How to Survive Brothers who don't want a haircut

The tools of Torture

Strap them to a chair and say "this is how it's going to be." That would be the my-way-or-the-high-way approach.

In our family, a haircut has significance. In the normal spectrum of life, certain things must occur to insure that the passage of time has not negatively affected one's appearance. This for little brothers means a haircut.

After 6 months in Kenya in 2001, my brother received some "interesting" (disastrous) haircuts. Once we took them to another barber shop to correct the haircut another barber had incurred. African hair is different from Caucasian hair, this the heart of the problem. After 6 months we bought our own kit of torture and commenced to inflict haircuts to family members. Originally, the process was fairly painless but as Christian, Caleb and Ezra grow older, they start to have opinions about what they want to look like and the simple take-a-little-off rule is nullified.

The first trick for a haircut is to get them in the chair. This means pleading, bribing, promising, threatening if they don't sit down, be prepared to spend a lot of time on that. Secondly, the speech:

"I know you don't want to but I'm going to do it so sit still or you'll be here all day! Oh gosh don't cry, it's not worth it!"

When you're done, they're happy it's over, you're happy it's over and you grab one of them to sweep all the hair into the bushes. It's a task worth doing.

How to reenter Your Own Culture

The reason I'd write about reentry is because...I don't understand it. I should because I've been doing it going on 10 years but I still have no idea how to handle it! It hits you differently each time because each time you leave, you experience something different overseas and that affects how you view your own culture. It was different reentering from France then it was a year ago reentering from Ethiopia.

This time it was a little more challenging for several reasons, mainly because after a year putting a huge effort into speaking French, understanding the French culture and trying very much to be French and blend into the French culture, to suddenly step off a plane and hear everyone yelling in loud American English was odd, shocking, bizarre and confusing. Wait a minute! I don't have to struggle to express myself! I can just speak what comes to mind without worrying where the adjective and pronouns fit into my sentences!
All that goes to say, in my African expat communities, we know we can't fit in. It's just not possible and as a result, we build our little third cultures and create our own entities. In Europe you look like them, live a developed lifestyle like them and after learning the language, appear to be them. No one knows the difference riding the metro to work!

There are several different things I do reentering my American home that make it feel normal again.

1) Sleep a lot when you get back. Jet-leg will keep you in an over-emotional, irrational, hyper-sensitive state where you think the world is crashing upon you, no one cares about you and overseas living has ruined you for life. Just get on the right time zone before questioning your existence.

2) Take several long walks. Talk to yourself, philosophize to yourself, pray out loud, write books out loud, sort out what you enjoyed most about your overseas experience. It helps.

3) Make two lists. One about the things you have to be grateful for. Seriously, you are so blessed to just be alive to be able to return home for good or for a a short period of time. The second is a list of things you like about living overseas, things you've learned, and things you've enjoyed. If it's the end of an overseas experience like France for me, it helps bring closure and a sense of joy and delight about the time spent there.

4) Don't judge. Even though people move on, culture shifts, places look different, don't judge it instantly as negative. Just decide it's different and work out later if it's positive or negative.

5) Never never never give in. Just hang in there. Mr. Churchill said it and did it. So can we.

How to Visit the Netherlands

I'm terribly afraid the most exciting things in my life revolve around travel. The more the better! I had the most fun (and fantastic/awesome/completely fabulous) trip to Netherlands the first weekend of this month (but being absorbed in learning indirect speech, passive voice, and heaps of more qualifiers I only now get the time to write about it).

First of all, you have to have someone to stay with. One of the students from two terms ago invited us to visit her at her home in The Hague. Can't turn down a trip to a place I haven't been now can I? After that, I had to figure out train tickets. What a frustrating experience when the website is in French and yes, I know French but have hardly the courage to read the fine print and wonder what I'm buying. Two weeks of attempting to understand (and finally getting the website in English) I bought them and after arriving the the mail, and hoping off to Gare de Nord in Paris, we were off on a high speed trans-city European train. How awesome!

When we arrived in the Netherlands, Corieke met us and took us to her house. She lives right outside The Hague and kindly let us sleep on her pull-out sofa for our stay. We met her lovely family, shared meals with them, and generally, tried to be polite house-guests and speak whichever language was desired at the moment, French or English (can't do Dutch, sorry there).

