Livebox.

You might have seen on FaceBook that E and I had a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day yesterday. An explanation is in order. E and I are 21^st-century Americans: we want our Internet, and we want it fast. We use it for communicating with people back home, for entertainment, and also for receiving messages regarding where we should be when because we are cell-phone-less here in France. So on Friday at 1:15 p.m. when it stopped working, we panicked slightly. Not on the level of Peyton-Manning-has-retired, but more along the lines of I-have-a-zit-two-days-before-prom. So it didn’t work right before we left to read our World War II assignment in the park? It surely would when we returned.

It didn’t.

Our panic level rose from yellow to orange, in the manner of the Homeland Security Advisory System. It was now prom day, so to speak, and the zit had grown to hairy-mole size. We played with it for a bit, but ultimately decided just to go to bed and assume it would kick itself back on in the middle of the night. You can sleep off a headache; why not Internet malaise?

You can’t. At least not in France.

By Saturday morning, we were on full alert. Batten down the hatches, boys; it’s Internet or bust! After becoming completely disgusted with both the troubleshooting manual and the piece-of-crap Internet box itself (called “Livebox”), we decided to visit McDonald’s to take advantage of their free Wi-Fi. The priority was making sure our families knew that our silence and missed Skype dates came from an Internet malfunction, not abduction by angry French World Cup soccer players. But wouldn’t you know it: our computers simply would not hook up to McDonald’s Wi-Fi. Our vexation mounted.

We went across the street to an Internet café. At least we knew it would work there. And it did. From a computer attached to a French keyboard:

(Notice, for example, the placement of the letters compared to where they are on your keyboard. Also, check out the punctuation marks. Totally different from yours. And do you see how there are two symbols plus a number on each numerical key? Yeah, that’s not easy to finagle.)

In the end, we spent 25 minutes—and a euro each—sending two emails per person of three to five sentences apiece, something that takes less than eight minutes when using our computers. After that, we were back to the issue at hand: fixing the Internet in our own apartment since we’d each paid 26 euro for it. Remembering the exorbitant price and feeling the anger mount again, we tried to call our landlord. Unfortunately, he lives in Avignon, which is nowhere near us. We got a busy signal anyway.

We returned to the apartment and fumed, frowned, and spoke harshly to Livebox. Nothing happened. Livebox is a jerk. E read the troubleshooting directions to herself. Then out loud. I did the same. We restarted Livebox. We restarted our computers. We turned off everything. We turned it back on. We seethed.

Leaving the apartment, we headed toward Orange, the company that makes blasted Livebox. They sent us to SFR, the primary Internet provider in Lyon. They sent us to France Telecom, the centralized French telecommunications company. They sent us to Orange. We noticed a pattern. We tried another Orange. They sent us to France Telecom. We tried a second France Telecom. They sent us to…wait for it…Orange. Our problem seemed to be no one’s but ours. We returned to the Internet café and dialed up France Telecom. There’s no toll-free number, but by that time, we didn’t care how much it cost to get the Internet running again. That is, until the café owner told us we owed him fifteen euro. Then, we cared how much it cost.

Raging anew, we lamented the fact that we’d spent money at McDonald’s, the Internet café (twice), and the landlord, and ended up with no Internet. Discouraged and forlorn, we returned to Quai Claude Bernard, growling and murmuring all the way there. Eventually, I said, “This may sound like the stupidest idea ever, but we could ask the guy at the café who speaks English to help us.” (We live above a café.) E said that she’d thought of that earlier, but was afraid to mention it since he was unlikely to be of any help. But he was our last option, and no one else in France cared that we desperately wanted to talk to our families.

Upon returning to our apartment, we found English Speaker and breathlessly explained our troubles. We handed him the troubleshooting manual, Livebox’s serial number, and several phone numbers. Expecting him to do what, I don’t really know. In the end, English Speaker was indeed able to help: there was a particular username and password that had to be changed periodically, and it was time to do so. It wouldn’t let us back in until we changed said information. Showering English Speaker with a deluge of Merci!s, we hiked up the 10 flights to our apartment and tried the password-changing. It worked! 

For two minutes.

I could go on, but suffice it to say that we pushed every button on Livebox and our computers, and everything was finally functional again, after another hour or so of work. We consider our connection to be pretty tenuous at this point, but at least it’s running again. I’d make a comment about how dependent E and I are on the Internet, but the fact is, it’s actually our families we’re addicted to. More than anything, E and I just wanted to be able to communicate with the people who are so special to us. So this post is dedicated to you. May we never have to be cut off from one another again. Cheers!

Groceries.

My students always used to ask what sorts of things were different in France. On the spur of the moment, it’s hard to come up with an answer like that. Like when someone asks you, “What sorts of movies do you like?” All of a sudden, you think, What do I like? Well, a couple of days ago something happened that I can cite as a definitive difference between France and America.

