"Flying Solo"

What a week! Bob and Sheri left for Texas early Thursday morning (Oct. 22, I think) at which point we had about 8 people here, I think. The following Sunday, we went from 8 to 26, and all this past week, we've been feeding 26 people, three times a day! Here's what our daily schedule looked like:

6:00am -- wake up, get dressed
6:15 -- coffee must be turned on by this point (it takes about 45 minutes to make 5 liters of coffee)
7:00 -- Finish guys arrive for breakfast. We had to have ham, cheese, bread, boiled eggs, coffee, tea, milk, orange juice, butter, jelly, cereal, and plates/silverwear set out for them to help themselves. Starting at this point, we just had to make sure things stayed full... we usually used 4-5 liters of orange juice per day.
7:15 -- Amber starts desserts for the day while Charles tends to breakfast refills and dishes. If the lunch dessert took a long time, I'd just make that one and have to wait till the afternoon to make the dinner dessert. I often had dessert ready to go before 8:30 in the morning!
8:00 - 8:30 -- French guys arrive for breakfast. They're more talkative in the morning :) and I think they eat more bread.
8:30 -- We double-check that all the ingredients for the day are at hand
9:00 -- our last customers come to eat breakfast and Marie-Yvonne and Barnard arrive to help
9:00 - 11:30 -- the four of us cook lunch, set the table, and keep up with dishes

11:30 -- quick lunch (we eat leftovers)
12:00 - 12:30 -- Finnish lunch (just the main dish and coffee; they only have a 30 minute lunch break!)
12:15 - 1:15 -- French lunch: entrée, plat, cheese, dessert, coffee
1:20 - 4:00ish -- dishes, cleaning up (the French always put bread on the table rather than their plates, so we spend a lot of time cleaning up bread crumbs), re-setting the tables, finishing dinner
4:00ish -- coffee with Marie-Yvonne and Barnard... we'd usually eat any leftover dessert items at this point. :) Then we'd check the ingredients for the next few days and see whether or not Charles and I needed to go shopping that afternoon or early the next morning. Mondays are veggie pick-up days, Thursdays are meat. We also order bread every day for the next morning.
4:30ish -- Marie-Yvonne and Barnard leave. Charles and I either nap, run to the grocery store, or finish up things for dinner.
6:30pm -- Charles and I return to the kitchen to do final dinner prep: check water pitchers, make bread baskets, prepare serving dishes, make coffee, etc.
8:00pm -- dinner starts. It usually lasts -- much to the dismay of some of our Finnish clients -- over 2 hours. On Friday, I left at about 11:30pm and Charles stayed till 12:30... that was unusual, though. We usually get back to our chalet at about 10:30. Some nights we ate dinner and some nights we didn't.
One or two nights, Charles entertained the guests with music while I caught up on dishes. They loved his Cajun songs!


We've had long days, but we've had a great time. We sort of found our "rhythm," and we've laughed a LOT with Marie-Yvonne and Barnard. They are SUCH fantastic people! They've been so patient with us as we learned our kitchen vocabulary in French-- they'd ask us were something was, and we'd just stare at them. Haha! This week has really been good for our language learning! It was hard, though... by the end of the week, we were waking up with sore feet, tired backs, and legs that didn't want to carry us anymore. Saturday we were definitely ready for a break.

Saturday and Sunday Marie-Yvonne and Barnard stayed at home because all of the recipes were ours and because half of our customers (the French ones) left Friday evening.

Friday was room cleaning day. We asked the clients to bring their sheets with them to breakfast Friday morning, if they didn't mind, and we ended up with mountains of dirty sheets!
We had a lot of help with the rooms, though! Anne and Madame Adams came to do the bathrooms, which was a HUGE help! Unfortunately, I forgot to remind them do to the chalets, so I had to clean 3 bathrooms (wah). Bob and Sheri were so good to us to organize help, plan out the menus, order veggies for us for Mondays, and even ask the Boulanger (bread maker) to deliver for us!
Saturday, we still had to do all three meals, but Sunday, we had only breakfast! It was wonderful! We spent the day going to market, drinking coffee, browsing for new cheeses to try, doing laundry, and working in our future apartment. We now have clean floors, a desk, a dresser, kitchen chairs, and dishes!

