I just wanted to say before I forget: Midnight in Paris is a fantastic movie. Seriously. You will laugh, you will have a little tear, you will be enchanted and you will fall in love.
Just go see it, I promise it's worth it.
And the best part is: no (on-screen) scandalousness or language. I'm not even sure why it's PG-13. Woohoo! Also, if you're saying to yourself "eh? Owen Wilson? Really?" No, really. You'll like him.
Also, I'm feeling in a chick flick mood and "Something borrowed" looks kind of fun.
Tuesday, June 7, 2011
Monday, June 6, 2011
You can control how you react... but not how others do.
I just read an interesting quote given in a specific context, but it works for pretty much anything. We spend a lot of time trying to please people, but sometimes we can't make everybody happy and we just need to be true to what we understand and feel to be right. So here's the quote:
"I’m not taking responsibility for their pain anymore [...] Let me explain. I can’t control anyone else’s emotional response to my actions. I can do my best to be a responsible human being by not running around inflicting pain and damage, but I can also accept that I can’t please everyone all the time, and this includes the people closest to me." (source)
It's a very good point: we worry too much about how what we say will be received, and it is important to not try to walk all over people, but you also need to not drown yourself out for fear of offending. And sometimes, there are people with whom it's just not worth talking about certain things because it just gets all twisted up and takes you nowhere.
"I’m not taking responsibility for their pain anymore [...] Let me explain. I can’t control anyone else’s emotional response to my actions. I can do my best to be a responsible human being by not running around inflicting pain and damage, but I can also accept that I can’t please everyone all the time, and this includes the people closest to me." (source)
It's a very good point: we worry too much about how what we say will be received, and it is important to not try to walk all over people, but you also need to not drown yourself out for fear of offending. And sometimes, there are people with whom it's just not worth talking about certain things because it just gets all twisted up and takes you nowhere.
(Just to make things clear: don't read too much into the theme of the post I pulled the quote from. I noticed this specific quote because I felt it applied to many things in general)
Sunday, June 5, 2011
Sunday excitement
Well today was.... entertaining to say the least. We really love our ward and we've felt very welcome here. The members are fantastic and lots of fun and I love being in this ward. That being said, there are always a few token crazies, and today was crazytown unleashed. Relief Society was great and we had a wonderful lesson on gratitude after I had finished butchering the hymns on the piano, and Andrew (who already has a calling in the young men's presidency) had a fun lesson on the law of chastity.
It all started going downhill in Sunday School. The teacher is nice enough, but he's a bit.... on a power trip? Which is so not my type of guy... Let's call him Brother A. Basically the lesson was "you guys shut up and let me be the teacher and I'll call on you if I decide to" and of course if you gave a "wrong" answer (read: not the answer he was expecting) you were promptly dismissed. So it didn't really start off all fluffy and happy to begin with and he was seriously getting on my nerves. Oh, also, the lesson was on hypocrisy, which made him doubly obnoxious.
So he gets started and at one point this one sister raises her hand. Now this sister, we'll call her Sister P, is the rambling type, but she's nice and I think the fact that her French is pretty bad probably contributes to her difficulty in expressing herself so I usually don't really mind. She raises her hand and says something vaguely related and Brother A decides she's preaching false doctrine and promptly shuts her up. He quite literally said "you are saying something that is false so I'll stop you right there" and moved on. And nobody SAYS anything!
At this point I'm fuming, but I'm not quite sure what I could possibly have said, especially since I didn't even understand what sister P had said... and then she keeps her hand up the whole time and he deliberately ignores her. Finally near the end he lets her speak as if to be so benevolent, and this is where it gets really awkward. She launches into some unintelligible tirade about evil spirits and casting out devils and whitened sepulchers... and everybody is trying to shut her up. She won't shut up. Then brother P. gets upset and leaves, asking the Sunday school counselor to have someone say a prayer. A really sweet sister gets up and says a 10 minute prayer, bawling the whole time and begging God to "forgive us for chasing you away from our congregation" etc. She was really sweet and actually did bring back a measure of Spirit, but it was so sad to see how heartbroken she was.
But unfortunately, today was fast and testimony meeting, aka get up on your soapbox Sunday for some people. I knew there was the potential for more drama, and I was right. Lots of women bore testimony of the temple (there had been a stake relief society temple trip that week) and one sister talked about her involvement in the UMP (center right political party), and there were a few more randoms. But of course, as soon as people start lining up, sister P gets in line with a smug expression on her face and I knew it was coming. She got up and talked about how we come to church to be healed, and addressing the congregation said "if you are sick you cannot preach to me" and other accusatory nonsense. She sits down and we all breathe in again, but then her husband gets in line and I'm thinking this could either be good or bad.