E and I went grocery shopping twice last week: once to the Sunday market for produce and fresh bread, and once to the store mid-week for everything else. Unfortunately, I’d already run out of produce when we went to the store on Wednesday, so I picked up some apples, cherries, and tomatoes to hold me over until Sunday. As is customary in France, for the surge of customers waiting to check out, there was one open cash register (and four closed ones [and a handful of unoccupied employees who weren’t about to get to work {which reminds me of a French comedian who said that Obama’s “Yes, we can!” slogan would never work in France. They operate more along the lines of, “No, we can’t!”}]). Anyway, when I finally got up to the front, I put everything on the little conveyor belt, just as one does in the States. Everything went smoothly until we got to the produce. “Il faut les peser,” the cashier informed me. Because I was flustered, I couldn’t catch the words, so I asked her to repeat. She did, and added, “Je vous attendrai.” Great, so I had to go back to the display where I picked up my produce so that I could weigh it, all the while with her waiting for me at the front with the other six shoppers in line behind me.

I had no problems with the apples or tomatoes, but I simply could not find the button on the scale for cherries. So that I wouldn’t hold anyone up any longer, I just pushed the “grapes” button and hoped for the best. Close enough, right? By the time I rushed back to the front where she was indeed waiting with the rest of my purchases, the line had increased by three more shoppers. I was so embarrassed about holding these people up for so long that I wanted to crawl under that produce display and become a troll as a cautionary tale for other unsuspecting Americans.

The weird thing is that no one seemed especially put off by my unintentional antics—and it was the middle of the afternoon on a Wednesday! They looked at me as though I were a fish in an aquarium. What is this species, one seemed to ask another in French eye language. Why is its face turning red? It appeared as though no one was really in a hurry. Certainly the cashier was not: she’d been talking to the customer before me about going south for vacation—the French get six weeks of paid vacation per year—long after she was done ringing up the woman’s purchases. The other potential cashiers were not in a hurry; they were instead ambling around the grocery store without a care in the world. Even the customers were more curious than frustrated. In America I would’ve been raked over the coals.

When Jeff and I had our neighbor F over last month, this same thing came up. I asked F what was the most surprising thing about America, after having grown up in Austria. He said, “It surprises me how quickly everyone moves in the stores. We move through the line fast, always. What if you love your customer and you want to say, ‘Your barber did a good job this week’? You cannot do it. You must just move, move, move.” Upon asking the same question to Professor B, a French professor from the region where we’re staying now, I was given the same response: “Why are Americans always in a hurry in the stores? If something takes awhile, we could just talk to each other in line, no problem. And what if we want to talk to the person who works for the store? But you cannot do it! We are rushed all the time.”

It’s a surprising thought.

But would it work in America?

Call it greed, call it capitalism, call it “making an honest living”…but one thing we hold dear in America is making money. I don’t necessarily mean that in a bad way. We want to take vacations to get away from the stress of everyday life, we want our children to go to highly rated private schools, we want to shop at Whole Foods or Greenlife so we get the cleanest food possible. Our lives require a lot of money. If we were to slow down in stores or in restaurants, we’d accommodate fewer customers, thereby bringing in less money. In France, for example, it’s common for a restaurant to fill up and then shut its doors for the night: patrons will stay from seven o’clock until midnight, lingering over bread, wine, and cheerful conversation. Would slowing down in this manner be worth the exchange we’d make? We would make a smaller profit, but we would know people better and perhaps, for that reason, benefit from increased national solidarity. Would racial anger begin to dissipate? Would religious extremism attenuate? Would we be physically healthier if we took things a little more slowly? Or would it make a difference at all? Perhaps we are too ingrained in our ways, too dependent on our money and independent of each other, for anything to change. After all, as a hardened introvert, I have trouble imagining myself talking to people for long periods of time at the grocery store or spending hours at the dinner table with others. Perhaps talking in line at the grocery store and lingering at the table wouldn’t make a difference. And we would probably have to give up the private schools and find other sources for the organic food.

I don’t think the French are wrong or the U.S. is wrong here, but perhaps we could benefit from each other. What’s the most important thing to get out of our lives, and how is the best, most balanced way to do it? I’d love to know what you think.

Fête de la musique.

On travaille moins et on joue plus ! (We work less and we play more!)

That slogan was on ads citywide for Fête de la musique, the national French holiday for music. Fête means “party,” “festival,” or “celebration,” and it is the word used to denote public holidays. I like the sentiment: Fête de la musique translates to “music party/festival/celebration.” The French counterpart of Independence Day is Fête nationale, which would translate as “national party/festival/celebration.” In keeping with the idea of a party, red, white, and blue bulletins were printed out with the above slogan on the front and a schedule of all the registered concerts in and around Lyon on the inside. However, some concerts are little more than a duet or trio with a boom box, and those were not included on the list. Dancers also seem to gain rights to their land for the night by squatting, so you just have to amble around if you want to find them. Anyway, contrary to how it might sound, the French do go to work on Fête de la musique, and most of them work a full day. But at 5:00 p.m. sharp, the party begins. Actually, it began a little before that outside my window on Monday afternoon: by 4:00 p.m., my window and head were pounding a bass rhythm in time with the impromptu discothèque on Quai Claude Bernard.