Sunday night, Charles cooked up some of the mushrooms that grow all over the property. They're delicious!

This week, Monday was going to be Marie-Yvonne and Barnard's last day helping us. Bob and Sheri were scheduled to come back Monday evening and wanted to dive back into work Tuesday morning. However, they fly standby and all flights are currently full. Sooooo they'll be back Thursday evening instead. When we timidly brought this up with Marie-Yvonne and Barnard, they're response was, "oh, no problem!" and they'll be continuing to help us this week. :) However, this week, instead of 26, we have only 17... which doesn't sound like a big difference, but it seems like a walk in the park after last week! Today, for example, we had everything except the icing for the cake and the potatoes done by 2:00pm, which gave us time for a leisurely coffee and an afternoon trip to the grocery store.

Keep us all in your prayers, though, especially Bob, Sheri, Kristin, Isaac, and the kids as they travel back from the US. Thanks for keeping up with us!

News from the French countryside

Well, we have not been very predictable with our blog here, but at last, an attempt to add something for you all to enjoy.
We finally finished the retaining wall and Bob and Sheri are gone to Dallas for their son's wedding. It's pretty exciting here with no one but each other with whom to speak fluent English. One of the regulars, Fred, told me last week that he hears a drastic improvement in our accents already and said that we have exceptional accents for Americans. I can hear a lot more of the French as well now even if I don't understand completely the sense of the words. But there was one man at Dîner last night who knew a bit of English and he shared it with us, "No speak Englich."

We have a sizable group of Finnish men here, but only two speak English at all and they are conversant, but not exactly fluent.
On that subject, Finnish is quite an interesting language. It's amazing that any country could make sense of the letters produced from pounding ones fists on the keyboard, but then, they fill in the spaces with sound you'd make while falling down the stairs. For the ignoramuses who don't know (and ignoramus is defined here as anyone who doesn't know something I didn't know 3 days ago), Finnish is an Asiatic language that has no comparison grammatically or phonetically to any European/Romance Language. For that matter, it lies completely outside of the Indo-European parent language progeny. Whereas, in most European languages, if you don't know the word in the language, you can spell your word and it is 75% of the time a cognate word and the other party could figure out what you mean. In Finnish, if you want to say, "Would you like more eggs?" you have to say, "Haluatko kanan munnat?" and then to ask, "Is it good?" "Onko hyvä?"
"Hyvää" is about the only word I've been able to memorize and hear from them. I means, "Good." "Hyväämentä" means, "Good Morning." when I asked one named, Kimmo, if "mentä" meant "morning," he gave me a funny look and responded, "If you say, 'Morning' and I say, 'What "-ning" mean?' what you say to that? ...She is a Chinese Lady and I doesn't know how she got in there!"
Finnish people (at least the ones I've met) have a lot of fun and know how to joke without getting dirty.
I asked if they did any kind of Internet networking like facebook or something and the best English speaker, Sammi, responded, "I have no friends. I lost book, but have still the face."
Another time, we were all about to go to bed and Sammi and Kimmo were having a smoke on the porch of their chalet as Amber and I passed by on the way to ours. It was after 11 pm and BLACK. Sammi pointed to the sky and said, "like Finnish sunrise. Darker at noon."
I communicate with the others by pointing and giving them a thumbs up if I like something such as Tapani's pictures of the moose he killed in Northern Finland and Tapsa's Harley. I asked Tapani if he lived near the Arctic Circle in Northern Finland and he responded that he didn't because that was at least 100 km (62.137 mi) away.