Saturday, we went to the beach. I've never seen the ocean from Europe! It was an overcast day but we were tired so we laid down on our towels and actually fell asleep. We woke up an hour later, very sunburned and almost binded from the light. It was relaxing and we talked about our college decisions and how fun it was to learn French in Paris for a year. That evening we went to a concert sponsored by a youth organization Corieke is a leader with. It was in a ancient cathedral in Gouda (same place the cheese comes from) and the wonderful stain-glass windows and the 200 voice choir was one the most amazing sights I've seen in Europe.

Sunday, we biked an hour to the French church in The Hague. It was a beautiful church with perhaps 20 people and very formal. 2 little old ladies behind us were convinced we didn't speak French and we whispering the page numbers for the Bible reading and hymn numbers for the songs. We were highly amused. The paster was Dutch (trained in France and spoke very elegant French) and wanted to convince us to return the following Sunday which we had to politely decline, informing him we lived in Paris and Corieke attends a Dutch church. The evening, Corieke took us to Rotterdam to visit her brother and his family. They live near an old field of windmills and we walked down an old stone path admiring what Holland is most famous for, it's beautiful windmills.

Monday we took the train to Amsterdam. Corieke and Rose had never been to the Anne Frank House so we stopped by there first and see the museum. After lunch in a cafe across from the Anne Frank House, we took a water bike down through the canals. It was so much fun watching the beautiful old Amsterdam houses pass by as we floated down the canals, taking turns at the paddles. We walked down Amsterdam's expensive shopping streets on our way back to Centeral Station and getting the train back to Corieke's. We picked up our bags and then went to The Hague Central Station where we kissed Corieke goodbye and headed on the red high speed train back to Paris.

It was a great trip, it was a highlight of life in France. I had no intention of returning to Paris but my giant study bible is kept in my dresser in France so I had no choice. Oh it was so fun though!!

How to Survive the TCF

I whined about it, wondered if I was crazy for taking it, worried about failing it and almost cried when I got mocks back. But in reality, I survived it, notwithstanding the fact I found it unbelievably miserable.

There are two large French language exams, the DELF and the TCF. Both are published by the same company (like the SAT/ACT) and follow the same system for levels A1, A2, B1, B2, C1, C2. The DELF is valid for life but you choose your level and pass/fail it. The TCF is valid for 2 years but is more to know your level; maybe you'll be A2+ or B1, surprise! I took the TCF back in December (scored an A2) but took it again today to see if maybe my French improved to an extent that perhaps I could pass for a higher level. Either way, I wanted to experience the joys of high level exams and the panic that you might die and reseed back into the earth from which you came.

The TCF has 5 sections of torture.

1) Comprehension Orale is listening to a tape and identifying what's going on; did he call his wife or boss an idiot? Are the speakers approving or disapproving of the recycling habits of modern Parisians? The questions for the entire exam always start out easy and get progressively harder as the levels advance.

2) Following Comp Orale is Structure de la Langue (i.e. grammar). It's mostly high level grammar fill in the blanks with the correct conjugations of irregular verbs.

3) Comprehension Ecrite. Comp Ecrite is just like the SAT, reading passages and answered A, B, C, D, this passage expresses black, this article has a blank option, this sign would be found black. The C1 questions would be college level papers with text so small you need a magnified glass to read it and evidently, a huge vocab to understand what it's about!

4) After all this is Expression Ecrite, to assess your writing abilities. There are 6 assignments on typically like writing appropriate responses to business letters, articles for make-believe newspapers, arguments for causes, letters to friends for 95 minutes.

5) Following all this comes the Expression Orale, talking into a mic while the director of your school posses the questions. Oh joy. I think that might be the most stressful part of the entire deal.

Anyway, oh joy it's over. Oh no I have to wait 3 weeks for the results and yahoo I can take it again in August if I hate my results. I thought of a Carrie Underwood song when the whole thing was over though, every tear that had to fall from my eyes, every day I wondered how I'd get though the night, every change life has thrown me...some pages turned, some bridges burned but they're were lessons learned...

How Not to get Lost in Paris

The State of "Lost"

Now there is always the concern that you will reach the hopeless, helpless, painful state known as "being lost." Many people take great care not to reach this condition and arm themselves with such tools as maps, GPS systems, cell phones, credit cards, pain killers but still, it befalls the prepared and the unprepared alike. However, the unprepared raise their likelihood of "being lost" being simply the unprepared.