It has long been known that the French are healthier than Americans—fewer heart attacks, strokes, alcohol-related deaths, and Type II diabetes diagnoses, to name a few. We already know that they walk/bike more, eat less sugar, and enjoy smaller portions of food. But surely there has to be another reason for their robust health. As we walked the streets of Lyon in pursuit of good music and the perfect crêpe au chocolat, I wondered whether Fête de la musique might be the secret to French health…or at least indicative of the mindset that contributes to French health. On 21 June each year, people gather for the simple pleasure of being together. They dance in the streets, sing along with the bands, and eat ice cream and crêpes. They chatter and laugh and walk around with cocktails. They take pictures and breathe deeply and hold hands. It’s the very picture of their expression joie de vivre (“joy of living”). Who can stay sufficiently stressed out to have a heart attack when they’re having such a great time?

The fact is this isn’t just the picture of Fête de la musique. Have dinner at any restaurant in France, and you’ll see the same thing: people in groups, laughing and talking and enjoying each other’s company. Last night we had our “small group dinner” which means that eight of us students went out with one professor for the sole purpose of enjoying ourselves in the city with someone to make sure we spoke French the whole time. L, one of the grad students, asked Professor B why the tables were all set for upwards of four people. After all, in America, most tables are ready for two, three, or four. Professor B replied, “Because that’s how many people have to sit at them!” In France, she informed us, people don’t just go out for dinner. If you’re at a restaurant, it’s because you’re celebrating something—which you would always do with friends. You go to restaurants when friends come to see you, when someone graduates, when a couple gets engaged, when you get a promotion. You don’t go just because you made it to 5:00 at work without keeling over.

Speaking of work, I think the French attitude toward it might also explain the decreased incidence of health problems. While the Fête de la musique bulletins might have especially brought it to the forefront, “On travaille moins et on joue plus!” is the general sentiment in the French mind as it relates to work. Professor B explained that the word “career” is used much less frequently in France than in America: one has a “job,” not a “career.” Work is simply not as meaningful or beneficial for the French as it is for Americans; the French punch in their time card, give their boss the next seven hours of their day, and then go home to enjoy an evening with their families. Professor B said that French people “live for evenings, weekends, and holidays.” Those are the times when living happens. As a result, the French workweek is only 35 hours, and everyone gets six weeks of paid vacation a year. And even more than that in some companies. The “lunch hour” is actually two, so people generally walk home and eat lunch with their families. Work is a means to an end, not an end in itself. That has to help the health statistics.

While I embrace the French culture of joie de vivre, I do believe there should be a balance between responsibility and fun. It seems to me that Americans in general lack the willingness and perhaps the know-how to lead truly sociable lives. I suspect I am just such an American. On the other hand, there is a value in working to better one’s environment, whether in the arena of business, education, medicine, law, parenting, or other such fields. These might be missing some extra punch in France because of the longing for weekends and holidays. Perhaps the French economy could be stronger if there was more interest and ambition on the part of the workforce. Or I might be wrong about both nationalities. What do you think?

Bienvenue.

You can’t turn off being a teacher, you know? It doesn’t matter if it’s your first year or your retirement year: if you really love it, it’s just there all the time, coursing through your body like electricity. Anything is fodder for the classroom, from merchandise you come across perchance in hole-in-the-wall shops to the stories you live each day. Memories and souvenirs become illustrations, props, or aids. You’re always thinking, I could use this when I teach…Anyway, this is admittedly my personal experience, but I suspect my World War II instructor is affected by the same condition.

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The night before classes began, E and L and I, the grad students, looked over our schedule and saw that we were to show up at “IEP” at 1:30 for our World War II course. What’s the IEP and where is it? we wondered, bemused. The first two professors we asked also had no idea, or only a vague one. Finally, we were able to find someone who explained somewhat more concretely, but the idea was still amorphous in our brains. All we knew is that “IEP” was the abbreviation for the name of an entire school. So, the next day we struck out in plenty of time to master the situation.

Unfortunately, we got sufficiently confused early on and had to take out a map. The directions we’d been given weren’t especially helpful anyway, and certainly not after several hours had passed. When we finally found our destination, we entered, only to find that the buildings were comprised of only offices. Slowly turning in circles in the middle of the courtyard, we tried desperately to find a building that looked full of classrooms. Nothing. Finally, L stopped a straggler and asked where all the classrooms were. The woman pointed us in another direction, and we took up the search again. Upon walking in, we became convinced that we’d found the right building, but still had no idea which room was ours. We looked at room numbers, peeked in windows, and cocked our ears toward doors, all in hopes of receiving some helpful information. Finally, E located what she thought was our room and called us over. Sure enough, as we tentatively walked in, a professorial-looking man in his fifties greeted us. We spoke briefly of our difficulties finding the room, and he seemed genuinely disappointed that no one had communicated with us any better than that.

When the others came in, he gave us a more official greeting. He introduced himself as Professor D and wished us the “warmest and kindest of bienvenues (welcomes)” to his native country. Then, the speech that followed was one I simply had to write down because I felt so calmed and welcomed, almost to the point of grateful tears. It was like I was in the presence of a divinely beatific Santa Claus who understood my student persona perfectly.

