Friends from far away....
Alright, today I got a chance to meet up with Nathan and Kara. As some of you may know, they are also going on onSite in October to Mexico. So this morning, we toured around Old Quebec and stopped to eat at a Crepe Restaurant. We talked about onSite stuff and I point a few points of interests. We had a good time telling each other what God has done in our lives. It was cool seeing each other again.
We are standing on top of one of walled sections, to the right is Old Quebec.
Sunday Updates
Today was pretty eventful. At church today, a missions team from First Alliance in Calgary came today. The service was still in French, but what was different was that the prayers, and announcements we had were translated into English. The sermon was not translated, but one of the pastors gave us a summary of the sermon in English. I found it a little different because he announced it to everyone in the pulpit and then the speaker preached the sermon. After the service, I had lunch with the missions team at the Life Bible college AKA IBVIE (Institut Biblique VIE(vérité, intergration, expérience)). The last three words are truth, intergration and experience. This Bible college was pretty small. They have one classroom for everything. By everything i mean the lunchroom, library and classroom was just one room. This Bible college trains many lay pastors. As far as i know there isn't a fulltime pastor. The pastor would have a secondary job either working as parttime staff for IBVIE or doing something else. This is part of their culture because they understand that lay leaders work best in the Quebec context. Unfortunately, this luncheon was very brief because the missions team had to go on and visit old Quebec and @ 5pm they would go on a cruise.
The other event was that the local churches here had a surprise birthday party for Troy (one of my mentors). So we meet @ a park around 3 to wish him a happy birthday. I was able to mingle around and practice my french on some of the people. I also got a chance to talk to some other missionaries who were studying French. I manage to get a picture of my two mentors and myself. I will post the picture up as soon as I get the picture.
Everything is starting to come together...
Yesterday, I got a chance to meet up with my mentors. It turns out that I will be having 2 mentors for the remainder of my onSite. So Troy, Matt and I talked about different ministry opportunities for me to do. This includes things like (but not limited to) passing out sandwiches to the needy in Old Quebec (Downtown), working in a soup kitchen, creating a Amazing Race-ish kind of event for the incoming missions trip teams and sharing my testimony in French. More details to come on all that as they arise.
Last night I also went to the youth group at Lévis Alliance church. This is the largest Christian & Missionary Alliance French church in Quebec. It is also the only one that has its own building. Because the Alliance churches in Quebec City are small, they combine their youth program together. I was surprised to hear that many of the youth who come have to travel a great distance. Troy told me that that some of the youth have to travel 45mins to get here. It was amazing to see the young people want to come and spend time doing a Bible study and also hang out. It was also different because in the summer, French ministry shuts down. So I think my mentors were pleasantly surprised when a dozen youth showed last night. Yesterday's Bible Passage was on Ecclesiastes 1. That's all i got from the short talk, but i do know that it was a bit of a discussion because the youth were very interested and they were discussing the passage with my mentors.
Other updates
In September, I will be going back to Laval to learn more French.
I made some minor cosmetic changes to the site. In addition, I now have a link to all my fellow onSite friends.
Test of a world clock. I know i am only 2 hours ahead. But i wanted to test out this nifty html coding that is on a website.
To any fellow onSiter who reads this blog, let people know what time it is in your zone by going on to this website:
http://www.timeanddate.com/clocks/free.html?n=165
Today, I did a little bit on my paper, went out to get some food for the week and pray/read the Bible. My host is still gone, so i am still all alone.
If you want to call, email or msg me on facebook, please feel free to do so.
Hi everyone,
I know i haven't posted in a while, that is because my life hasn't been too interesting. I have been working on some papers for onSite and trying to practice my French. That is all i have been doing last week. My mentor should be back from vacation soon, so hopefully we get to talk this week.
Random Fact:
The strangest culture experience that i had was finding milk in a plastic bag. In Quebec City (at least where i am at) The 2 liter milk containers are the same but there are no 4 liter jugs. We just get a few bags, and we put them in a pitcher like the picture that you see below.
moving in....
Alright, some brief updates:
My mentor is away on vacation for the week. Thus, right now all I am doing is watching French TV, writing some stuff and trying to speak French to my host.
I moved to a different place in the house. I like this place better because even though it is smaller, i have access to the bigger kitchen and the living room.
This is a picture of my keys...I took it because i haven't seen such a old design in a long time. And i never used one before either.
Hopefully in the coming week, i will be able to tell you more of what i will be doing in Sept. My mentor think it is a good idea to go back to Laval and I agree with him. I am currently waiting for further instructions from Admin. Please pray that God will show me what to do with the Laval stuff.
New beginnings.....
Well, all my friends that i made here have left and returned back to their homes. Now i am all alone. boy it feels like i am starting over again, except i am still living in the same place, and i can speak a little french now (yay!)
so much is up in the air right now in terms of what i will be doing. I have no idea what i will be doing this coming week. One of my mentors' are going on vacation, and i haven't met my other one. THe important thing that i need to do everyday is practice my French.
The Big Recap
Well, today was my last day in the FLE program. I finished my last exam today and I hope that everything will be alright.
For those of you who are just starting to read this blog, I will recap what has been going on the past 1 month and 10 days:
To fulfill the onSite requirements of the language component, I signed up for an intensive French immersion program at Laval University.
"School of Languages" This is the building where my classes were at.
My class looks like this. it is specifically designed like a u-shape so that we can all see each other and work on French together.
This program was designed to help people develop better communication skills in French. They have levels from being completely beginner to bilingual. To tell what level a person is in, we had to wear a bracelet. The bracelets look like this:
Blue is beginner, red is intermediate and yellow are advance/superior levels.