For your enjoyment, I'll also put a video of the celebrated actors of Finland: Pirkka-Pekka Petelius & Aake Kalliala





The Finnish may not speak English the best, but I have had my share of linguistic blunders here as well. The French language is organized in such a way that changing one syllable can change the entire sentence. We were at that traditional dance a couple of weeks ago and I introduced myself after Amber and said, "Je suis sa épouse." instead of the correct "Je suis son épouse" which I changed my intended meaning of "I am her husband." to "I am her wife."
Also, as I mentioned sometimes it works to just use the English word with a French accent and they understand, but other times it can phonetically mean something completely different. For example a man came to Le Colorado where we are and I ask «Avez-vous vos (and I forgot the word «Chambre» here and replaced it with the English equivalent "Room," but with a French accent which sound exactly like the French word «Rhume») room?» but the poor man heard the French word, what being French and all and therefore I asked him, "Do you have a cold?"
The third problem I have with French right now is that I have a built in vocabulary of Cajun French words that are indeed French words, but usually crass and vulgar by today's standard of proper French. For instance, Amber and I were trying to get somewhere in Paris and I had a detailed map that showed me several streams, but I couldn't figure out which one was the one right in front of me. So I asked a passerby, "what is the name of that stream down there?" and tried to make it easier by pointing, but the man responded in a choler, "I don't understand the sense of what you just said!?" "That STREAM down there!?" I repeated and he ran away. Well, it ends up that one of the popular words for a stream in Louisiana sounds amazingly like a terrible word to the French and I was asking him the name of that #@*! down there.

Well, what do you do? I've started to tell people that I'm just going to leave my Cajun words in Louisiana.

In other news, there are edible mushrooms by the dozens growing here and I'm learning how to cook them like a true "Français."

Until next time....

Learning Lots!

Wow! It's been a long time since we've updated our blog! Sorry about that... we've had some problems with the Internet, and we've been keeping busy here! We're getting to know the Misegades and the way they do things, we're getting to know the "regulars" here as well as the occasional guests and even some new people... and we're getting to know Égletons. Here's a sign that we thought was really funny. It points to Soudeilles (a town) and "Other Directions." We were the only ones laughing, but that's ok. :)
We're enjoying the food... I got brave one night and made crêpes. They were pretty tasty! I also found a recipe online for Anaïs to make pancakes. She was SO excited!!! She *loves* pancakes. :)
This is a picture of a small part of open market. It happens on Sundays when weather permits, I think. They have all kinds of local produce, cheeses, honey, sausage, clothes, etc etc etc. It's a great place to try new things and talk to people about what they're selling... most of the time, they made it!
This man makes some mean boudin and andouille!
So Sunday during open market, we went to get some fresh bread. There we ran into a friend of the Misegades, Sabine. She was so excited to hear that Charles is Cajun! She asked if we would be interested in hearing some local music and learning some dances. She said she'd love to also learn about Cajun music and dancing. We said absolutely, that would be right up our alley! So Monday night, we went to the dance lesson. Charles played with the two accordionists, and I danced -- for 2 and 1/2 hours! We had a blast! :) I thought I'd get to take pictures, but I got pulled into dancing, so this is the only photo I have. We also went, that Friday night, to a rehearsal of a group that plays traditional music from this area. It was really interesting! We got invited to come back to their next practice and play with them. We're really excited at the opportunities this gives us both in music and in building new relationships.
I'm really loving my camera that my parents gave me for my birthday... This is a picture taken early in the morning, from right in front of the house we're staying in for now. It's colder than it looks, though! This morning, it was -6 degrees Celsius (I think that's around 22F). Charles on a Sunday afternoon :)Me and my new friend, Anaïs. She's a passionate young Christian girl studying to get a Bible certificate. She loves to talk about the Lord, and talking with her is really helping my French!
Charles and Bob, hard at work on a wall they built to be a future retaining wall for a future swimming pool. This wall has been a lot of hard work for Charles and Bob, as well as Christian, who comes every Wednesday. When Christian is there, they speak only in French, and this has been a big help to Charles' French. He keeps up conversation very well. (We also speak French at dinner.)
Now we're preparing for the week and a half that Bob and Sheri won't be here. We've been planning menus and stocking up on food supplies. A few of their friends will be here to help us, which is good, because there will be between 20 and 30 people to feed every day -- potentially 3 times each day, even. Charles and Bob have been doing some dinner music some evenings. They're quite a pair! I've been really enjoying the women's Bible study -- both the study and the ladies who attend it. I'm able to follow it and even share my thoughts sometimes, but I still speak quite slowly.