“There are two things you must know before we begin. First of all, I know that it is so very difficult to speak a language not your own. After years of practice, it is still difficult for me to speak English, and I am fifty years old! And for you, I can’t imagine the bravery you have to speak French in this room with me, a native speaker. It is hard, and I know. When I go to America and visit my American friends, they always laugh when I pronounce certain words. It is very difficult to pronounce th and r your language. And they laugh and say, ‘Oh, we love your accent; it’s so cute!’ That makes me feel foolish, makes me feel embarrassed. That makes me feel not very smart because I cannot pronounce the words the way they do. Let me say this to you: I will never make fun of you, never. I know this is hard, and I want you to try, and I promise that if you try, you will not be made fun of by me ever. You understand?

“The second thing you must know is that to learn a language, you must speak it. So speak French to me to learn it. And if I say something you do not understand, you have the right to stop me. Do you understand what I’m saying? You have the right to stop me. This is your class. Sometimes when I start teaching, I get so excited, so enthusiastic, and I speak very fast. My foreign students sometimes look at me with open mouths because they do not understand me any longer. Yes, stop me when this happens. I can talk about World War II forever and not stop for breath.”

Here was a man I’d never met who made me feel more confident in a classroom than I had the rest of my time in Virginia. And I was halfway across the world. Immediately, I felt at ease. He understood: this second-language thing was difficult and tiring, but he would be patient with me. Of course, I never expected a professor to ridicule my pronunciation; nonetheless, it so put me at ease to actually hear someone say it. Here was a place where my floundering French was welcome and desired.

I’ve only had Professor D’s class for two days (a collective seven hours), but those two days have been packed with radio clips, examples and illustrations from his life, and lots of quickly passing lecturing. My notebook has about as many notes on his teaching style as it does the information itself; I feel like I’m constantly writing things down. I consider it a blessing to be under the direction of Professor D, even if it’s only for four weeks. Here’s to the development of many more teachers worldwide just like him.

The Bread Man.

Last Sunday E and I woke up early (well, early for jet lagged Americans) to go to the open-air market just minutes by foot from our apartment. We wanted to absorb everything, taking stock of all the available goods, before committing to any one particular vendor’s wares. We noticed right away an especially delicious-looking display of small breakfast bread loaves in various flavors and promised each other we’d return. We kept our word: after purchasing conservative quantities of tomatoes, carrots, zucchini, cherries, and strawberries, we made our way back to the Bread Man. E asked for a pain aux fraises et au chocolat blanc (bread with strawberries and white chocolate), and I chose a pain aux pépites chocolats (bread with chocolate chips).

Upon hearing our French, the Bread Man brightened and asked, “Which nationality?” We replied that we were Americans, and he was delighted. “Americans, yes?” he clarified jovially. “So Lyon is cold for you!”

Wasn’t that the truth! The day E and I arrived in Lyon it was in the low fifties with rain, and the next morning was no warmer—less so, in fact. “Here some years we ski on our national holiday!” he enthused. “Can you ski on your national holiday?” he winked at us. We all laughed. “Impossible!” I said, while E too assured him there were no such opportunities in our native land. Skiing in July! If you’re not in very select locations or you don’t own a snow machine, you are likely unable to celebrate the Fourth of July with snowballs.

Quickly, as happens with many of his line of work, he turned to the quality of his craft. “You have bread like mine in American stores, no?” I replied that while we had bread—even bread meant specifically for breakfast and dessert—we definitely had nothing of the caliber he offered us, at least not in stores. He nodded knowingly. “Yes,” he agreed, “your bread is industrial. Me, I make all my own bread. All of this”—he waved a hand across the whole spread—“all made by my hands. In America, you make things much more quickly than I do, but then you lose the love of your food. I make everything with much care, yes, much care.”

And how true is that. I am not the sort of person who thinks everything in France is better and more interesting and more chic than everything in America or vice versa. Both countries should be appreciated and celebrated for their differences, particularly their strengths. Nonetheless, I think the Bread Man is right on target: we are so separated from our food in America that many of us either hate it, anesthetize ourselves with it, or struggle between the two. It’s a consumable like everything else, something to be mashed into our mouths while working, watching television, or driving hurriedly from one appointment to the next. We don’t love our food because we expect it to fill voids for us or because we are so disillusioned that it hasn’t. We tie it to what it does to us, for better or worse, rather than from its source.

The French are paradoxical as it relates to food. On the one hand, everything they eat is loaded in fat—butter, cream, grease, take your pick, and it’s probably there. Bread and butter are served in large quantities at each meal. Lunch and dinner are both accompanied by wine, and sometimes by a few wines. The French spend—quite literally—hours of their lives à table (at the table), lingering long after the last morsels and drops are gone. Our group had dinner at the high-class Brasserie du Nord on Sunday night. Our reservations were at 7:00 p.m., we were seated immediately, and yet we didn’t leave until after around 10:30. It took that long to eat our three-course meal. Each course was eaten slowly with much laughter and conversation interspersed between bites and courses. Both wine selection and food preparation are sciences at which native French people are expected to be proficient; serving at a restaurant, even a merely decent one, requires the highest levels of such knowledge. Servers, in fact, often have culinary degrees. Yet with such importance placed on food, the French remain one of the healthiest, slimmest, and most robust nationalities on the planet. How is this possible?