We had to wear it at all times, so that other people can identify how good our French is. The French program was very intensive, yet at the same time very enjoyable. I had to take two classes. One was French grammar (worth 5 university credits) and the other is French pronunciation (worth 1 university credit). Each day, I would wake up around 630AM, do devos/ eat breakfast and I would take the 746AM bus to the University. Classes will start around 830 and end at 1230. I have made a group of friends and we would hang out in one of the cafeterias to eat lunch. Now at the campus, we are strongly encouraged to speak French all the time. If a professor sees us speaking French, we would get a card like this:
We take these cards and put them in an envelope. Each week, the animateurs (AKA student leaders) would count how many cards a class has, and the class that has the most for that week gets a “coffee break”. In addition, a couple of days ago, the animateurs counted who had the most orange cards. I came out third in my class, so I got a little prize.
Now there is also punishment for speaking in English (or any other language), and that consists of a white card:
Basically, you get send to an office and you have to tell a counselor why you didn’t speak French.
On campus, we are also encouraged to take part in many activities.
The animateurs had a list of activities that we could sign up for. I went to almost all the movies and a few excursions.
In the coming days, I will start posting up the pictures from my excursions on facebook and flickr. I wish I had more time to do more of the activities, but I was busy working on French homework.
If you scroll down the page, you would see the pictures of my host’s home. But I know that most of you haven’t seen who I lived with so here is a picture.
My host is the older woman that you see in this picture. Her name is Lise and for the next while I will be staying at her house. All the males that you see in this picture are my housemates, I have 4 housemates who lived in different areas of the house.
Breakfast and dinner are provided in the off campus living plan that I signed up for. So our host would cook dinners for us everyday. Mealtimes are a great experience for me, because we get to really practice our French speaking and listening. Our host will also take us to tourist sites and different cultural places. The people who I lived with here are very warm and friendly.
The funny thing that I realized was that apparently our government has a program where if you are a Canadian citizen, and a fulltime student at a university, they cover all the costs of attending a spring or summer FLE program. It is called the explorer program. You take a look at it here:
http://www.jexplore.ca/english/index.html. The only catch is that winning this bursary is by random draw, and you might not get to go where you want to because there are many universities that accept explorer students. Just to give you an example of how cool this program is, two of my housemates are explorer students and they get $245 to spend on meals or whatever they want. It is a neat program; check it out if you are interested in learning French.
Short updates
I will be posting up a big recap of my time here at Laval and I have a couple of oral exams tommorrow .
Please pray that I will finish well.
Pictures on Blogger,,,,experimental
Alright, I am going to experiment with this blogger picture tool. And show you the place where I call home right now and possibly for the remainder of my onSite experience.
There are 10 rooms, 9 of them are bedrooms. My host has a tv for every bedroom. There are also 4 refridgrators, 3 washrooms and 2 kitchens in this house.
This first picture is the exterior the house.
The top floor has four bedrooms, shower room, washroom, and a kitchen.
Here is a couple pictures of my room
I live on the top floor, it is surprisingly very cool during this hot season.
GroundLevel: This is the kitchen, there is a bedroom to the left of the picture.
GroundLevel: This is the living room.
This is the basement, there are three bedrooms, bathroom and my host lives in another room here as well.
BackYard
As you see, my host is making us dinner.
Thats all I got for now, Feel free to leave comments.
Hi everyone,
Today is August 7th, which means that I have been in Quebec City for 1 month!
A couple of updates: First of all, I have my final exams (2 oral, 1 written) on Thursday and Friday. Please pray for me, that I will remember everything that I studied, and that I will use it outside the classroom.
I will not be moving out on Saturday as originally planned, I will stay here in my host's home until further notice. Some of you are wondering what my host's home looks like, I am going to put some up on Flickr for you to see this big house.
Update: I decided to just put them on blogger as a test.
Well, today was my first day where i could carry a very basic conversation in French. It was very exciting to say a few sentences to other people. I have realized that my read/writing is definitely better than my ability to speak. But i am excited that i can understand about 5-15% when other people are conversing in French. My host is very nice, because she talks really slow for me to understand.
I remember that when I try to practice my French outside the university, most people will tend to switch to English or find someone that does. I was at Subway a few days ago, and my friend who was finishing up a French major said 'Bonjour' and the guy behind the counter got someone else who knew English to help him and I. Events like this happen all the time, which is good because I am able to communicate with them, but it is also very detrimental to my French.
Well,, next week I will be finished this program! I got finals next week, please remember me in your prayers. I am also not exaclty sure where I will be living or what I will be doing after the program because my mentor thinks it would be a good idea if I learned more French before any kind of ministry, so please pray that God will show me the next step soon.
Finally,,,an update....
hello,
It has been too many days without an update. Not much has been going on, except learning french. The teacher did lose a quarter of the classes oral presentations (Midterms). SO yesterday, i had to redo mine. Hopefully, it goes well.
My host wanted to see a couple of movies yesterday and so We (Host +4 guys) went to the local theater to see a The Simpson's and a French movie. Unfortunately, the Simpson's in French were all sold out, so we had to get the English version. (I am not a fan of the Simpson's, so i went purely just to immerse myself in the French language). The French movie was interesting, it was a story about a mom finding and reconnecting with her daughter. I am not exactly sure of all the details, because there was no subtitles. But I did understand that much, and it is more than what I would have understood during my first week here. BTW the Film is called
Ma tante Aline which is My Aunt Aline in English.
I got 1 week and a half left of French studies! I am not exactly sure of what I will be doing after. My mentor suggested that I learn more French at Laval during the fall term. However, as of right now, nothing is confirmed.