The weather is colder than we expected. We found out about a thrift shop kind of place in Égletons, though, so we might see about getting some gloves. The Misegades have given us their spare coats. They're taking very good care of us! They also gave us this weekend off since the next two weekends we'll be going full speed without them here. So we're going to spend Saturday in Tulle, we think, and browse some music stores and maybe attend a gospel concert we read about in the paper. Anyway, keep us in your prayers and keep us posted on what's going on with you! We miss y'all!

Bienvenue à Égletons (Welcome to Egletons)

Well, here we are in Egletons, France, and it’s hard to describe precisely the feeling of beginning to settle in to a new place. The weather has been beautiful. It’s chilly in the mornings and evenings, but sunny and warm in the afternoons. We have heard that it’s often quite rainy here, so we are soaking up the sunshine while it lasts.

Charles and I get up every morning between 7 and 8am. We wake up in chalet #3 here at Le Colorado and have breakfast together: yogurt and/or toast, coffee (of course), and sometimes orange juice. Then Charles heads out to work with Bob and Nolan (Bob’s son-in-law). Right now, they’re working on building a retaining wall for a future swimming pool. They hope to get all the concrete set in so that it can dry before the cooler weather. I clean the house, clean rooms of clients who have recently left, go on errands with Sheri or Kristin (the Misegades’ daughter), or have quiet time by myself. I cook, and the two of us usually have a fairly leisurely lunch together. In the afternoons, Charles goes back to work with the guys, and I help cook dinner for the clients or clean or hang out with Kristin and her three lovely children: Kailin (almost 5), Sophia (3), and Ryan (8 months). Charles and I try to go on walks when we have time. It’s a beautiful area for walking – even the weeds are pretty. For dinner, Charles and I often eat with the guests in order to get to know them and to practice our French. After a meal lasting up to 2½ hours, we come back to our chalet, watch a French video (language tool from Dr. Garside), maybe an episode of the Office, and fall asleep.

Communicating continues to be a little bit awkward. Today, on an errand with Kristin in Tulle, I met her friend Audrey. All I said was “Bonjour,” and she looked at Kristin and said, “She’s not French either, huh?” It’s not a rude thing to say here, it’s just an observation. Still… from one word, she knew I was American. It’s an odd feeling, trying to hide my nationality. But American tourists have earned such a reputation for being brash, rude, and ignorant of things that are culturally or politically sensitive that I try hard not to fall into the stereotype. I’ve not felt any animosity, though. Especially out here in rural France, we’re well accepted and people are very friendly.

Charles and I have very much enjoyed trying out our French on the customers here. With two of the “regulars,” Tony and Fred, we’ve been able to talk about politics, music, our dreams, religion, death, etc. Sometimes, with Charles’ Cajun accent, I end up acting as translator, but we’re both learning a lot. We also sometimes end up helping them a little bit with their English. Anyway, they’re great guys: friendly, interesting, and patient.

We’ve also started meeting people from around town. Charles met the guys who work at the hardware store, and I’ve met the lady who launders the sheets and the ladies at the grocery store. We’ve also met some of our neighbors, one of whom is a die-hard fan of American Western movies. He loves to wear his cowboy hat, bandana, and chaps.

Something that’s really lit a fire under me to work on my French is the women’s Bible study. It’s every Thursday afternoon at 3pm (9am Eastern Standard time), and it consists of about 7 ladies who meet at Sheri Misegades’ house. They’re all really wonderful, sweet, Christian ladies who enjoy discussing the Bible. I am able to follow the discussion fairly easily (provided my brain is in “French mode,”) but sharing my own thoughts is difficult. I was finally able to share a little bit this past Thursday, but I felt that I halted the fast pace of the discussion. They were all very sweet about it and understood me fine, but I was a little discouraged. All the more reason to keep studying, right?