For one, the quantities are much smaller. I haven’t left a table hungry yet, but much less is served to me than I would expect at even a Steak ‘n’ Shake in the U.S. Also, the streets are teeming with walkers and bike-riders. Rush hour is nothing to be worried about because if a person lives within four miles or so of his/her office, she/he walks. Everyone is aware of how much they are eating because they eat so very slowly and deliberately. Meals are accompanied by things other than food to look forward to, such as the entertaining and fulfilling company of others.

Of course, not all of these elements of the French meal could be adopted in the U.S. We lead faster-paced lives, we frequently live a longer distance from our jobs, and we enjoy the peace and quiet of our fierce individualism (myself included). But what if we did slow down, eat a little less of the delicious foods we love, and invite friends over often to share a meal with us? What if we did prepare our food on a regular basis—and take pride in it as a craft that sustains life—rather than buying “industrial bread”? I wonder how our health and our entire society would change, with or without the gym.

Arrival.

It’s three minutes until noon on Sunday, 20 June. I am writing from a small, cute apartment on the Quai Claude Bernard in Lyon, Rhône-Alpes, France. My windows are open, but since I am on the top floor, all I’m looking at are leaves from the tree in front of our building. If it weren’t for the car noises, church bells, and occasional sirens below, you’d never know I was in a major European city. Looking down from my window through the leaves, I can see a busy street and a wide river. Just beyond that, a hill is covered in old buildings—apartments, churches, and houses. It’s cloudy and cold out today: a high of 52^oF. I’ve been here for almost 24 hours, during which time I’ve set up my room, showered twice, eaten, Skyped with my parents and Jeff, slept for nine hours, explored the area around our apartment somewhat with my roommate, grocery shopped, and taken a trip to the Sunday morning open-air market. Even with all that activity, I’m finally calming down a bit after a tiring journey over the Atlantic.

I left the States at 6:40 p.m. on Friday evening after a very difficult goodbye with Jeff. Everything went smoothly until arriving at London Heathrow: no connecting information for Lyon was given over the intercom on the plane, and no gate number was on my ticket. Luckily, and completely coincidentally, the man occupying the seat next to mine was the husband of the trip’s supervisor. Working together, we were able to locate the gate of our flight to Lyon, and we got there just on time, despite the long lines at security. While waiting for my suitcase in Lyon, I heard familiarly accented English and went over to ask the girls using it whether they were with the U.Va. trip. They were, and one of them agreed to split a cab with me, even though we were going to slightly different destinations. What would’ve been a 44€ expenditure became just 22€, which is, of course, still ridiculous but easier to swallow.

When I arrived at Marie’s, the property manager’s, apartment to pick up the keys, I had to wait for her for some time. When she finally arrived and gave me the keys, I walked up the five flights of stairs only to find that the doors weren’t labeled or numbered, so I didn’t know which was mine. I searched and peeked and, in general, looked like a confused American. Fortunately, there were some people across the way that I was able to ask, and they genially pointed me to the correct apartment. However, when I got there, I couldn’t open the door. There are two keys required, one that looks perfectly normal and one that looks like it opens a castle. You can guess which key caused problems. I traipsed back down the stairs and asked Marie for help. She brusquely explained the door and demonstrated, so I was finally able to get it open.

To make a long story short, when I got in the apartment, I cried and unpacked and cried and read the Bible cried and showered and cried and prayed. A month is such a long time to be away from home and, most especially, one’s spouse. I tried for an hour and a half to hook up the Internet so I could at least email Jeff and my parents, but—surprise, surprise—I wasn’t able to log on. I hit rock bottom. I was alone in a strange city without a way to contact anyone I knew, and my worn-out mind and body just couldn’t take anymore. But before long, my roommate arrived, and things improved quickly. E got the Internet running in no time, and I explained the castle-key to her. We realized about the same time that we hadn’t eaten all day, so we decided that we’d run out to the grocery store for supplies. Not that there was much of a choice: nothing is open on Sunday except the weekly open-air market, and stores close early on Saturday.

The grocery trip turned out to be a fiasco. Marie had pointed us in the direction of a Casino, the primary Lyonnais supermarket chain. E and I absolutely could not find it and, after walking for an hour and asking three different people for directions, had effectively gotten lost. Finally, we found a tiny grocery store that was still open, and we stocked up on some necessities: eggs, vegetables, cheese, fruit, bread, water, laundry detergent. Regrettably, the laundry detergent and pack of water bottles were enormously heavy. Since we were lost, we ended up having to carry them a very long way. Both of us suffered hand damage. I simply cannot explain the pain we experienced due to the being-lost and the six-pack of 2-liter waters. Even today my fingers and hands are sore, the skin’s rubbed raw, my feet are aching, and my biceps and back muscles are killing me. To add insult to serious injury, on the way back from Casino, we passed no less than five (closer) supermarkets. To further open the wound and pour salt in, we discovered after returning to our apartment that the “laundry detergent” is actually fabric softener. Come on. Nonetheless, we’re marking it as a success because we’re not hungry and we did eventually wind back up at 1 Quai Claude Bernard.

