my favourites. No commitment attached :) But whether there is any commitment there or not, I still feel the heaviness! :(

Oh and I have something to keep me occupied on the plane on Wednesday afternoon...
Tongue twisters...

en français

Les chaussettes de l'Archiduchesse sont-elles sèches, archi-sèches? - Are the socks of the Archduchess dry, really dry?
Un chasseur sachant chasser sait chasser sans son chien de chasse. - A hunter who knows how to hunt knows how to hunt without his hunting dog.

Dutch

De knappe kapper kapt heel knap - (something to do with a barber cutting pretty hair but his employee cutting it better)
maar de knecht van de knappe kapper kapt nog
knapper ken de knappe kapper kappen ken

German

Fischer's fritz fischt frusche fische (something to do with a fisherman called Fritz who fishes fresh fish)
frusche fische fischt fischer's fritz

Swedish

sex laxar i en laxask - (6 salmon in a box)

If you see me muttering to myself on the plane, it is all for a good cause!

a glass of water

I'd been feeling kinda empty, then started looking through this famous psalm and really thinking through each line... this is basically want went through my head as I was reading it.

"Praise the Lord O my soul, all my inmost being, praise his holy name." - yeah that would be good... get a move on soul!

"forget not all his benefits, who forgives your sins" - That's right... I have been forgiven! What does that song say "ransomed, healed, restored, forgiven" and it's by grace not by works... I've done nothing to deserve forgiveness, I believe and He does all the work, and it's more than just forgiveness, I have a fresh start every time, I'm being made new each day, like Him over time and He sacrificed so much to make this possible! Woow!

"who heals all your diseases" I've never been seriously physically ill but I've definitely been healed of some past emotional hurts in recent years.

"who redeems your life from the pit" hmmm... I don't think my life has never been "the pit" but I have definitely come close to rock bottom at times this year and He rescued me. Like when I was feeling lonely and frustrated through feeling kinda purposeless and lacking "meaningful" friendships in France, He brought the meaningful conversations and friendships when I needed them the most, He spoke when I needed to hear Him :)

"who crowns you with love and compassion" - yeeeaah... I'm starting to see the evidence of that now :)

"who satisfies your desires with good things" - when I felt purposeless and desired purpose, He gave me opportunities, He gave me people to love and He made me useful!

"so that your youth is renewed like the eagle's" - just thinking about all this stuff, remembering His goodness to me and that I am loved by a God who crowns me with such love and compassion is so refreshing and redonnes mine energy and refills me with spirit... ran out of words around here... and that was just the first four verses!

Try it

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.

No-Man's Land

The first time I ever went to France at the age of 14 I walked through these... No-man's land by the Somme: the expansive empty tranquil fields divided by several trenches that used to be the battlegrounds in the first world war. No one wanted to go out into them because the likelihood of your coming back was so minimal...
I feel as though I'm in no-man's land right now though my situation doesn't quite look like that. It looks more like a busy month of what will be more countless goodbyes, celloings, bits and pieces of travelling than much else... part of me just wants to skip the goodbyes, to skip this long drawn out end to what has been an experience of a year and get on with the next part... or at least be in either one camp or the other... not in between the two... hrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrumph (an elephant sigh)

But I know God has a purpose for me being here, and even though I'm finding it hard to do what I love best i.e invest in people, because either they're leaving or I am, I've to make the most of it, and live, because that's what he's called me to do, for better or for worse...
Whether I like it or not this is no man's land season... so no reason to be de-motivated by it. Rather, quite the opposite: ...give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus. 1 Thess 5:18

God please make me joyful.