It was bad. He called "certain people in the ward" to repentance and chastened them for their lack of charity, etc etc citing from scripture and so forth. Ugh. Finally he sits down too and we have more testimonies. At the end of the meeting, the bishop got up and sweetly but very clearly reminded everybody 1) what the point of a testimony was and 2) that he and he alone has the prerogative to chasten/call to repentance the members of the ward as a whole, and that he saw no need to do so at this moment. Laying down the law!
Anyway. Some good mixed in with the bad. I am grateful for people who just get it and who are fantastic leaders. Our bishop is wonderful and carries such a burden. He's doing a wonderful job and there are many great members that move seamlessly from one calling to another to keep things running and running in the right direction. Ha, today our relief society president got released and in the same breath called as the primary president!
In other news... we spent a great long weekend (minus Sunday) with my uncle Charles' family. Unfortunately I've been working too much lately and I had some pretty ridiculous deadlines, but we still had a good time. We went to the local farmer's market, took a bike ride, visited the Val d'Europe (a very big shopping mall that has an outdoor portion with outlet designer boutiques) and spent time playing in their yard and braiding each other's hair while Andrew played Halo with the boys :)
Also, I found the nail polish colors I had been looking for for quite some time now. The only brand I could find that carried them was O.P.I. and I didn't really care to spend $20 on nail polish. I got two awesome colors for $5! I know, it's silly that I'm so excited about something so silly, but it made me very happy.
This is pretty neat: it's our old family bible, with lots of birth dates and wedding dates, etc. I wish my handwriting looked that good!
It all started going downhill in Sunday School. The teacher is nice enough, but he's a bit.... on a power trip? Which is so not my type of guy... Let's call him Brother A. Basically the lesson was "you guys shut up and let me be the teacher and I'll call on you if I decide to" and of course if you gave a "wrong" answer (read: not the answer he was expecting) you were promptly dismissed. So it didn't really start off all fluffy and happy to begin with and he was seriously getting on my nerves. Oh, also, the lesson was on hypocrisy, which made him doubly obnoxious.
So he gets started and at one point this one sister raises her hand. Now this sister, we'll call her Sister P, is the rambling type, but she's nice and I think the fact that her French is pretty bad probably contributes to her difficulty in expressing herself so I usually don't really mind. She raises her hand and says something vaguely related and Brother A decides she's preaching false doctrine and promptly shuts her up. He quite literally said "you are saying something that is false so I'll stop you right there" and moved on. And nobody SAYS anything!
At this point I'm fuming, but I'm not quite sure what I could possibly have said, especially since I didn't even understand what sister P had said... and then she keeps her hand up the whole time and he deliberately ignores her. Finally near the end he lets her speak as if to be so benevolent, and this is where it gets really awkward. She launches into some unintelligible tirade about evil spirits and casting out devils and whitened sepulchers... and everybody is trying to shut her up. She won't shut up. Then brother P. gets upset and leaves, asking the Sunday school counselor to have someone say a prayer. A really sweet sister gets up and says a 10 minute prayer, bawling the whole time and begging God to "forgive us for chasing you away from our congregation" etc. She was really sweet and actually did bring back a measure of Spirit, but it was so sad to see how heartbroken she was.
But unfortunately, today was fast and testimony meeting, aka get up on your soapbox Sunday for some people. I knew there was the potential for more drama, and I was right. Lots of women bore testimony of the temple (there had been a stake relief society temple trip that week) and one sister talked about her involvement in the UMP (center right political party), and there were a few more randoms. But of course, as soon as people start lining up, sister P gets in line with a smug expression on her face and I knew it was coming. She got up and talked about how we come to church to be healed, and addressing the congregation said "if you are sick you cannot preach to me" and other accusatory nonsense. She sits down and we all breathe in again, but then her husband gets in line and I'm thinking this could either be good or bad.
It was bad. He called "certain people in the ward" to repentance and chastened them for their lack of charity, etc etc citing from scripture and so forth. Ugh. Finally he sits down too and we have more testimonies. At the end of the meeting, the bishop got up and sweetly but very clearly reminded everybody 1) what the point of a testimony was and 2) that he and he alone has the prerogative to chasten/call to repentance the members of the ward as a whole, and that he saw no need to do so at this moment. Laying down the law!
Anyway. Some good mixed in with the bad. I am grateful for people who just get it and who are fantastic leaders. Our bishop is wonderful and carries such a burden. He's doing a wonderful job and there are many great members that move seamlessly from one calling to another to keep things running and running in the right direction. Ha, today our relief society president got released and in the same breath called as the primary president!