This morning, E and I had a much better experience. We went to the open-air market to look around and find ourselves some lunch. We did not get lost this time, thankfully, and we found cheap and delicious food. We feasted on a rotisserie half-chicken with roasted potatoes at lunch and ate some more bread and cheese. (We really have no option on the bread and cheese, you understand, because we’re in France.) The only problem arose when trying to reenter our apartment: castle-key reared its ugly head again. We spent upwards of ten minutes just trying to open our crazy door. It was the height of frustration, let me tell you. We’re going to have door practice before orientation tonight.

That’s pretty much everything that’s happened so far, and I need to stop writing because I have reading to do for class tomorrow. In short, things are going okay, and I am so glad E is with me. I can’t imagine how much I’d be wishing I could go home right now if I wasn’t going through it all with someone else. I actually do still just want to go home, but I’m starting to feel better about being here for a month. And Skype really, really helps. It’s a big comfort to be able to see and talk to Jeff and my parents (for free!) and to hear the voices that calm me.

I can’t post pictures because my computer doesn’t recognize my camera. But I will write more later—whenever the next adventure ensues.

John the Baptist.

(NOTE: You’ll have to forgive the picture. I searched on Google Images for John the Baptist out of curiosity, and I thought this one was funny.)

I have never liked the phrase found God, as in “My nephew finally ‘found God.’” It makes God sound so commonplace, so easily lost and regained. Using this terminology, it sounds no more important to “find” God than it would be to “find” your long-lost stopwatch. Actually, I think we should be making every effort to "find" God as many times as possible during the day. Matthew 3 especially illumines this point with the introduction of John the Baptist.

Apparently, John’s entire diet was overgrown flies and raw honey. I suspect your mental image of him is similar to mine: unruly beard and hair, yellowed teeth, suntan a woman would kill for. If you only visualize him in the context of a preacher that lives in the desert and screams at people about repenting, that works. But imagine him in your daily routine. Hearing God’s message from the voice of a scruffy, insect-eating maniac in your office, neighborhood, or church would be difficult. It would take some serious searching to “find God” in John’s message because it would be a challenge to get past his appearance.

I’m not going to take this down the path of God-asks-that-we-love-even-the-stinky-people – although I could use a dose of that sometimes. Instead, God’s use of wild-eyed John reminds me to look for God even in the most unexpected of places. For example, I have always loved British Romantic poetry, which was written by men known for their pantheism. While I am no pantheist, I believe they might have been onto something that most modern-day Christians overlook: God doesn’t equal nature, but His glory resides in it. It’s why we get so enraged about things like the Gulf oil spill. It tarnishes our natural revelation of God, his very masterpieces. His magnificence glows in the sunset, flows in the waterfall, glistens in the stars; the British Romantics are masters of bringing this wonder to the surface. I can “find God” even in non-religious venues.

In January of this year I wrote about a similar experience: “finding God” in Friends. There’s an episode in the eighth season in which Rachel, pregnant with Ross’s baby, has moved in with Ross even though they are no longer involved and haven’t been in years. One afternoon in the third trimester of Rachel’s pregnancy, Ross goes on a date with a woman he met while he and Rachel were shopping for baby paraphernalia. When he returns, it’s obvious that Rachel is upset with him, but he can’t figure out why. “What do you want from me?” he asks, confused. Sighing, she replies, “I don’t want you to date. I don’t want to date you, but I don’t want anyone else to either. I want you to be at my beck and call twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week…I know that’s ridiculous, but it’s how I feel.” After a moment’s pause, he shrugs and says, “Okay.” Looking up at him, mystified, she says, “‘Okay’? But I’m being so unreasonable!” It’s the picture of grace, right there. God is “lovesick” over us, as Philip Yancey says, and is willing to erase our sins with his grace over and over and over again…even though we’re being so unreasonable in asking for it. Even though we’re repenting and failing, repenting and failing, he welcomes us to his throne every time.

Finding God is not a once-in-a-lifetime event, rather it is a never-ending exercise for the Christian. How can I find God in what I do so I can emanate his message to those I encounter everyday? How can I find Love so that I can create a culture of kindness throughout my life?

Proof.

The story of Jesus sounds silly, doesn’t it? It doesn’t seem logical that a Middle Eastern carpenter—quite literally born in a barn—could be king of the universe. Honestly, I don’t blame people who say, “You really believe that?” By the world’s standards, my faith doesn’t make sense. I also don’t blame people who want proof. Our party line as Christians seems to be, “Christian beliefs are based on faith, not proof.” And we like to quote Hebrews 11:1: “Faith is the confidence that what we hope for will actually happen; it gives us assurance about things we cannot see” (NLT). That works for us (presumably), but many want something more concrete. No scientific experiment exists that I can perform to definitively prove my beliefs, but there is something I consider my own personal proof: wisdom. This is a miracle, this is proof to me: when I consider all of the major decisions I’ve made in my life, I have yet to make a bad one. That has absolutely not one iota to do with me; I’m no wiser than anyone else. In fact, I’m comparatively less wise than many people on the planet. But every time I’ve had to make a life-altering decision, my heart has sought wisdom from God, and as a result, I haven’t regretted a single step I’ve taken.

