What am I listening to, today? Well, French music (bien sûr) but here are some songs I just cannot stop listening to. Check them out and let me know what you think in the comments box below!
This is the saddest and most beautiful song ever. I love it so much. Even if you don’t speak French the emotion of the music tells the story.
Don’t translate this song because the lyrics are prey-ty raunchy, but I love the classic rock feel of the song, and if you ignore the lyrics (like so many good songs) it’s awesome. This is a cover off the original song by Jacques Brel.
Honestly I enjoyed this music video more than I was probably supposed to. I love it so much, and the song itself is perfect to grove to. This one was actually suggested to me by one of my Au Pair kids! (The most tasteful 9 year old, ever.)
First off, this video is from one of my favorite movies growing up, “An American in Paris” (funny, since now I get to be the American in Paris) with Gene Kelly, who I was in love with. This is actually my favorite kind of music to just relax and listen to. It’s a perfect mix of traditional with a smooth collection of modern twists. In love.
Today I realized that next year, about this time, this is what I’ll be seeing with the au pair family I’ll be living with. I can barely believe my life. I’m so excited!
Even though I have 5 months until I’m going to be leaving for France, I’ve made it a personal addiction to immerse myself starting right now. Today I decided to get into some French pop music…because who doesn’t love learning French from pop music? Right?
After following some links, I stumbled upon some solid gold.
What I’m learning, though, is that when you can’t understand everything the musician is saying, the music videos are ten times more ridiculously funny. Here are some of my favorite gems from today! (And yes, I bought them all on iTunes, so they’re going to be imprinted in my mind.)
Yesterday I was frustrated. I was trying to talk but had forgotten how to. The words were on the tip of my tongue, but I just could not remember them.
Knowing a language, and then forgetting it, is (I would imagine) a bit like knowing how to walk and then losing the ability to do so.
It’s a painful process, throwing yourself back into the grasps of the unknown known. Your mind has to catch up with your memories. And it can be an extremely frustrating process.
Yesterday I had to remind myself that I’m a student learning (or, rather, relearning) an entire language and that takes time. But as a perfectionist, it’s really hard to sit at a table with my tutor and start to relearn things I knew in elementary school. I want to excel, to run ahead and know everything instantly. I guess it’s a little piece of the brat in me – wanting to get things done WHEN I WANT THEM.
But, I think this is giving me more of an appreciation for the process of learning anything. And, in addition, a sense of awe for anyone who comes out of a situation where they have to relearn basic principals again. Relearning to walk, relearning to talk, relearning to know people, things or places. Stubbornness isn’t even a word that begins to describe what you have to be equipped with.
A reminder came this week, though, while I was reading with the six year old I nanny. He was struggling through the words, sounding out each one painfully and struggling as though he was pulling a heavy weight behind him. He wanted to read about his favorite soccer player Clint Dempsey, so he had insisted that the pages he read for the day were from the internet (instead of usual school level reading books) .
As he went along, he started to realize the task that had been put before him. It took 20 minutes to get through a paragraph. And that was with a lot of assistance, and breaking down words syllable by syllable.
He could have given up. He could have walked away from the table and decided to have books read to him for the rest of his life. But, instead, he pressed on. Grasping for an understanding of each character on the page. Wading through the sentences as though they were a bog trying to suck him down into its muddy ground. But he is a fighter, and he fought his way through each and every sentence. I think I learned a lesson from this sandy haired little six year old.
I learned that it takes practice, it takes determination and patience – but most of all it takes tenacity to continue on through something that seems impossible.
The ability to see things as a promising future, that currently looks like a horrible mess, is not a skill that can be taught, but rather, a piece of each of us that has to be discovered. Each time I go to practice French it breaks my heart to admit that I’m not as proficient as I once was. I have to swallow my pride and ask for help on words and meanings that I used to have mastered.
But every time I sit there struggling, I remember the tenacity of my little six year old, and press on. Because, at the end of the day, it’s not about how much struggle there was to make it to the finish line. Only that you made it there.
Six months from today I will be in France. And that’s scary.
In six months I will be in a different culture, with completely different people. There will be different customs, different expectations and different ways I will have to live in order to adapt to them.
But today, while I was having my daily panic/excited thoughts about my upcoming adventure, I was reminded of something a teacher I had in college used to say: “Don’t be scared, be prepared.”
With the Olympic games going on right now, athletics seem to be the go-to for life analogies, and it’s not hard to see why. It’s only one time, every four years, that these athletes have an opportunity to showcase their absolute best. And, if you asked most of them, you would find out that they have been training for this moment their whole lives. Similarly, in everyday life, we have to start training for goals long before we find ourselves standing in front of them.
Unfortunately, it’s pretty easy to see goals as far off expectations; things we can think about when we get to them. But the challenge is to start running long before we ever see the start line of a marathon. Yesterday I was reminded of this while, in church, we were talking about living the present with the hope that our future reality brings.