Anyway, here are a few pictures to give you an idea of the scenery. :) For more photos, see our facebook pages.

Here's Charles in front of a castle not far from where we live. It's one of France's newer castles, from the 16th century. (Charles says it still has that "new castle" smell.)

From left to right: Kristin, Sophia, Bob, Kailin, and Sheri. This was taken during church on Sunday morning at Kristin and Nolan's house.
The big bosses: Bob n' Sheri. :)
Our current residence:

a couple houses in Egletons

picture I love of the nearby city of Tulle
Limousine cow
Our future apartment
Sorry the pictures are in a weird order. I haven't figured out blogger like Charles has. Anyway, thank you for keeping up with us! We'll keep you posted as we continue to get settled here.

Que Le Français Soit! (Let there be French!)

A lot has happened in the last week. We spent some time with Amber's parents before we left just hanging out, going out on their boat, playing spades and touring around the DC Mall (the Capital building, Washington Monument, Lincoln Memorial, the Vietnam Wall and the Smithsonian) before our flight to Dublin, Ireland. Our flight was actually 1 ½ hrs early, thank you AerLingus, so we had a longer layover, but we had Cadbury chocolates while we waited. And I checked on my guitar

From Dublin, we flew to Paris and the pilot spoke to everybody in only French. The funny thing about that is I understood more of his French than the TransAtlantic Irish pilots’ brogue! We got into Paris around 13:45 (but 7:45 to our bodies) to take the train to our hotel, Le Kyriad. Apparently, Le Kyriad is a European chain and a decent one at that. Our bed was actually two twins pushed together and you couldn’t see the television with the bathroom door open. The entire bathroom was approximately the size of the master bath’s tub in our trailer. Granted, the tub from our trailer in Georgia was a huge tub.

We decided to go get something to eat and found a few blocks from our hôtel a café called, Le Relax. By this time it was 18:30 or so, but we didn’t know that Parisians eat dîner at 20:00+. We both ordered items unfamiliar to us and the gentleman who was our waiter and cook brought Amber sliced pork loin and fries, and couscous, chicken, sausage and an undetermined soup like stuff for myself. The waiter/cook, realizing that we were Anglophones, told us that his uncle knew a man who spoke English and that he’d send his uncle our way. The food was fantastic! They kept us supplied with bread and I couldn’t finish my plate due to the amount served, but I tried. The uncle came over when he noticed we had finished with a plate of white grapes and said, “Dis is from zee chief.”

There were a group of people there and we began talking to them and they started asking us who we were and where we were from. When I told them my name, Charles Vincent, they responded , «Charles Vincent? Vous êtes un Français!» (CV? You are French!) I explained that I was from Louisiana and they were all excited and one produced an encyclopedia to look up our state and find more information; Another produced an accordion and we all passed a good time despite his inability to play it. It seemed God had his hand in the whole thing since we were able to comfortably communicate with those people for a couple of hours and they helped us with terms and ways of saying things and even our ability to hear improved in just a short while. We both felt more comfortable talking after that.

The next day, our «decalage horaire» or jetlag turned out to be worse than we’d hoped, but we still got up before noon. We were able to see Nôtre Dame that afternoon and walk around a beautiful area of the city. On the way, we stopped a man cleaning the streets and asked him, «Ou est La Nôtre Dame?» since we weren’t completely sure of our location. The man gladly walked with us several blocks, singing along the way until it was in sight. He turned to us and asked,

«Parlez-vous L'Englich?»

«Oui.»

«Zen you say, en Anglais, ‘Where iss de Nôtre Dame Crunch?’»

“Do you mean, Church?”

«Oui! Church. ‘Where iss de Nôtre Dame Church?’»

We had a good laugh about it.

I surprised amber that evening with a boat tour of Paris (paid with previous savings) that included a five-course, fancy meal. It was a beautiful tour and we were able to communicate in French with our waiter who seemed relieved since many other tables did not speak French.