I have on 2 different occasions gotten really lost in Paris. Once, looking for the US embassy. (Why is there a USA flag flying over something other then the embassy? Becoming French are we?) The other time, looking for a cinema. Both times I dragged my friends around the block several times before discovering, I really hate Google Maps, I hate street signs, and I will never, ever on pain of death admit I'm "lost."

I have learned a great lesson regarding the "lost" state. Find a metro. It's really that simple actually. It's like a car is always waiting for you, where ever you go. You simply scurry down the big black hole into the underground and look at the metro map. "I need to take this metro to Nation then the RER A to Chatelet and then I can take the 10 line to Concorde and I'm a block away from the restaurant." (Never mind that happen's to be the most expensive district in Paris, you're there.)

Kind of cheating but it sure works...awesome! And I never have to ever really admit I'm lost! (evil laugh)

How to Love The Palace of Versailles

How can you not adore wholeheartedly the Palace of Versailles? It's absolutely impossible. The place is incredible, and excessive, and huge and so totally worth a go!

I am a Versailles freak. I admit it! I love the place! 9 months in Paris, never seen the Arch a la Defence, been to a handful of museums, never been inside Gallery Lafayette but I've made it to Versailles...4...5...times...I think...

My recent visit (last Saturday and the most recent) reminded me exactly what I adore about the palace. There is a must do list to visit as there is for everything in life.

1) Stare at the Palace. You have to stare at it...for a long time...every time you go. It's huge. I'm from a country which just celebrated it's 400th anniversary. Versailles is over 330 years old. It's old, it's beautiful, it's a historical monument, it's Versailles!

2) Go inside. Why visit if you're not going to stick your head in and see the ridiculously pompous status in which ancient royalty used to lodge themselves. The Hall of Mirrors, Marie Antoinette's former chamber, the mini-Cathedral and the theater, all merit a visit.

3) Walk the gardens. In summer the fountains play. Because it's presently summer, they charge you to go in the cultivated/most pretty sections but you can still spend several hours walking around. The fountains play to hopelessly tacky music but walk through the rows of perfectly shaped bushes, trees, flowers, everything perfect and spotless.

4) Marie Antoinette's Hamlet. France's most famous queen had her own personal hamlet to escape the palace and court etiquette. Towards the end of her reign when heavily influenced by Rousseau, she wanted to get closer to nature and her natural state. Now, we have the leftovers from it...and they're quite pretty.

5) Lunch at the Canal. Every time I've been there, I ate something along the canal, watching the huge fish. You can look up the hill to the palace and see just about everything that's going on. Not to mention, it's cheaper (and more fun).

6) Take lots of pictures. The landscape makes for great backgrounds. I seriously saw 3 different couples getting their wedding pictures done in the gardens the last time I was there. It works great for pictures.

That's just a start. A good journalist might turn this into a three part series but I'm just a French student!

How to Survive a Rainy Day

When it rains and you're living overseas, it's very easy to become depressed and feel the entire world is crashing down on you. In fact, that's sort of how I feel this ugly rainy afternoon. Why does it have to rain today?Why do I live in France? Why wasn't I born a martian? My computer doesn't love me!

1) Do your homework. It's very difficult to feel sad when wrapped in homework. It's virtually impossible, in fact. Between your online dictionary, your notes on the subjonctif and the conditionnel, it's easy to remind yourself that you live for a purpose, to do your homework.

2) Have a nice lunch. It's ridiculous how a cup of coffee with a French baguette makes everything so much more tolerable. (Unless of course the coffee is instant in which case, this proposal is rendered completely void.) A piece of chocolate (dark chocolate to match the mood) with the coffee makes even more sense and serves to easily remind you, that comfort foods exists in all forms in all countries.

3) Read a good book. No one should read a self-help book on overcoming depression on a rainy afternoon. Something uplifting with a notebook and pen and scented candle works though. Even crack the window to allow the depressingly cool rainy air into your lungs as you read. This naturally serves to remind you the beauty of literature can overcome rainy weather.

4) Be grateful you don't have to work outside. Someone had to point this out to me and I was delighted to find it works! I started I-tunes and opened my window just a bit and realized how glad I was not to be wet. You stay dry, doesn't require much thinking! Guess it works!

Et voila, that's it. How amazingly better I feel now. But then again, as much as rainy weather can be depressing, the joy of the Lord is our strength. The coffee does help though.