The first such step I consider to be transferring high schools. That may not sound like an especially big deal to you, but it certainly was to me. The county high school was brimming with people I’d known since I was five years old; the city high school boasted a whole three people I knew: my next-door neighbor and two church friends. When you’re a profoundly introverted person like I am, the thought of going to school with 2,000 people you don’t know isn’t exhilarating; it’s terrifying. However, the city high school was more academically rigorous and fostered a much stronger drama program, so I made the switch in January of my sophomore year. God was with me in my new school: it was there I met the woman who’s been my best friend for over a decade, plus other wonderful people with whom I keep in contact. It was a difficult decision but undoubtedly a wise one, which is obvious when I look back. That’s something I can say for so many other decisions I’ve made that seemed irrational at the time: getting a teaching certificate instead of going to grad school when I finished college, etc. There’s been a reason every time, and God hasn’t let me make a bad decision yet. I don’t regret a thing.

There’s one decision for which I’m still waiting to see the wisdom. I double-majored in French and English in my undergrad: two supremely unmarketable degrees. Choosing those fields is counterintuitive on all accounts, but nothing else felt like the right fit. I just trusted God that he had put those talents and desires in my heart for some reason. Currently, I’m trying to earn a master’s in French, which doesn’t really solve the marketability problem…especially since French majors nationwide are being outsourced to France. The job market for French professors is decreasing, and, even though I knew that, I still felt that familiar pull that this was the right place for me. On top of all that, I perform much more agilely with English-language literature than I do with French. And yet somehow, despite all of that, I really feel as though this is where I belong. It’s that tiny little beam, like the faint green light Nick Carraway saw across the water’s surface, that I hang onto.

Yet, non-academic reasons for why I’m here are already revealing themselves. The University of Virginia provides state-of-the-art medical care, and for the first time, I’ve gotten answers about things going on in my body—answers I wasn’t even charged for. Also, living away from my hometown has been a bittersweet blessing: though it’s been unspeakably difficult to be hours from my family and friends, I’ve learned that I can thrive somewhere other than that one environment. Jeff and I have found a welcoming church home, a place we truly look forward to visiting on Thursday nights and Sunday mornings. Our church talks a lot about being genuine, compassionate, and full of grace—all qualities we have found in abundance in our small group. Even if I never saw any other returns on investment than the ones I listed above, the move to Virginia would’ve been worth it. Nonetheless, I still expect God to gloriously use my academic pursuits here in the future, even though I am blind to the possibilities right now. The convergence of what I know and what I hope for is my faith and my proof all at the same time.

I’m starting to feel that after the master’s it will be time to move on, and I just have to hope that God will be with me for the next step, too. He’s never let me down, never left me alone, never left my questions unanswered when it was time to reveal the reasons. I have no idea why I’m here, no idea why I majored in literature and language, no idea what the next step will be. For a planner like I am, that is exceptionally uncomfortable. But the never-failing love and grace of Christ is the safety net I cling to. That’s proof enough to me that my faith, my Jesus, is real. I’m not worried. It’s like one of my favorite moments in Charlotte’s Web. Wilbur, having been informed by the sheep of the fate of pigs on a farm, says to Charlotte, “Should I be worried?” She responds calmly, “Of course not. What good would that do?”

Mirrors.

The most frequent response I receive when I tell people that I taught high school is, “Wow. I could never do that. Teenagers these days…” This judgment comes complete with a slow headshake to emphasize the hopeless state of youngsters. I concede that teenagers can be difficult. In fact, they are in turn hilarious, pitiful, intelligent, angry, creative, challenging, and very, very needy. But I tend to come to their defense when people carelessly pass judgment on the lot of them. And actually – although this seems to go too far for most people – I rarely think it’s the student’s fault that he/she acts inappropriately.

While we were visiting Jeff’s parents in Colorado in December of 2008, we all went to see the Avalanche play the Nashville Predators. (If you think I had torn loyalties, trust me, I did.) Everyone played nice until the second period. An Avalanche player knocked a Predator off the ice into the box where his teammates sat. The Av player was sent to the penalty box for un-sportsmanlike conduct. The rest of his teammates found this call unfair, and tensions mounted on both sides. While the Av player was in the box, the Predators took advantage of the situation and made a goal. The scoreboard flashed with menacing red words silently screaming at the Avalanche: “Get mad! Get even!” Before long, a fight broke out near the Predator’s goalie, causing all of the players to flock over and get in on the action. To be honest, none of that really surprised me; it’s testosterone in action, and you can see similar scenes in bars, schools, and parking lots around the country. But what really made my blood boil was the crowd’s reaction. Predictably, they stood and began cheering on the fight. With thousands of people yelling, of course, it’s impossible to hear what all is being said; however, I heard the man behind me start screaming, “Yeah! Ground ‘em into the ice! Give ‘em hell!”