We don’t know what exactly lies for us in the future. For me there are still a lot of undetermined variables that go along with the huge move I’m about to make. There’s paperwork, translators, classes, packing and numerous other aspects. But, what drives me in the now is the hope of change in my future, and it takes constant reminders to remember that there is an end goal I am working toward.
Because, ultimately, I have the option to do one of two things:
1. Panic and shut down because the obstacle looks too large to conquer.
2. Start preparing myself now, so that when I reach those obstacles I’m prepared to conquer them.
If you know you will need to run a marathon months away, you start training now in order to be ready. You start running now. You start logging your hours now. You start living in preparation of the future while you are still in the present.
The people who are the most successful are the people who begin with what they have and work toward what they want. It’s easy for me to look at goals, such as learning another language fluently, or successfully living and helping take care of a family I’ve never physically met, as mountains I don’t even begin to know how to climb.
But, when I start going into freak out mode, I remind myself of the promise for hope in my future. One of my favorite bible verses is Deuteronomy 31:8:
The LORD himself goes before you and will be with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged.
Discouragement is one of the biggest battles when you’re fighting toward change in your life. There’s always going to be the negative input from outside and inside telling you you’ll never make it, or the challenge is too hard. But, when I start to listen to these voices, I take a minute and stop to remind myself that I will NEVER be left or forsaken and that discouragement and fear are not of God, and therefore of absolutely no interest to me.
He will never leave you nor forsake you.
It’s crazy, the power of words. They are essential to reminding us of our identity and our rite to live a life of freedom. They allow us to remember the promises of the future, by looking into the histories of our past. And allow us to work toward goals that are so much bigger than our comfort zones.
Six months from today I will be in France. And that’s scary. But fear is only an emotion – one I am not willing to allow to control, taint or command my actions or decisions. I live my life turned toward the reality of serving a God who promises me strength for today and a bright hope for tomorrow…and six months from now.
“Doubt kills more dreams than failure ever will.” – Karim Seddik
Picture a little girl. She turned nine years old last week and is simultaneously excited and bored to death with life. She wears her hair in multiple braids every day. She likes to make things and learn about new people, but mostly likes to watch the world around her, as though she is learning the moves to an intricate dance she hopes to perfect.
This little girl is a bit odd. For her 9th birthday she asked her mom to take her to Williamsburg so she could study colonial life in the 18th century. And, on the way there, her family made a stop in a little place called Quebec, Canada. Amidst the unreadable traffic signs and how beautiful all the people speaking sounded, it felt like heaven. The little girl is mesmerized and entranced. She thinks she’s walked into a storybook, and she doesn’t ever want to step out again.
Studies show that what you gravitate toward when you’re 7-9 years old is an early indicator to what you’ll be passionate about in your adult life. You might lose it during middle school, or hide it during high school. But, generally it comes back again and again, as though some kind of haunting presence.
This is what happened to me in third grade. The moment I heard someone speak French for the first time I was hooked. I couldn’t/can’t believe how beautiful it was/is! The language was like verbal painting, and I LOVE painting. The moment I got back to my own hometown I insisted that my mom put me in French lessons. I wanted to know everything. How to speak it, how to read it and how to move to France when I was older. My mom wasn’t on board with the last request, but she enrolled me in classes nonetheless.
French has always been something I’ve poured myself into, but has never seemed like “work” to me. It’s always been there, more or less like a hobby. Something I’ve gone back and forth to all the way through college. I don’t really talk about it. Most people are surprised when they find out I know any French at all. But, having the opportunity to now live in the very heart of what has captured my own, has brought it to the foreground again in my life.
This past week I started French tutoring, so I’ll have a solid foundation for when I actually move. I was going to wait to enroll in classes starting in April at the community college near my house, but decided, after looking at enrollment fees, that private tutoring was actually way cheaper and more one on one instruction. So now, I’ll be going once a week to meet up with my tutor.
One thing that is really surprising me is how much my mind has retained, although I haven’t spoken one word of French for almost five years. I’ll hear a word, or a phrase and think, “Wait…I know that…” It might take me a couple of minutes, or being reminded, but I think it’s all re-sticking pretty quickly. It kind of feels like I’m rediscovering my identity after having amnesia. And I’m not gonna lie – I love it.
That being said, here are
My goals for French:
– 1 hour per day of practicing
– At least semi-fluent before I even get on the plane in August
– I’d love to be able to Skype with my au pair family while speaking French, instead of speaking English and have the parents translate to the kids
– Join some kind of group to meet other people in Seattle that speak French,
so I can speak with them (April/May)
– Start writing my blog posts in En Français and English so I can practice, but you guys can still read them
– Learn to flirt in French. That’s right – I said it.
Darkk Horse Travel 