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A professor in the French department just emailed me and offered me a job--making some Word documents html compatible.

So I'm trying to figure this out.




That should be four spaces and
a new line.

Yes! It worked.

and this should make italics

So far so good.

Do'es this make an apostrophe? What abo't that?

Can I put it in the center?
How about italics in the center?

And this way?

I sat down and started writing an essay. Writing a good, though-out essay--thought maybe I could post that here. My blog needs a niche, or reviving, or something. And wouldn't it be interesting to be able to sit down and read intelligent and thoughtful essays that were good and thought-out?

But I gave up quickly. I didn't even take the photo for this post. It's one my uncle Niel, who's building the fence, took and that my mom sent out. Didn't take it, didn't load it up.

It's a picture of the Corner. Bertelson Corner is a piece of land on Big Turtle Lake in northern Minnesota with three tar-paper cabins from maybe the '40s, a wash house, a boat house, a tool shed, and a pump house. It has a regulation-size badminton court and a shuffle court that no one's used for years (but that I've always been dying to try. Once I brought this up and somebody said the stuff to play was probably in the former-boat-house-now-tool-shed and I was sent to look but couldn't find anything and was terribly disappointed), two aluminum canoes, a speed boat and a pontoon boat, and an great big Windstream trailer that must be from the '60s. The Corner is a time capsule--the chairs and tables, the pictures and the old magazines lying around. There's a fan in "the House"--the biggest of the little cabins--that has a green tag hanging off of it. "If you take this," it says, "make sure it's back at the Corner by July 1958. --Dad."

I was surprised about how happy I was to be back here. I came when I was little-little, and didn't come again until my second sister was in junior high and I was 11 or 12, and the three of us (with my mom) came up. For a long time I felt like I had missed out on the Corner because of that little gap. But when I was getting an update on my second cousins--the ones that were younger than me, young enough to not consider ourselves the same age, are starting (and finishing up!) college, the baby who wasn't born yet that first trip back is in sixth grade--I realized I have been coming for awhile.

It's usually walking across from the cabins towards the lake--under the trees, across the short grass--that I start to wax reflexive. I think about the last time I'd been there. I think about how old I was then, what I was doing. The Corner was bought by my maternal great-grandparents, and my grandma and her sisters spend time in the summer up here together. Since I got here on Friday, I've been listening to them talk about the cabin they would rent before the Corner was purchased. Listening to them talk about the people they know or knew up here. Listening to them tell stories and laugh and laugh, and realizing they all have a sense of humor and love of life, like when they were younger (I think I realized this when my grandma told about how her mom sent her and her sister outside with some cleaned fresh fish to put them in that side of the icebox that opened from the kitchen and from outside--it was dark, and when they opened the little door, there were these two hands sticking out to scare them--their mother's hands). I think about myself and how I've changed from Corner visit to Corner visit--how much more they must do that than I. Thinking about year to year, not just back ten or fifteen years. The other day, we went on a drive, my mom and grandma and great aunts and I. We went in to see the place of a man they had known who had passed away. The now-owner drove in while we were there, getting out of her car, wary. My grandma explained we had known the former owner and introduced the group. "We're from Bertelson Corner," she said, "been coming here since 1925..."

The Famous French House

So, the other week, someone knocked at our door. There were two guys when I opened it, one with a camera, the other one asking if they could film us speaking in French. They were doing a spot for BYU, they explained (it was about the Spanish House, I think) and just wanted to get some footage of the different languages of the Foreign Language Student Residence. We sat on the couch and talked, and they filmed us.

And then the other day, I got home after classes, and my roommate Clémence told me there'd be someone coming by to film around dinner time that evening. Kind of the same thing--later that evening, a guy with a camera, a girl, and some other guy who didn't seem to be entirely connected came in to our apartment--following another of my roommates, Sydney. They walked in and I kind of rolled my eyes and muttered "great" in French.

Then they turned off the camera...it turned out that, unlike the first group, this group actually spoke French. In fact, they had come from France (except the third guy, who seemed to be a guide/host from Church headquarters). They began introducing their network--M6, a national network in France. It was about this point that I realized this was a little bigger than the BYU TV guys.

