Blogs from Alsace, France, Europe - page 15

I'll be honest - I didn't have very high hopes for my birthday party on Saturday, courtesy of the Fau Family. Laetitia,had invited family friends from church, people who tend to be at least 30 years older than me and more Cedric and Laetitia's friends than mine. I was beginning to worry that I'd be the only person my age at the party. After a bit of light interrogation (I'm not too keen on surprises - well it depends whose organising them) I managed to discover that Laetitia had contacted the youth leaders to see if they could get some of the youth group together - this was Friday afternoon and considering Vincent and Elizabeth's organisation skills (Vincent's in particular), I didn't have much hope for anything being sorted. On the Saturday morning I woke up ... read more

After a busy and tiring week of working with the group of Dutch people who had come to visit the school and the 3eme and 4eme, helping them to translate their projects on persecuted Christians, I was ready to get away from Guebwiller, even if it was just for a day. So when Anna suggested going to Colmar to meet up with two other English assistants, I instantly accepted. Luckily we caught an afternoon bus in - I don't think I'd have been capable of dragging myself out of bed any earlier than 9 o'clock. The two other English assistants, Megan and Laura (it was the first time for me to meet them), got off a train at Colmar at 1:30. Once assembled, me and Anna acted as the guides and led them across the busy, ... read more

My day of work on Friday involved helping the class of 3eme translate their projects on Persecuted Christians - the information for which, they'd taken from Google and Wikipedia so translating the language wasn't exactly easy. I mean, how am I supposed to be able to translate the population density per km2 of China from French into English? And Northen Korea's mineral rocks? Me and Daniele spent the lesson pouring over her giant-sized dictionary and searching on the internet to help us with the translation, all the time puffing and groaning and rolling our eyes at the task before us. A total of 6-7 projects all to be translated by next week. Not fun. Then there's the sponsored race being held next Thursday in aid of Open Doors. On monitoring duty with Lydie and Daniele at ... read more

Not much to blog about today - life in France is still as rich (meaning it's full of great and difficult moments), enjoyable (meaning I love it 99% of the time - the other 1% of the time I'm thinking of the food back home or English tv) and beautiful (meaning it hardly ever rains but more importantly, that I wouldn't want to be anywhere else). I am so lucky to be here,doing what I'm doing and gaining the experiences that I'm gaining - it's taken me a long time to realize just how incredibly lucky I am. The more time passes the more I think of how sad it will be to leave this life - but I'm sure God's got great stuff in store for me after this year is up. In fact, I ... read more

Yesterday evening after a long day at school, I had the English lessons over in Colmar, which Daniele had asked me to come along to. I hadn't hesitated in saying yes when she asked me - as much as I don't really like speaking in front of lots of people, somehow when I'm in a teaching situation, it's different and I feel more confident. However, as the time drew nearer I did start to get very nervous especially when the students started arriving. They were all very curious about who I was and what I was doing there, dressed what must have seemed a bit strangely - I was wearing a white shirt and black skirt with a Welsh shawl pinned around my shoulders with a daffodil (the lesson was evidently Wales-based) - I chose to ... read more