Subjonctif

We have had a good week at school. We have learned two new verb tenses this week, plus-que-parfait and subjonctif. Plus-que-parfait is not much of a problem, it is easily conjugated and translates directly into English. Subjonctif is a little different. It has a more difficult conjugation and it doesn't really translate. Il faut que j'écrive = It is necessary that I write. Many students I have spoken to have had a lot of problems with it and we may too by the time we finish learning all the uses for it.
Last weekend I let Lilia walk to the store around the corner by herself and pick up a few things for us. She has been begging me to do it again. Of course I followed her to make sure she made it okay. Thankfully we live in a safe neighborhood. There are almost always people around and many of them neighbors.
Micah is staying late after school on Thursday and Friday to work with his teacher and a couple of other students learning French. We are really thankfully because even though he understands a lot of French he has been hesitant to speak much.
I am really looking forward to school break coming up and my parents coming to visit. I am excited about hiking into Paris with my dad. Massy is the start of "la coulee verte", a hiking and bike trail that goes into Paris. Thanks for the thoughts and prayers. God bless, JASON

Une petite pause

I'm taking a little break from homework at this moment. I do not know for sure how much homework I have been working on but it has been a lot. I had to write my tèmoignage (testimony) for school tomorrow on top of my usual homework. We had bible study at the house this morning, the family was not all recovered yet. My kids have been doing a lot of interesting things, they are starting to resemble missionary kids more and more.

I was walking home from school with Caleb and he was showing me another kid in his french language class (CLIN). I asked if he spoke English. Caleb says, "No, he speaks British".

Yesterday, Lilia told Andrew that he was twenty-one (a number on his baseball shirt). He replies, "No way." While we are all laughing, she tells him that she is talking about his baseball shirt. He points at the ball on his shirt and says, "handball".

Lilia was also talking this week at lunch one day about two boys that were wrestling. Caleb asked if he had a red shirt on. Lilia said yes. Caleb then says, "Well, I suggest he is in my class."

Last Sunday, Lilia fussed about going to church. Afterwards she told me that in Sunday School the teacher had mentioned that fussing about church was a sin. She said she started asking God forgiveness right then.

Micah, who is our perfectionist and always has to have everything in its place, got out of the shower and somehow I forgot to comb his hair. It was sticking up bad after he had got his "gown" (pajamas) on and so Angie took him to the mirror to show him why we where laughing. As soon as he saw himself he said, "Whoa, give me a comb!"

Attached is a picture of (left to right) Micah, Andrew, Caleb and Lilia. God bless, JASON

First winter colds,

We are having a little sickness passing around the house. Angie is congested and not feeling good. Andrew has had a little fever on and off for the last couple of days. Micah has had a bad sounding cough. I hope they are all better by monday. I have been able to get several other things done other than medicating. We did our absentee voting finished, sent out some thank-you cards, did some drivers license research, of course went shopping three or four times. We have homework due monday over the book Tintin - Le Lotus Bleu. I have not been able to find it here locally yet. Concerning the driver's license, it costs a couple of thousand euros minimum and several weeks to get you driver's license, if you pass everything the first time. It is a difficult test from what I hear. There are five states that have agreements with France, meaning France accepts there driver's license directly. You show them your drivers license from one of those states and they will give you a french drivers license. So far, it may be faster and cheaper to fly to the US and get a drivers license in that state and then return and get the French one. Definitely something to consider. Attached is a picture of the kids in a pool at Greece. They really liked this one, Andrew as well because it was just the right depth of water for him to walk in. God bless, JASON

Interesting Facts about France

*France has the 7th or 8th largest economy in the World (depending on how you measure)
*Minimum wage is €8.27.
*Electric Power production is 78.1% produced by nuclear power generation, 11.1%by hydroelectric power generation, 9.5% produced by fossil feul power generation.
*France is the second largest agricultural exporter after the US
*France has 1/3 of all the agricultural land in the European Union
*France is the most visited country with 82 million visitors a year (only those staying over 24 hrs).
*France is the third largest weapons manufacturer in the world.
*70% of new cars sold in 2004 had diesel engines.
*According to a January 2007 poll by the Catholic World News: 51% identified as being Catholics, 31% identified as being agnostics or atheists. (Another poll gives atheists proportion equal to 27%), 10% identified as being from other religions or being without opinion, 4% identified as Muslim, 3% identified as Protestant, 1% identified as Jewish.
*For more facts. http://abainfrance.blogspot.com/2008/11/interesting-facts-about-france-ii.html

Rencontre d'amour

Past two days have passed well. In school we have studied about sharing stories about love. "Coup de foudre" (literally hit of lightning) is the french phrase for love at first sight. For homework Angie and I had to write the stories of how we met. It was fun and interesting to see the different points of view.
It seems winter has arrived. There was a cold wind blowing today. It is supposed to get down to forty the next couple of nights and only warm up to 60. What seems to make it colder to me is the wind. We dragged out the winter coats and bundled everyone up. I still have been holding out on turning the heaters on. God bless, JASON

Another Birthday.

Angie's birthday was Friday. I purchased some eclairs and took them to school for our class to enjoy. It was a slow day at school thankfully. We had about 3 hours of homework on Wednesday Night and an hour on Thursday night. We started to watch a movie last night dubbed in french. It was about the crashing of a 747. Jimmy Stewart was in it. It was dubbed in French of course and it had been a while since I had tried to watch a dubbed movie. Normally it is just kids cartoons. I was surprised by how much more I caught on to. We stopped and went to bed with only about 30 minutes left in the movie. I imagine they escaped from the underwater plane okay. I am looking forward to my parents coming to visit. Last time we talked to them they said goodbye and see you in a few weeks. I didn't realise that it was that close. I have a lot of things I am looking forward to doing with them. Just sitting and talking with the kids will be fun. My Dad and I are planning to hike into Paris. I would like to take part of the same path we took earlier, walk to the Louvre, the Arc de Triomphe, and La Tour Eifel. It would be a nice walk, especially since we would not have to hurry. Now I am going to see what Angie is doing in the kitchen. Thanks again for the prayers for us and continue to pray. We are in the process of looking toward getting our French drivers license (more on that later), and deciding where we will go after language school. Our prayers go out to those who are having financial trouble in the US. We had several churches that had to drop supporting us because of financial hard times. We know that God is in control and has infinite resources. God bless, JASON

Le lundi.

We had a good Monday. I usually like Mondays, I'm charged from Sunday and ready to dive into the week. Services went well yesterday at church. There was a visiting missionary to Cameroon. He gave a short presentation of the work and preached a message. I understood almost everything he said, but I could not follow the overall outline. I gave a short lesson in class today. I think it went well. I took it to my teacher before class to correct it and she starting correcting the scriptures that I had printed at the top, it was funny. Angie gave her testimony in class today as well. We had a great meal for supper. Angie had bought a rotisserie chicken and we had potato wedges with homemade cheese dip and green beans (french cut - naturally). Angie would never admit to it but she is a good cook. It is hard to believe that this month is winding down already. There seems to be a lot of interesting things happening in the US recently. Economy, hurricanes, politics . . . I try to keep up with what I can and keep the family informed, kids included. I want the kids to have an idea of what is going on in the US while they are gone. Attached is a picture of olive trees and palm tree in Greece. God bless, JASON