It turns out they're working on a huge...special? on Mormons. They followed missionaries around in France and talked with members there, they came to Utah and went to Temple Square, Welfare Square...and BYU! Asking Sydney about it later, they followed her around for most of the day. She got pulled out of class that morning--someone at BYU helped them narrow down students. Sydney said they were looking for someone who lived in the French House and was taking a French class.

They came to dinner--watched us eat--and asked everyone questions. Questions about why BYU, about the Honor Code, about what we do on the weekends, about dating. I hope we represented well. The next day in the shower, I started to wonder--will we be the only representation of young American Mormons? I wonder...

Last of all, I finally have pictures working again...here are some from the FLSR. Just for the sake of finally adding pictures again.

This is my Russian friend Alla making me kimchi.

Sidewalk chalk messages for roommates.

And me. In someone's apartment. Mine?

French Camp and Photos

I feel bad that my last post--that's been on here for so long--is ranting about things. A pretty mild rant about things that have little impact on the world, but still...

Today I started helping out at a French Camp that BYU is putting on this year for high school students. A graduate student and I are doing a cooking class for an hour each day, alternating groups every other day (today we had the "advanced" group, and they were pretty darn good). The grad student is paid. I am not. I emailed a professor and asked to be involved with the project.

As this was coming up today--as we were approaching 3:15--I started thinking, why am I doing this? I am busy with classes, and it's kind of a funny dynamic, actually, with the grad student, especially since she asked me if I had talked to the secretary about how I was getting paid...

But it was fun today. We made quiche Lorraine, which, it turns out, you can get into the oven in 15 minutes flat if you have pre-measured ingredients. I had convinced the grad student we needed to do a questionnaire about food allergies, which she said we could do after the quiche was in the oven...turns out one girl was vegetarian, and the quiche was the only recipe we're doing with meat in it. Oh well. Another girl is allergic to cantaloup and honeydew, and we were also planning a melon salad...I had had to talk the grad student into letting me do the questionnaire, and when we got the results I was thinking inside "ha, see it does matter."

Tonight we had Family Home Evening, and our group took photos wearing the tye-dye shirts we made for FHE two weeks ago. I would post them, except I'm having photo problems. I lost the cord to connect my camera to my computer, and my fancy memory-card-that-turns-into-a-USB has a virus, it turns out. I didn't know memory cards could get viruses, and I certainly don't know how it caught it. Anyway, I think blog posts without photos are kind of lame. But it looks like they'll be kind of lame for a little while still.

Classes, money, and realizations

First, a class update. I am no longer in the technology class, so no more EduBlogging. I am, however, in a multicultural education class, whose assignments keep telling me to post something as my status update on Facebook or on Twitter or to text my friends. Creative...but my classes don't usually invade my Facebook life.

Well, but I have added professors as friends. Weird.

Anyway. The week has included several monumental moments for me.

First: the US Mint makes fake money.

Have you seen the newer one dollar coins? I don't know if it was just a PR failure, but I had no idea about this program when it started--the Presidential $1 Coin Program. Though I sure did hear a lot about the state quarter thing when it was starting, and when the dollar coin was introduced, and even about the revamping of dollar bills, I never heard anything about this. The first time I got a hold of one of the presidential $1 coins (I think as change for pizza at high school, if I remember correctly) I thought some dumb kid had given the lunch lady fake money that she had bought into, and now was giving me fake money back as change.

The design--especially the Statue of Liberty back--it looks fake and cheap. I bought a snack out of a vending machine this week and got gold $1 coins as change, and initially had the same reaction. Wait, this isn't real money!

And other coins, too--after completing the state quarter thing (last year, right?), the Mint is now starting an "America The Beautiful" quarter series--again, going through all the states and territories (kudos to them for including American Samoa, Guam, Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, and US Virgin Islands--places I didn't even know about until 10th grade, but that's a whole other issue), depicting nature scenes. There's currently in circulation a penny with a shield on the reverse and also four different pennies with scenes from four stages of Lincon's life: birth and early childhood in Kentucky, formative years in Indiana, professional life in Illinois, and presidency in Washington, DC. "Westward Journey" nickle series with five different nickles with a buffalo, the Pacific coast, Louisiana Purchase/Peace Medal, a keelboat, and the traditional Monticello. Oh, and there are currently three designs for the reverse of the Sacagawea gold dollar.

