05 October 2011

zeee bread & butter

Bonjour là! Since it has, infact, been lightyears since I last posted I am actually so excited to get to share some recent adventures!!! I am going to post random pictures so y'all can see and then most likely come back to explain all the different little adventures they are from, another time!




                                       


Right now I am sitting in my comfy, quite spacious thing of a room, in a little, quiet town outside Lyon, France.  My large window is open, the panes stretched wide, like a little baby waiting to give a big hug. The light air of the Beaujolais country is wafting in, out, about and around me as birds sing their little melodies. I can hear the leaves of surrounding trees, l'arbres, ruffle quitely, calmly waiting for the weather to cool. The savory, satisfying taste of lunch is still on the tip of my tongue.

ahhhh la France. Encore..oui, c'est vrais! Yepp, it's true! I am back in France again, this time for study abroad. This little biddie just couldn't get enough the first time and had to come back for seconds ;)

Anyways, like I mentioned, I am in Lyon, France in the South-Eastern region de la France. (On a minor tangent, I never know if you capitalize directional words such as North, West, South, East, South-East ...but well, I think they look quite nice like that...alas they will stay capitalized.) (Goodness gracious, I can't even understand grammer in English...good thing I have La Grammaire Française every Tuesday at 14h00-15h30... yeah, GREAT thing.)

Anyways, today I have a day off from my little studies. But today I am writing to you, chèr ami! 

Usually, each fresh little morning, I pull myself out of bed and into my salle de bain to wash my sleepie face off and get me a fresh one. After I get dressed and try to make myself look somewhat acceptable i.e. as chic as all the other young ladies in this country, I go downstairs to the biddie wooden table in the kitchen. I put three scoops of dark, fragrant coffee grinds into the filter and cut myself of a iece of baguette while the thick Malongo coffee brews, bubbles and makes other assorted strange noises. I sincerely hope those sounds are normal, by the way. I may have already broken this family's microwave (oh, what a morning that was) and I do not need to add anything else to my petit track record. But, alas, back to baguettes and black coffee.

  


If you think baguettes, butter, cheese, wine, and striped shirts are a complete cliché of the french culture, than you are right. The way it is portrayed in North American culture, at least, is very silly and inaccurate! The family does not wear berets whilst pracing around on cobblestone streets eating croissants. However! There is a bit of truth to some clichés. Par example...every morning there is fresh bread sitting pretty in its little paper slip, on the kitchen table. There does indeed sit a little tray of creamy, pale, (delectable) butter right next to that long, crunchy-on-the-outside, airy-soft-on-the-inside baguette, every morning. Rosé, or sometimes red wine, is often casually served alongside Ratatouille for dinner. Cheese or yogurt always follow the main dinner course. And ladies, french women do wear stripes. Lots of stripes.


There are lot's of beautiful things about France, and one of them is that there still remains a sense of simplicity about things. Bread is fresh and good, plain and simple. Butter is creamy, delicious and used in small amounts. Laundry is dried on little racks outside instead of in a machine. Legs are used to walk to other places, dinner is in a room without a TV and conversation about anything and everything accompanies eachmeal, and here at least, there is always a bit of controversy over qui a raison, who is right. This little biddie can't say she loves everything about the french culture...there are somethings that I think I will always be more accustomed to and comfortable doing how I have been raised to do them. And it is not easy living life in a different language! Slowly but steadily I will become fluent, I keep telling myself. SLOWLY, but steadily.



With the support, laughs, love, and understanding of other friends, people, communtiy, students, I am inspired to pray and trust that God will bring me where I need to be going. At all times. Getting to a place of fluency is definitely one place I want to go, but also just getting off at the right bus stop would be nice. hehe.  




so yeah, I'm thinking my little (or not so little) feet are looking swollen in this picture. I promise I have not been eating too too many baguettes or bittie pieces of dark chocolate. I think they are a bit plump on account of walking heheh. Then again, I did just eat 3 (possibly 4) french butter cookies. hehehe little bittie better get to some walkin' again.