Don’t talk to me about disrespectful, violent young people when that’s what you give them to look up to. And it’s not just at hockey games – the Chattanooga Lookouts (a minor league team no less!) has bloodthirsty fans, too. In the interest of space, I won’t even begin to cover football players: consider Ray Lewis, Philip Rivers, Randy Moss, and the list goes on. Don’t talk to me about violence in high schools without considering the ramifications of violence in sports. Teenagers think, and are absolutely correct, that it’s hypocrisy to tell them, “You can’t settle disagreements with fights,” when they’re seeing these same adults acting in completely the opposite way on the sporting field! I love sports as much, and probably more, than the next girl, but if we want high schoolers who are able to control their emotions, able to handle things like “adults” (What does that even mean anymore?), then we’d better hold a mirror up while we’re at sporting events cheering on the fights, disrespect, and violence we’re preaching against.

I’m not saying we should enter the arena wearing peace signs and smiling at everyone and selling roses instead of beer, but I am saying to think about those complained-about young people. How can we expect them to act differently when this is what they see from us?

Imperfection.

Last night Armando Galarraga, pitcher for the Detroit Tigers, was six outs away from a perfect game when ESPN started bonus coverage. (A “perfect game” happens when a pitcher gets an out for every batter that comes up. No hits, no walks, nothing but disappointed batter after disappointed batter.) It’s the top of the eighth. A groundout, a strikeout, another groundout. Top of the ninth. Fly ball. The right fielder seems to be running at supersonic speed. Superhuman catch—everyone’s in awe that he made it, thereby keeping the game “perfect” for another out. Next batter grounds out to the shortstop. Last out. Grounder. First baseman darts over to pick it up. Galarraga runs over to cover first base. The catch is made, runner gets to the base one and a half seconds later, knows that he’s out. Runner hangs his head in defeat. First baseman and Galarraga begin cheering: it’s a perfect game! Then, all of a sudden, it’s not. The umpire calls the runner safe. Safe. Galarraga gapes for a moment and then screws his face into an unbelieving smile. He quietly goes back to the mound, having lost the Detroit Tigers their first-ever perfect game. This would have also been the first time ever in MLB history to have three perfect games in one season. The last time there were even two in one season was 1888. In short, this is unheard of. Knowing all of this, the first baseman starts yelling at the ump. The Tigers’ manager comes out and yells at the ump. Fans boo. It’s all to no avail: the call stands. Galarraga gets the 28^th out. The game mercifully ends.

It’s no secret that humans are imperfect. I think that’s why everyone gets excited about perfect games: it’s so rare to find perfection in this world that we root for the team that’s able to create it for nine innings. And I do mean “team”—Galarraga might have been on the mound, but it takes hard working fielders to keep the perfection going. The perfect game belongs to all of them, not just Galarraga. Without that amazing catch by Austin Jackson, for example, the perfect game would’ve ended a lot sooner (and, it must be said, more fairly). Together, these men comprised the perfect team for one night, and baseball fans nationwide get excited about that.

There’s something in our nature that makes us crave perfection. I daresay it is Eden. Collectively, our souls remember a time when the world was perfect: no heartbreak, no sin, no anger, no bad calls. There was a time when gallivanting around unclothed and uninhibited was allowed. No one went hungry, no one died, no one became ill. It’s this memory buried in our unconscious—the Holy Spirit living in us—that causes us to say, “That’s not fair!” We remember what fair felt like. It’s this memory that causes us to seek out the elixirs of youth: Botox, plastic surgery, hair dyes, and serums. It drives us to say, “Oh, it’s perfect!” about gifts given to us, sunsets in front of us, or meals made for us. For a brief moment, we catch a whiff of perfection, and it thrills us.

But it my own life, this perfection has a darker side. I find myself often afraid to take a step in any direction because I’m afraid I won’t be perfect. Certain lesson plans that would’ve probably been excellent learning experiences for my students were thrown in the trash because I didn’t think I could execute them perfectly. I dropped a class in college when I wasn’t able to do with assignments with perfection. This fall I will be teaching elementary French at U.Va., and I am terrified that I will get in front of the group and embarrass myself because it won’t be perfect. Even in church, I sometimes look around and think, All these people probably have excellent devotional times every day, and I can never seem to keep a Bible-reading routine going. I do a lot of comparing myself to others, and I always come up short.

Yet the Bible tells me that despite my imperfection, Jesus loves me—so much so that He allowed Himself to be murdered so that He wouldn’t have to live in heaven without me. He exchanged His perfect life for my ugly one. He doesn’t care that I’m imperfect. How that works, I will never understand. After all, unhealthy, self-imposed requirements of perfection aside, I’m still a sinner. I still think and say and do terrible things. And yet, knowing all that, Jesus loves me. That, actually, is pretty perfect.