Fraud

I checked my credit card bill yesterday and found something interesting: a $300 charge from Air Canada on August 19. That was just a few days before I flew home, but I flew on Westjet and I booked my flight at the start of August, so this didn't seem right. I checked into it, and the booking was under someone else's name. The Air Canada person told me I had to contact my credit card company to get it fixed up. So I did that, and after a quick conversation on the phone, it was almost cleared up. I won't have to pay for that transaction, but I will have to sign a form that they'll mail to me, and I'll be without a MasterCard for a week or two until they can send me a replacement card with a different card number. Fortunately I still have a Visa card and a debit card.

This incident makes me glad that I check my bill carefully each month, because if I left it for too long and noticed the fraud too late, I would've been stuck paying for it. The moral of the story: check your credit card bill (and bank statement too) every month for fraud.

Formulas

"Formulas presuppose God is more a computer or a circus monkey than an intelligent Being." -- Donald Miller, "Searching for God Knows What"

It seems like when I get into a conversation about God, if I'm trying to answer somebody's questions about God, quite often I'll throw in some kind of formulaic pat answer. It doesn't seem to matter whether I'm talking with a Christian or not, and it doesn't seem to matter that formulaic answers tend to bug me; I still give formulaic answers. (Maybe the people who give me pat answers don't mean to either.) I know that my finite mind will never fully comprehend an infinite God, but I think I could do better than I do. Maybe sometimes the formulaic answer is the best answer I have so far. Other times, I think I know an answer that's better than a formula, but it's hard to express. Sometimes what's in my heart seems to transcend any formulaic answer, and that's hard for me to express.

So if I give you a formulaic answer to something, please know that it's probably not intentional. Tell me that my answer seemed formulaic, then wait a week, and by then, maybe I'll come up with a slightly better response (not necessarily an answer) to your question.

By the way, I found that quote at the start in the free, downloadable first chapter of "Searching for God Knows What," which you can read here. It's an interesting and funny read, but so far, that's the only part of the book I've read, since I don't have the actual book.

Home

My odyssey is over. I'm home. The trip was pretty good, but it's good to see my family again. Not only did I get to see my parents, I got to see my brother, who returned from a year in Philadelphia two weeks ago. (See this page to read about what he was doing.) Today at the airport was the first time I've seen him since February. I'm looking forward to seeing friends again too, so don't hesitate to call me. (Sorry ladies, I don't give out my phone number on my blog.)

But I'll be somewhat busy because I need to unpack, prepare for a presentation about my Uganda trip (which could be as soon as next week), and look for a job. Yup, no more learning for me. I'm looking for a long-term job.

Almost home

I'm in Toronto now visiting my friends Dave and Christine. They moved here a year ago. They've been busy with Christine's parents for the past week, so they're a little tired now. But I'm a little tired too. We've checked out a few things in Toronto like the Canadian National Exhibition, and we've hung out at their apartment too.

Early Tuesday morning, I'll be catching a plane to Edmonton. It's been a good trip, but it will be good to be home. If you live in Edmonton, hopefully I'll see you soon.

Reflections on traveling

I've made my way to Aylmer, Ontario, which is near London. This is in the heart of Canada's Ahmish country, so for the second time this year (the first time being when I went to Pennsylvania in February) I've seen horses pulling buggies on the highway.

Traveling alone like this does sometimes get lonely. It's been great to get together with a few friends in various cities, but then later in the evenings (except here in Aylmer and my one night of a very brief stay in Hamilton) I'm back at a hostel or university residence. It's times like this that I'm glad I'm not staying at a hotel. At least at the hostel in Montreal, there were people to talk to, and I even knew two of the other guests. (But those two guests were spending most of their time with each other, not me, not that I can blame them. They are boyfriend and girlfriend, and they won't see each other for a year.) Also, I'm sometimes alone during the day because my friends have jobs.

But on the brighter side, this has been a good chance to rediscover east-central Canada. I lived in Ottawa when I was almost too young to remember, and I traveled throughout eastern Canada with my family in 1997, but this experience has been different. In 1997 I was 15. I wasn't all that rebellious, but I wasn't super enthusiastic about spending 3 weeks with my family and seeing lots of historical and educational stuff. Yeah, the 1997 vacation was generally a good vacation, but I think I'm more enthusiastic this time around. I also have more freedom to do what I want (which includes seeing some historical and educational stuff) and through finding my own way around and making my own decisions, I think I get to know the cities better and my appreciation for these cities grows. In 1997, we only spent a day or two in Montreal and I barely remember it. This time, despite seeing the same street performers every night a block from the hostel, and finding very little that interested me in the Rue St. Catherines shopping district, there were many other things I enjoyed about Montreal. (And I enjoyed the street performers too, the first time anyway.)

Here in Aylmer I'm getting a little more acquainted with another branch of Christianity--the
German Church of God. It's affilliated with my church and my grandma goes to one of those churches, but until I went to Uganda I never really had a chance to learn much about those churches from people who actually go to them. Now that I'm visiting friends that I met in Uganda and visiting their church, I'm learning even more. They are more conservative than my church and I've heard a few things that I disagree with, but I'm grateful for the chance to meet more people there and get an inside look.