à plus mes amis!


12 August 2011





La ville de la lumière
...or something like that.
hehe 


Paris.




                     

             

                                                             
                                                             
     
       

        

Paris was amazing :) Seriesusement, mes amis, you should try to get your lil selves there si possible, if possible.  I went to Paris with  a group of students and staff from mon université in Montreal. It was one of the craziest, most challenging, beautiful, SMELLY!, delicious, bond-making, habit-breaking trips of this littlebiddie's life. Oh how I wish I could TAKE YOU. Ah mes amis, mes amis goodness gracious how many times I had to pinch myself as I walked out of my Parisian apartment door, rode the metro (like a pro obviously), ate my lil pain au chocolat (chocolate croissant! UHM OUI.), wore a lil scarf hehe, and attempted to speak la langue française, the utterly delish little language of French. However... despite how quite romantic and lovely it sounds, my month long frolic around the land of baguettes and berets, was in fact,  a very difficult trip! And to be completely bare-boned honest with you, I left the City of Lights with the sinking feeling that some of the people in the City of Lights are, well, not so heureux, happy. But then again, I can feel the same thing in New York. Goodness gracious, I love people and I love places filled with vibrant life, vivid culture, delectable food, mind-blowing art, but sometimes I think the world is. so. focused. on the complete wrong things. What the heck man! When I'm 80 all I will want to know is that I've helped people, ya knowwwww? I just want people to feel loved and happy, and not feel lost a midst crowds, and noise, and subways, and exhaust, and poverty, and pee on the streets, and garbage underneath old benches and...everything else. 

Paris gave me persepctive. Beautiful, loving, grace-filled perspective. I love my Parisian friends! And Paris is indeed beautiful, just as they say. (and the bread ohlalalalala) But! I hope to see, not just in Paris, but everywhere,  more sourires,  more smiles. More truly satisfied, hope-filled people.


I know it is hard for people to take me seriously and all, on account of my resemblance to a curious lil gamin, kid. But all petitee jokes aside, there is reeeeeal hope. This is where this littlebiddie found it a couple of years ago...

"For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him." John 3:16-17

L'espoir. 

...this does not mean, however, that there were not many little biddie adventures in la ville de la lumière though ;) Adventures with God are just that much more fun hehehehehe so much to tell!







09 August 2011

HI!

So I felt completely guilty today. Quite guilty.

BUT.

I realize this guilt's existence in my (smallish) brain is quite justified. QUITE justified. A friend told me recently that I have many fun, often creative, sometimes useful, and, on very rare occasions, good ideas. But then she said something that has not ceased to bother my little self in quite a while.

"You have all these ideas! But then you never actually follow through with any of them."

Now, my little heart nearly dropped all over my honey-brown wooden floor as I sat in my chair and stared at that very same honey-brown wooden floor. It was so true.

Never, well RARELY, do I follow through with the things I say, plan, proclaim that I will do. WHY!?  What's even worse is that this means that I am one of those. YES. One of those...

The unreliable friend.

OHMYGOSH I can barely look at the words I've just typed. OHMYGOSHOHMYGOSH! It's true! I am unreliable! Oh goooodness gracious. I am going to need some type of chocolate laden SOMETHING as I ponder this.

Okay no seriously eating your feelings, I am told, is not the answer. But actually chocolate at any time of the day is just a lovely thing. And well, I am personally a lively supporter of the dark chocolate against  free radicals brigade. Whatever in the world a free radical is, I am not sure, but you see chocolate is somehow the answer to the stopping of these little rascals.

Anyways. Back to my life fail. I've decided that I cannot, absolutely CANNOT ccontinue to be an unreliable daughter, sister, friend, girlfriend, uhmuhm... american citizen! voter! recycle-er! erm...reader! No more books half finished! Jane Eyre-HERE I COME!!