In other news... we spent a great long weekend (minus Sunday) with my uncle Charles' family. Unfortunately I've been working too much lately and I had some pretty ridiculous deadlines, but we still had a good time. We went to the local farmer's market, took a bike ride, visited the Val d'Europe (a very big shopping mall that has an outdoor portion with outlet designer boutiques) and spent time playing in their yard and braiding each other's hair while Andrew played Halo with the boys :)
Also, I found the nail polish colors I had been looking for for quite some time now. The only brand I could find that carried them was O.P.I. and I didn't really care to spend $20 on nail polish. I got two awesome colors for $5! I know, it's silly that I'm so excited about something so silly, but it made me very happy.
And for a touch of randomness: you find some interesting things when you're packing...
 |
| my dad in action |
This is pretty neat: it's our old family bible, with lots of birth dates and wedding dates, etc. I wish my handwriting looked that good!
Have a happy Sunday!
Saturday, June 4, 2011
Bordeaux trip part II
I went down earlier than Andrew to spend some time with my dad and sister, and on the day I took the train it was RIDICULOUSLY hot and sunny, so my dad decided to rent a car so we could get to the beach the next day.
And this is what our beach trip looked like :
And it was just as cold as it looks.
BUT we didn't let it bring us down and we still found plenty of fun things to do
My dad showed us the house he used to live in (in the town of Arcachon which is just on the beach). You can see the name: "les Boutons d'Or"
And we hiked up to the top of an observatory that was built two centuries ago (slightly scary, I'll admit, but it's surprisingly still very solid) and overlooks the bay.
Voilà!
And this is what our beach trip looked like :
And it was just as cold as it looks.
BUT we didn't let it bring us down and we still found plenty of fun things to do
My dad showed us the house he used to live in (in the town of Arcachon which is just on the beach). You can see the name: "les Boutons d'Or"
Voilà!
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
Normandy Continued
Hello everyone!
This is Lydia's lesser half here to update you on our French adventure. Last I checked, she left you stranded in the middle of our Normandy trip. After our wonderful day at the Mont St. Michel and our visit to the Bayeux Tapestry, we began our 6-hour tour of the D-Day landing beaches. If you ever come visit the Normandy beaches, personally I recommend at least one full day. Anything less just doesn't do it justice. Also, although the tours are often expensive, if you can find a good tour guide it is worth it. Since I'm kind of a history nut AND I'd already been here before, I was the tour guide.
We started out our day at Sainte-Mere-Eglise.
This is Lydia's lesser half here to update you on our French adventure. Last I checked, she left you stranded in the middle of our Normandy trip. After our wonderful day at the Mont St. Michel and our visit to the Bayeux Tapestry, we began our 6-hour tour of the D-Day landing beaches. If you ever come visit the Normandy beaches, personally I recommend at least one full day. Anything less just doesn't do it justice. Also, although the tours are often expensive, if you can find a good tour guide it is worth it. Since I'm kind of a history nut AND I'd already been here before, I was the tour guide.
We started out our day at Sainte-Mere-Eglise.
This was the first city liberated by Allied forces following the D-Day landing. Here we talked about how France fell to Germany so quickly and the status of Allied and German troops in the area prior to D-Day. I talked about the allied air invasion (101st and 82 Airborne divisions) landing behind German lines before the main assault on the beaches, and a whole bunch of other really interesting stuff. If you pay for my flight out to France, maybe I'll take you on the same tour.
After this visit, we traveled about 8 kilometers away to see a small 12th century chapel in Angoville-au-Plain. We visited this chapel on my first tour here and I thought it was so unique that I brought everyone back. Two American medics set up a field first aid station in the chapel and treated 80 German and American troops while the fight continued outside. The town changed hands three times before the Americans took it over for good. The interior still has blood stains, bullet holes, and now has stained glass windows honoring the two medics who stayed there.
 |
| German head wound |
We picnic-ed at Utah Beach which was just a few kilometers away from Angoville. Utah Beach is undergoing some museum renovations so we couldn't really do much there, but I gave our group an idea of what the allied battle plan was, how the German defenses were set up, and how the landing at Utah beach went. Utah Beach was one of the two American invasion beaches.
Following Utah, we drove to Pointe-du-Hoc, a cliffside where three companies of Army Rangers climbed up the cliff, took the gun battery at the top, and held off German reinforcements until Allied troops came to relieve them. There were originally 225 soldiers - by the time they were relieved only 90 were still alive and capable of fighting. The bluff is covered with craters from bombardments leading up to the Normandy invasion. We couldn't spend a lot of time here which is unfortunate because this is probably the most "interactive" of all the visits we made (bunkers, craters, a gorgeous view, etc).
