Tall, Fat and Blonde

During CEM orientation, my Parisian roommate informed me that I was not a real American because I was neither tall, nor fat, nor blonde. In sharing an apartment with a Parisian, I learned that the French do indeed shave and bathe regularly.

I attend an English Conversation Hour at the local University twice a week. In English conversation hour this past Tuesday, we discussed stereotypes. The group was about half French and half Americans, and we split up into national teams to write down as many stereotypes of the other country that we could think of. Then the Americans wrote stereotypes that we think the French have of us, and the French team did the opposite. We compared what we cited at the end, and the results were surprising! Or maybe the French team was just trying to be nice.

American stereotypes held by our French team:
Americans...don't know how to cook, chew gum all the time, are always concerned about time because time is money, speak loudly.
Our reactions:
Americans: "We were surprised you guys didn't say, 'fat' or 'tall'!"
French: "We were going to write 'fat', but we took it off the list because all of you are normal sized!"

French stereotypes held by our American team:
The French... are very proud, only speak French, eat bread, wine and cheese constantly (true), smoke all the time (false), wear berets and tights (false), are fashionable, are skinny, and sit in cafes all day.
The French team thought that Americans would think of them as... grumpy, know-it-alls, going on strikes, good cooks, loungers on the French riviera, well-educated, and connoiseurs of good wines.


I think most people stereotype the south of France and assume that I live next to a beautiful beach like this.


Rather, I live here.

Sweet Hours of Prayer

Tuesday was a day of prayer, as every day should be.
Tuesday morning, as part of an exercise in Craig's class on "Spiritual Leadership," we split into small groups and prayed for a subject that was on our hearts, based around a scripture.
In my group of 3, the verses shared were:
Mark 9:24: "I believe! Help me in my unbelief!" We expressed our love for God but our shortcomings in our faith, which He can grow in us.
Matthew 28:20: "Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age." When we leave CEM and go back into the world, we will need to know that Jesus is always with us.
1 Peter 1:22: "Love each other deeply with all your heart." As members of the church and students in our Bible School, we need to show more love and concern for one another.

Almost every Tuesday night, the church gets together for an hour of song and prayer. This Tuesday, the hour was the most animated ever. About half of the usual group was missing because they were rehearsing for this Saturday's Musical. They were replaced by our new American interns and Let's Start Talking Team. Usually prayer night is only for adults, but this time a 10 year old boy from the church joined us. At his request, we sang "Humble Yourselves in the Sight of the Lord" and "This Little Light of Mine" complete with hand motions and chair dancing, which is about as wild as the Church of Christ ever gets. There was a spirit of light-heartedness, almost-giddy joy and simultaneously deep devotion and communion with God about the evening and faces were (figuratively) glowing.

Long awaited photo of our church.
Photo props to Katrina Koski!

Let's Start Talking

Let's Start Talking is an organization that sends teams of American Christians around the world to host one-on-one English conversation sessions. We are welcoming a team of 4 students from Pepperdine University for the next 5 weeks.


Our LST Team!

LST is open to everyone in the community, of all ages and all levels of English. At the moment, they are meeting with each student (or "reader") twice a week, or more as requested. We have 25 students so far.
Their conversation sessions are hosted in our church's classrooms. The conversations are based on short texts that the student reads out-loud, found in a workbook assembled from the book of Luke. In addition to the weekly one-on-one sessions, LST hosts weekly parties where all the students can get together for a cultural exchange and more conversational English practice.

We've spent the past week getting to know our new LST team: eating together and showing them some of our weekly activities. LST is also getting involved at the local university by hanging out with students studying English. This week and the next, they will be attending an English class as living "show-and-tell". Having them here is a great experience for them and the entire church. And the cultural exchange goes both ways: at English conversation hour on Friday, our LST team learned how to shoot a bottle cap in the air and how to split an apple in quarters using just your hands.

You can read this story from LST's point of view on their blog, here!

CEM gets Psyched!

Two psychology professors from Abilene Christian University are wandering through France. They started in Lyon, spent the week with us at the retreat in Ardeche and came back with us to Marseille. They directed a few sessions during the retreat and preached at our church on Sunday.

On Monday, they taught our 3 hours of CEM class and gave us some practical insight on personality, identity and communication. Haven taken psychology in High School and remembering some of it, I was surprised by how useful and Biblically applicable the material that they presented was.

Some topics we covered:
Confirmation bias - when you make a first impression judgment of someone, your observations of their behavior tend to confirm your judgement (he's smiling because he's mocking me! vs. he's smiling because he's a nice guy)
"We're not as reasonable as we think we are."
"The easiest solution, when you have an issue with judging people, is to practice humility."

Johari window - a 2x2 grid of things you know/don't know about yourself and others know/don't know about you. There are even things that you don't know about yourself and others don't know about you that have underlying effects on your behavior. The goal of the christian should be to minimize his blindspots and unknown self, and to share his private self to try to become a transparent, open public person. More information: Johari window
"In the Old Testament, there is an example of David confronting problems with his unknown self: he knows that something is wrong in his life and he prays that God will help him to make it right."
"Someone who is Biblically/spiritually/age mature but who doesn't open himself up to others can have a HUGE blind spot which can lead to conflicts."
"Keep expanding your public self."

Conflict resolution -with the help of some role-playing, we illustrated passive, aggressive and assertive styles of addressing conflict.
"If a person isn't ready to hear assertive criticism, say it anyway. You need to have an honest, transparent relationship."
"Many times when people come to our office, they share things that they could have shared at church. They didn't share them there because they would be too afraid of shame. It's a shame if our churches aren't a safe place to share our struggles; ideally they would be."