I WILL NOT BE UNRELIABLE! However, in keeping with my idiotic unreliable nature, I am obviously horrendous at keeping resolutions and the like. So this declaration against unreliability actually cannot be anything like a resolution. MAIS NON! This has to be an actual change in behavior. And for that, there is only one place to go.

ANTHROPOLOGY! hehe okay noooo. Je rigole, je rigole, I jest, dear friend, I jest.
I'd be lying through my brace-free (for six years now!) lil teeth if I told you that I drew my strength, determination, and purpose from anywhere except God. In fact, there's less of me doing anything, and more of Him doing everything. Reading the Bible, as nun-ish as that sounded to me in my wee years, has come to mean the world to me. It's that powerful. It's one of the primary ways I connect to God. [ and He is preeeeety darn cool. Sense of humor too, right Lord?! hehe :) ]

So it is with this strength, His strength, that I will find the ability to be reliable. Afterall, Jesus was the most reliable person ever. He came to this place, with idiotic unreliables like me running around, and chose to die for us. He had the choice to not be killed, but chose to let Himself be led to the cross because He. cared. that. much. Without Him, I wouldn't have my relationship with God.

Now that's the kind of reliability I look towards. That's the kind of reliability I want to grow to display and live and be.  I am not much of a risk taker. ( Helmut, seat belt, and SPF 30 all day, errday.) But Jesus' kind of proactive reliability is something I want. And I'm willing to make changes to do that. So here's to BEING RELIABLE. Starts NOW.

impromtu mini rap for motivation:

free radicals G?
nah, I wanna be radically free
of my stupidity
my unreliability
its my passivity
thats
taking hold of me
erm
hot diggi-ty.

So whoopwhoop there you go.
Im a changing woman, yo.


:)



02 February 2011

C'est l'hiver à Montréal!

Salut chers amis. How goes it!! It's super duper snowy and billowy and white and windy and puffy on the streets of Montréal right now. Littlebiddie looks quite like a miniature walking snowsuit when she chippers to school these days tehehe mais, c'est bon mes amis, c'est bon!

The only lil thang that has been bothering me as of late is the fact that my trusted lil boots have ripped at their seams. Quite literally. The zippers on both the right boot and the left boot (respectively) have recently announced their resignation and are no longer working in cooperation with the idea of walking through snow. Like my little sister, they are quite cheeky and can often be sassy. I have therefore decided I am going to give them time to reconsider their comments/actions. Otherwise, we are off to la cordonnerie, the shoe shop repairman.


Last year, l'année dernière, I went to le cordonnerie to inquire about some luscious little leather boots I had spied in the shop window. When I went inside, however, the owner, the little monsieur, was in the workshop around back. But! The little monsieur had left the door a bit ajar and I was able to glance in and see a beautiful little sight. Shelves and shelves of beautiful, fresh, dyed leather hung from thick wooden shelves all around the workshop. Big metal sewing-implying things were installed at the ends of long, wide wood tables. I do believe I started to think of Pinocchio whilst soaking that little shop in, but was soon made to regain focus when the little monsieur noticed me standing in the middle of his shop.

 

                     mehehe at the shoeshop! chez le cordonnerie!

I don't think he reeeeaaaaallly fancied the thought of me taking pictures, so I didn't. Well, mmkay, I snapped like two! hehee those little french boots were impossibly mignon, cute, but I simply could not justify their direct purchase. Now, maintenant, it is a different story :)


      

Alas, I shall get to work on finding some boots. Yeee I love explorations!
Explore something new about your world today, mon ami!
                                                                         à plus! 

19 January 2011

hehe

              



Hello! Mmk, so here's the thang. T'is a new year and a new start and this lovely freshness is inspiring me to attempt to start to become a regular bloggin lilbiddieee! Soooo for those who I've disappointed (mamá) fear no longer. Je reviens, I'm back, and I'm making it a point to write once a week! Fun things to show and tell!!! weee!

For right now, ima show off some photography from a ¡super talented colombiana! yayy her photos are beautiful and I love them! One is my desktop backround, maintenant.

mmkk, talk to you soon! je reviens ;)