Omaha beach was just down the road. This was the "worst" beach for all the allied troops where virtually nothing went right. When you think of the first 20 minutes of Saving Private Ryan, this is the beach you should think about. To compare, Utah beach was taken with less than 200 casualties. Omaha beach had over 6,000. Here I dissected the Allied attack plan and showed where things went wrong and why it took so long and so many lives to take the beach.
Finally, we ended the day at the American Cemetery in Colleville-sur-Mer. We easily spent two hours here and just took time to reflect on what we'd seen, visit their self-tour (which built upon everything I'd already told them) and then spent a lot of time walking among the graves. It was our pre-Memorial Day celebration. It is a beautiful location: very serene and a wonderful tribute to everyone who is buried there. God bless America.
 |
| Lydia liked the "portable" radio station |
In other news, my internship at the Embassy has been exciting. I'm working on events that should go a long way in connecting American businesses and European service providers in the Green Energy, Aerospace, and general business sectors. Basically, we team up with corporate partners to create events where businesses can exchange information, market expertise, and financing options while we provide market research and regulatory expertise. The only downside is that I won't be here to see most of my projects come to fruition.
I got to see Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at the Ambassador's residence the other day. She gave a brief speech about how she appreciates the staff at the American Tri-mission in Paris (State, UNESCO, and one other that I can't remember, maybe OECD). It was just a simple meet and greet, but it was something that doesn't happen every day. Yesterday we had the official Marine Corps silent drill platoon come and drill for the Ambassador, international politicians and military guests. It was quite impressive. After the drill was over, the Marine Drum and Bugle Corps came and played some patriotic anthems and - you'll never guess - "Don't Rain on My Parade" which was doubly funny because it was threatening rain that morning and it just isn't something you'd expect from such a formal band. I've often said that I don't like marching bands, but this one - though perhaps not technically better than others - actually makes sense from the uniforms to the marching to the perfect formations. It was a thing of beauty. Afterwards they all came out and mingled with us on the Ambassador's lawn and I spoke with a Lance Corporal in the silent drill team. He was from Phoenix and quite an impressive guy. It was a nice way to celebrate Memorial Day, especially in a country like France where our soldiers came twice to serve with European allies in the cause of freedom.
I applied for my first full time position ever. Though I don't particularly want to work for the federal government, a position had opened up as a commercial specialist in the consulate in Bordeaux. It's something that Lydia and I have long considered, so even though I still have one year of school left and I don't have a work permit for France, I decided to apply anyway and get my name out there. It also helps that the job was specifically a training level position, NOT in Paris (Paris is nice, but I'd take a smaller city, especially Bordeaux, any day), and it is close to Lydia's family. Plus, it is good practice to revamp resumes and cover letters for different jobs. My career hunt starts in earnest in August as Operation Become a Real Person begins.
Since you are all bored now, I'll sign off and let Lydia keep posting more interesting things. All the best,
Andrew
I got to see Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at the Ambassador's residence the other day. She gave a brief speech about how she appreciates the staff at the American Tri-mission in Paris (State, UNESCO, and one other that I can't remember, maybe OECD). It was just a simple meet and greet, but it was something that doesn't happen every day. Yesterday we had the official Marine Corps silent drill platoon come and drill for the Ambassador, international politicians and military guests. It was quite impressive. After the drill was over, the Marine Drum and Bugle Corps came and played some patriotic anthems and - you'll never guess - "Don't Rain on My Parade" which was doubly funny because it was threatening rain that morning and it just isn't something you'd expect from such a formal band. I've often said that I don't like marching bands, but this one - though perhaps not technically better than others - actually makes sense from the uniforms to the marching to the perfect formations. It was a thing of beauty. Afterwards they all came out and mingled with us on the Ambassador's lawn and I spoke with a Lance Corporal in the silent drill team. He was from Phoenix and quite an impressive guy. It was a nice way to celebrate Memorial Day, especially in a country like France where our soldiers came twice to serve with European allies in the cause of freedom.
I applied for my first full time position ever. Though I don't particularly want to work for the federal government, a position had opened up as a commercial specialist in the consulate in Bordeaux. It's something that Lydia and I have long considered, so even though I still have one year of school left and I don't have a work permit for France, I decided to apply anyway and get my name out there. It also helps that the job was specifically a training level position, NOT in Paris (Paris is nice, but I'd take a smaller city, especially Bordeaux, any day), and it is close to Lydia's family. Plus, it is good practice to revamp resumes and cover letters for different jobs. My career hunt starts in earnest in August as Operation Become a Real Person begins.
Since you are all bored now, I'll sign off and let Lydia keep posting more interesting things. All the best,
Andrew
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)