Bad translation

It turns out my posting entitled "French music" had some bad translation. My dictionary claimed the word "pis" means "worse" but someone in Quebec told me that in Quebec (but not in France) "pis" means "and". So here's a slightly corrected rough translation of part of the song "Degenerations":

Your great-great-grandmother, she had fourteen children
Your great-grandmother had almost as many
And your grandmother had three and that was enough
And your mother did not want any; you were an accident
And you, my little girl, you change partners all the time
When you make mistakes, you have an abortion
But there are mornings, you wake up crying
When you dream at night of being surrounded by children

So maybe it'a not as preachy as I thought, but the lyrics are still intersting.

Farewell to Montreal

I'm in Ottawa now. Today I took the train from Montreal to Kingston to visit a friend in Kingston (Kelly). I met him on the Uganda trip. Another friend from the trip (Harry) was on his way from Hamilton to Ottawa, so he went to Kingston too. We had some lunch and then I hitched a ride to Ottawa with Harry. Unfortunately Kelly's wife Chantelle (who was also on the Uganda trip) couldn't be there.

Here are a few memories of Montreal:

-Seeing an entire museum of nativity scenes--including one from Uganda--at St. Joseph's oratory.

-Being introduced to various Asian foods (including some pretty good Vietnamese soup) by a Vietnamese friend who moved to Montreal recently.

-Seeing French signs everywhere, usually with no English on them, even in the most touristy areas and in the English movie theatre. But as soon as I tried to order some food (for example, a Beaver Tail) in French, the cashiers would respond in English.

-Visiting Rue St. Catherine (a popular street with lots of stores and restaurants) on the last day of the World Outgames. The road was closed to cars and there were lots of people, including a few in clothes that were...um...interesting. While I do believe homosexual activity isn't right, homosexuality is something I want to understand better, and maybe this experience got me one step closer to understanding.

But I'm tired, so I'm probably forgetting some things. I quite liked Old Montreal, but I suppose Old Quebec City is probably better, but I had less time to explore there.

Sometime soon (maybe next week) my former roommate Ryan will be leaving for Egypt for a year. He didn't come to Ottawa with me, so today was the last time I will see him for a year. Be sure to pray for him if that's something you do.

Farewell to Chicoutimi

I'm in Montreal now. The program in Chicoutimi is over, so now I'm visiting friends. I accidentally ended up staying in the same hostel in Montreal as my former roommate Ryan, just as I accidentally ended up doing the French immersion program at the same place as him.

Wednesday and Thursday night, I went to the "Rhythmes du Monde" festival where they have free concerts by bands from all over the world. This is an annual festival in Chicoutimi, and I think Edmonton should copy it.

Friday night was our final party and I was out for most of the night. Saturday morning I said goodbye.

And remember: If the cheese doesn't squeak, it's not real poutine.

A Day in the Life of Alex

I'm finally getting around to writing about a typical day in Chicoutimi. On a typical day I start off with a class at 8h45 (that's French for 8:45). I'm in a class with 14 or 15 other students who are around the same level as me in French. At the start of class, our professor asks each of us what we did the previous evening. We each have to explain in French. This is good practice, especially with past-tense verbs.

The class is roughly three-hours or a bit more, with a 20-minute break in the middle. This can get a little too long, but it's a lot better than a three-hour engineering lecture. We don't just listen to our professor talk like we would in engineering, we're given worksheets to work on and we get chances to practice speaking French. A couple of times, we got into small groups to discuss interesting issues like the death penalty and the ideal age for marriage. These discussions are more interesting than most of what we do in the class, but they're tough. It does help build my French ability beyond things like, "Yesterday, I did my homework. Then I went to 'Le Bistrot.' Then I went to bed." It resembles a high school class more than a university class, although we do get university credit for it.

After class we have a cafeteria lunch. After lunch, the activities vary. Mondays, we typically learn traditional Québecois dances and we listen to someone talk about Québecois food or music. As much as I like the music and food in Québec (aside from the very mediocre cafeteria food), the music and food part of the afternoon can be a little boring and I get tired easily during that part of the afternoon. After that we have a choice of activities and I participate in sports. Monday evenings we watch a Québecois movie. They're hard to understand, but subtitles (in French) help some.

Tuesday afternoons we have our choice of workshops to do. I chose canoeing. But sometimes that's been cancelled due to weather or very low attendance. This week I went hiking with a different group because canoeing was cancelled.

Wednesday afternoons we have another choice in activities, and I chose the Gumboots dance, some kind of African dance. Wednesday evening is typically improv night, where some students do improv in French. Less than half of the people participate and the ones that do only do it once, and I didn't participate.

Thursday afternoon we have a class on Québecois culture. This is the time of the week when I'm most likely to drink coffee. The last two times, we watched kids' movies, so that was a bit more fun, but I still needed coffee.

Friday afternoons are usually free, and sometimes there's a party of some sort at the university in the evening.

When I'm free for the evening I eat supper with my host family. They're quite friendly and quite helpful with French. The father of the family in particular is quite funny, but he's been away on business for three weeks. My free evenings vary greatly. Sometimes I do homework. (Yes, we get some homework, but it's a lot less than in any other 6-credit university course I've taken.) Sometimes I go places with friends. One time I went to a place in the river valley where they have free line dancing 4 nights a week. Those line dances are a lot harder than Cadillac Ranch!

So if you're considering doing French immersion, you've now had a quick look at what UQAC (Université du Québec à Chicoutimi) is like. But you'll have to read my other postings if you want to hear about more specific, fun, and interesting happenings.