Communication is still a bit awkward; I’m sitting now on the train with a man to whom I can’t properly explain why we’re not in our assigned seats...

Saturday, we thought about going to the Louvre and got on a bus that ended up heading in the wrong direction. When we got to the complete wrong end of the city, I thought we would turn around , but the driver said we all had to get off because of what I thought he said was a «Barah.» «Barah?» I said. «Non, Parade. Avec une groupe, bah ba ba ba bah!» and he began imitating a trombonist marching around and then I understood that there was a parade on our bus route. But we got to see Le Tour Eiffel and go to the top (pics) and speak with some Eastern Europeans who knew French, but not English, the first interaction of that kind. They wanted to know about my beard. Actually I was trying to count the languages I heard in line at Le Tour Eiffel: German, Dutch, French, Italian, English (American, British, Australian), Korean, Japanese, Spanish, Whatever Eastern Euro language it was that I heard, and others. It was really quite amazing.

Sunday, we still couldn’t wake up before 11:00, but we got up a little after and went out for a picnic at Le Jardin du Luxembourg. It was crowded (pic) but very beautiful (pic). There was also a very interesting music group playing and people danced some apparent traditional dances.(vid) We went also to a park on a far end of the city that was near the Conservatoire. It was a beautiful, modern park that also had groups of people playing music. We stopped and listened to a couple of the groups, most African drum circles, but the last one had guys singing African songs and we tried to capture that group’s wonderful harmonies, but they went into something else in this video, but there is an excellent surprise at 3’ 15” enjoy. (video coming)

By the way, We’re now off of the train and the man sitting across from us on the train I mentioned earlier started a conversation with us and we found out that his name is Pierre and he is a Sergeant in the French Navy living near where we will be staying. He was interested to hear about our situation in France and asked if we were Scientologists. We assured him we weren’t, but it was difficult to explain with such a limited vocabulary and not being Catholic that we were Christian. We were able to explain that we were simply following Jesus Christ and not fame or money. He asked for our email address because he wanted to talk to us more about it. Pray for Pierre that we would be able to reach him soon and minister to him. Pray for the Misegades that we could minister to them as well as they help teach us how to minister. We’re busy, but we’re taking time to do this once a week when we get into a routine schedule. We’ll try another, briefer update on Monday.

À plus tard, (Later)

C&AV

Lord, Prepare Us

Lord, prepare me to be a sanctuary

Pure and holy, tried and true

With thanksgiving, I'll be a living

Sanctuary for You

Two days until departure. We're having a wonderful visit in Virginia, finishing last-minute paperwork, banking stuff, tickets, reservations, packing, and hanging out with family n' friends here. Sunday morning we spoke at Manassas Baptist Church, where Amber grew up. It was our last church visit, and they're deciding in a Missions Council meeting tonight whether or not they'll be supporting us. It was really nice for her to get to see so many people she grew up with! 

Anyway, keep us in your prayers as we finish getting things ready and leave on Wednesday evening for Dublin, then Paris. 

Louisiana Tour & Goodbye to Georgia

We have just finished our Louisiana support-raising tour. We spent time in Baton Rouge, Sulphur, Lake Charles, Rayville, Rustin, Spring (TX), and Lafayette. It was a time of incredible encouragement and spiritual refreshment, but it was also draining. We performed and spoke at several churches and met some incredible Jesus-lovers. :) We have been fervently prayed for, encouraged, fed (LOTS!), and have made some progress in our support-raising. Our last church to visit will be this Sunday in Manassas, Virginia. Here are a few pictures of us "doing our thing" in Gospel, Inc in northern Louisiana:

September 6th was our last Sunday at New Bethel Baptist Church (for a long time, anyway). We had a wonderful time of worshipping and sharing with our beloved church, followed by a fantastic meal in the new fellowship hall. It was difficult for us, and tears were shed... but we continue to lean on the knowledge that we are following the Lord with our lives. 

Keep us in your prayers! We're spending our last few days in Virginia with Amber's parents before we fly to Paris on September 16th.