I have to admit, I was a fan of the original 50 state series--I have all of them in a book at home (except about five) that I've been collecting for the last ten years. But I think part of my attraction to the program was how it was so new. It felt like a once-in-a-lifetime thing. I didn't realize it was just the start of the future of American money. When did our currency come out of novelty shops, anyway? There are so many variations that you can't even tell what's real.

Second: Not everyone likes Minerva Tiechert's paintings

I love Minerva Tiechert's paintings. I'm signed up for a class about appreciating art and museums this term. We meet at the BYU Museum of Art. For our first assignment, we had to go write a response to a work in the museum. I chose The Rug Dealers by Minerva Tiechert, a huge--maybe five feet by ten feet--painting showing two Native Americans holding up woven rugs to sell. There are some cowboys--two Latino, one Anglo--standing on sides of the scene looking. Behind the sellers, a woman is standing and weaving a rug, a child at her side. It's Minerva Tiechert's style--more impressionistic, softer colors, movement--and looks so American, with the Native American designs in the rugs, lots of different cultures and people, an American scene in the American West.

I wrote the paper about it, and the next day at class, we all walked around the museum together, lead by our teacher. She asked us to present the work of art we had written about. We were close to mine, so I said I'd go. I stood up and described the things I just described, and then the teacher started asking the class questions, leading a discussion. She brought up Arnold Friberg, who painted the picture of George Washington kneeling and praying by his horse--and the series of pictures that appear in front of copies of the Book of Mormon. LDS audiences usually like more realistic depictions, she said, and when Friberg's and Tiechert's Book of Mormon paintings were both submitted, Frieberg's were chosen.

This lead into some discussion--several people saying, yes, I like the more realistic Friberg pictures. I don't like the chalky colors and painting style Tiechert uses. Her pictures are vague.... I guess this all just surprised me. I really like Tiechert's paintings. I guess it had honestly never even occurred to me that people might not like them.

Which leads me to realization number three.

Third: Some people think The Umbrellas of Cherbourg is cheesy

Another thing I love: the 1060's movie The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. It's French, entirely sung, and sad. I watched it for the first time with my dad, and liked it so much that I bought the soundtrack and, when I was in France, went to Cherbourg and tried to buy an umbrella.

I've moved back into the French House at BYU, where I speak French with my roommates and five days a week all the French House people have dinner together. The other night we were talking about French movies. We had talked about Les Diaboliques and Amélie and I said, do you know The Umbrellas of Cherbourg? Clémence, who's from France, laughed. Christina rolled her eyes. "It's so cheesy," said Clémence.

I still love it. And listen to the music.

Blogging in class...

I'm sitting in my technology for education class, and it's the ten minute break. At the beginning of the class, they wheeled in two carts full of MacBooks (how great is that?), and we're all sitting at our desks...learning how to set up blogs. I had to set up one using a different provider since I already had one. It's on Edublogs, which is just glorified Wordpress...trying to sell you things. www.blogformyclass.edublogs.org. It's not going to be exciting. It's going to turn into my "personal learning environment," or "PLE"...eg, where I post assignments.

I'm having a great time. Hooray for school!

Okay, back to work. I need to go update the other blog.

Photos! (Random)

I've been thinking about how I need to update things...everyone has a blog now, though. It's not quite as cool of a hobby as when I started it. I think that has been part of my delay.

I wanted to get some mission photos up. I wrote a lot about my time as a missionary in my emails that got posted, but there weren't any photos to go along with them! I finally uploaded (most of) my photos, and I pulled out a few to post here. It's a pretty random selection...
In my last area, Suwon, there was a restaurant that had the best kim bap in the world. And by that time, I had eaten a lot of kim bap for lunch or dinner when we were out and about (didn't eat it every day...but pretty close).
A member invited us to his steamed bread shop. These are made with rice flour, I think, and filled with red bean paste. A little tiny shop.
This is in my second area--Anyang stake. Gumcheon District of Seoul. I took the picture at the top floor of an apartment (that was on a hill). We had gone up to the top to start knocking on doors. Take an elevator to the top, then walk down, a floor at a time, knocking on all the doors... (I knocked on so many doors)
A threesome! Last area, I'm on the right, then Sister Choi (pronounced "chay") and Sister West. It was a holiday, and the missionaries had a sports get-together thing.
While I was in my second area, a bunch of missionaries got together on a Preparation Day and biked along the Han River. It was such a beautiful day.