a hard week

So, this week has been a little more difficult than the rest of my time here in France so far. On Wednesday afternoon, I found out via email that one of my good friends, Lisa Klassen, had been in a really serious car accident on Tuesday morning. I read with disbelief the Winnipeg Free Press article about how her car was propelled up a snowbank and over the railing of a bridge, landing upside down on the Red River and cracking the ice with the force of the fall. An off-duty firefighter had been driving behind her at the time and ran down to help, kicking in the window and cutting her free from her seatbelt, then administering CPR until she began to breathe on her own. She is currently in hospital in stable condition. Miraculously, she has no brain damage (despite being under water for almost 5 minutes) and through it all has suffered a broken vertebra and tailbone. She is not in the clear yet, as there is still a chance of infection in her lungs due to the river water remaining, but she has come a long way since Tuesday.

This obviously came as a shock to everyone who knows Lisa and what an amazing person she is. The first day I found out was especially hard since it’s at times like these that you just want to be around people whom you love. That day I experienced homesickness as well as a feeling of helplessness, since there was nothing I could really do. Well, nothing except pray. So that’s what I did. Reflecting on it now, I know that if I were in Winnipeg right now, that’s all I’d be able to do anyway. So I’ve been praying more than I ever have before, and God has answered a lot of my prayers already (and I know there are tons of people back home praying for the exact same things. Oh yeah and if anyone reading this could keep Lisa in their prayers, that would be awesome!). That’s really encouraging. In all, this week has been long and emotionally draining, but through it all my feeling of isolation has disappeared and to take its place is a sense that I’m part of a bigger community of people who love Lisa and who can be spiritually united in purpose and prayer. So that was this week.

Other smaller, normal things continued to happen this week too. I had a few more classes and I started my DEFLE course. I actually found out that I won’t get as much oral practice as I originally thought I’d get from this class, but I think I’ll still stay in it, if only to learn some more vocabulary. In Phonologie, we had a petit contrôle on Thursday, which was basically a quiz on naming phonemes. It was difficult! The prof gave us a little piece of paper with 10 descriptions of phonemes, like consonne occlusive bilabiale sourde, or in English, “voiceless bilabial stop consonant”, and we’d have to write the IPA symbol for it, or [p]. Not only are there upwards of 100 phonemes to describe all the languages of the world, and not only did I spend all week trying to memorize their descriptions en français, but we only had 5 minutes to do the entire test! I think I did OK, but talk about racking my brain for the right symbols!

Other than that, I’ve had the opportunity to experience my first “administrative headache,” as the girls who came last year like to say. I’m supposed to access the texts for my translation class online on this thing called the bureau virtuel, but I just can’t get it to work for me. Why do things have to be so confusing and so hard to navigate here? I’ve tried several times to join the group for my class, just like my prof said (“Ah oui, c’est en ligne, au bureau virtuel.”) Yes, it is just so simple! No, it really isn’t actually. I can’t find my class because half the groups don’t have names or information about them, and once I join a group there’s no option to click on to join in any group activities (one of them theoretically being printing out the necessary documents). So what should have been simple turned out to be difficult, and that just made me frustrated, and then I just gave up. I’m going to try to email or visit the prof in her office on Monday, but I don’t want to look stupid. People here have a tendency to look at you as if you’re stupid if you can’t do something they think should be easy. Oh well, the foreign card may need to be played once again here. This really isn’t as big a deal as it seems to me at this moment, but that’s school for me right now. So other than all this, school is A-OK!

Lent started on Wednesday, and I decided this year to give up speaking English, but I had to attach a whole bunch of clauses, like 1) except when I’m talking to my family or friends back home; 2) except when I don’t know the French word for something; and 3) except when I’m really emotional and just can’t speak French anymore. So, this week was pretty much shot for speaking French around my fellow Winnipeggers and my American friend Danielle who goes to church with me. But amazingly I went out for supper Friday night with the other girls from Winnipeg and we spoke French almost the entire evening. And on Saturday I went to a potluck for my DEFLE class where I got by with speaking French the entire afternoon (it’s especially fun trying to explain the winter weather in Winnipeg to Europeans in French!). I’ve actually met quite a few people here already, which I’m happy about. It’s pretty cool learning about other cultures too. I got to try some different types of food at the potluck, and I in turn made pancakes from scratch for everyone to enjoy (along with some authentic Canadian maple syrup!). I was also really excited when the American girl whose place it was brought out a spinach dip in a bread bowl, a staple at any Canadian/American party. It reminded me of home.

Well, that’s it for this Sunday. I hope to do another post sometime this week, and maybe I’ll post some more pictures. I haven’t taken any in awhile, but I’ll see what I can do. Don’t worry though, there will be tons from my trip coming up in a couple of weeks. Take care and remember to pray for Lisa! Till next time.