"Quoiever"
No, the title is not a French word. For that matter, it isn't an English word either. Essentially, it means the same thing as the English word "whatever", but for some strange reason, I got into a bad habit by saying this word. Most young people will understand what I mean, but it is still not a official word in either languages. This is just one of many words or phrases that I have combined the French and English together to make some weird and wonderful new word. I call this Frenglish because it is a mixture of both languages and if you are familiar with these languages than you know what I am saying. The things you say when trying to learn a new language.
No big news yet, tomorrow I am going to a new church for a youth group. Every month, we have a worship service and a speaker will come and share about a topic that is important to the youth. This youth event, called CONTRE COURANT in French, is at a different location each month. It is a great event though, lots of people attend.
Finally, please continue to pray for my French skills, developing relationships with other people, --it is kind of hard developing relationships with people who I don't really know and please pray for my testimony that I will be able to finish corrections and present it well.
Alright, Friday was youth group again. The game that we played was pretty cool, it was a eating contest between two groups. The food ranged from vegetables like carrot and peas to odd things like cheesewhiz, etc. After that we had a discussion on family, friends and God. The questions that were discussed were how do you view God, how does your non-Christian friends view God, etc. Yesterday, I also got a chance to attend the young adults group (18-35). In Quebec City at least, people emphasize on recycling and reusing materials, people make a big deal of saving the environment. And The questions are basically asking what more can we do, because God has given us such a blessing? Alright, afterwards I talking to people who I met early. Conversation skills are getting better, I mean, compared with even a month ago I know I am speaking better. I have finished a rough translation of my testimony in French, getting it corrected and pronouncing the words are my next step. Anyhow here is a couple of pictures, the first one is from Brillez, the youth group, and the second one is from Verticalité, the young adults group:
After a discussion with the youth group, we usually hang out.
These are my friends in the young adults group. We had a good conversation after the discussion.
Alright, so on Friday, we had a scavenger hunt at a mall. It was pretty cool, the kids had lots of fun. I was passing out food for the groups to eat as a challenge. The food that the youth had to eat were canned mushrooms. Only 3 groups out of 6 came to our station. Some people like the idea of eating an entire can of mushrooms (and drink the juice) so the groups who had people who liked these mushrooms went faster than the group that didn't. After the scavenger hunt, we went to Krispy Kreme. So at Krispy Kreme, I was able to converse with some people in part French, part English. There were some words that we had to get one of the missionary kids to help us translate those words. It was kind of funny though because at one point we had a discussion of whether Wii was a masculine or feminine word. (In the French language, the gender of the word is reflected in the article so for all the nouns that I use, there is a gender form that I need to say. It is kind of like Greek in that sense). It was a good conversation because I got a chance to know more about some of the youth.
Post modernism = Post Religion?
That was the title of a seminar that I went to yesterday at Laval. It was all in French, so what I could make out was pretty limited. The speaker summed up a brief history of various philosophers and important people who made an impact on our society. He basically said that in a post-modern world, individualism is the key. What that means is that morality and judgement is rejected by the person, and it is all about cultivating freedom of expression and desire. It was helpful that the speaker had a PowerPoint presentation. This seminar was sponsored by Campus for Christ.
Multiculturalism
In Quebec City, it is a very diverse culture. I know that it is true of anywhere especially in Canada, but a couple of days ago I was reminded once again of how there are so many cultures here. On Sunday, I had lunch at the church. It was a farewell for an old man who is going back to Haiti and also a fundraiser for the new church building. Normally, he visits his home country and then he comes back, but because he is 98 years old, he decided that he will stay in his home country telling people about the Gospel. He donated the meal that we had yesterday and asked people to give to the new church building (They are currently renting a community hall, they bought land, but they need money for the actual building.) The meal itself was different and it was very good. We had an Haitian style food, there is some foods that I tried for the first time, and I like it! There was also a praise & worship time. It was pretty cool to sing new songs, and many of these songs were in an African language. I think it was Swahili, but I am not sure. As we were singing, the song leaders urged us to stand up and dance! It was cool to see people in the congregation dance and sing new songs, and it was particularly neat to see the old man stand up and dance for a bit. At the end of the fundraiser, people donnated around 2080 for the new church building! It an incredible experience to see how God works in the hearts of people.
I also see a lot of multiculturalism at the school as well. We have a bunch of Spanish speakers in my class. I noticed when they are late for class, they would asked if they could join the class. If they are very late for class, they won't come in at all, and they will just wait outside until the next class starts. They have huge respect for the teacher. As a side note, Spanish is the second most used language after French in Quebec. We also have a student from Finland. He said that people in his culture like to be silent. He does no go up to random strangers and say hello, because the act of greeting a stranger would be considered rude, perhaps offensive. One of our missionary friends who were also in the conversation asked him how people make friends, if they do not talk to strangers. He said that as an adult, in order to make new friends is to get drunk at the local bar. Then all the social norms of being very individualistic would be ignored. We all came to the conclusion that our Finland classmate does not have many friends, but the friends that he does have are willing to die for him. I am learning something new everyday with our multiple different cultures within our class and reminding myself that we are in a Global Village.
Finally, Today I made some minor cosmetic changes to the blog. (Links are in a different color now, I got rid of the pink and purple.)
Long time no post....
Hey everyone,
Things are going well for me. French is getting better, and I am making some friends at the university as well as at the youth group. We are Christ's Ambassadors wherever we go, and it is most important when I am interacting with classmates at Laval. They already know that I am a Christian and I am studying to be a pastor. I did get a chance this week to talk with some of the students, they know what I am doing, but they do not fully understand why I would do what I am doing. Hopefully, in the coming weeks, I will be able to tell them more about my story.
Youth group was pretty cool as well. A couple of weeks ago, we had a guys' only hang out time. We played Wii and watched Les Transformer. It was pretty cool. Last Friday, we had a discussion group like always and this time we talked about the music that we let our ears listen to. It was pretty cool, and of course it was all in French, so I could sort of understand some parts here and there. I do know that the it was a big discussion and that the youth are very vocal.
Finally, Due to some of the limitations that various different online photo albums have, I am now moving my entire youth group pictures to webshots. For all you onSiters, webshots is pretty neat in that it allows you upload 1000 pictures + 100 every month after. Not too sure of all the details, but it is pretty cool. You can check out my pictures here. (Link opens in a new window.) My Flickr site will be updated on the last day of every month so I can load as many pictures as I can with the limitations. I will use flickr to upload some of the best shots and most defining pictures of my onSite. For my facebook albums I will upload everything else like my university pictures, scenic photos and random shots. Finally, any really important pictures will of course be posted here on blogger as usually.
(Nov 11) UPDATE: I have updated the slidebar to reflect the changes that I have said in the post.
Well...that was random..
Alright, so I am walking down Old Quebec cuz i have youth group tonight and a bunch of young people (who spoke french) said hola! to me! I never thought that i looked Spanish but apparently to these guys I did. More to come when I come back from church.
