My First Time Eating at a Michelin Star Restaurant, April 2016, Crozant, France

April, 2016.

Crozant, France.

What to eat?  What to choose?

This was my first time eating at a Michelin star restaurant: L'Auberge de la Vallée.

 The cheese service.

So many unfamiliar cheeses.

 I really don't like French cheese.  Unless it's the creamy stuff.

 French Cheeeeesssseeee!!!!!

 Proof I tried it.  Never again. :P

 My Mom doesn't mind cheese.

 I didn't mind eating this. :0)

 That's a, "Mom, can you please stop taking my picture," look.

It was a very good meal.

Truly a vacation highlight.

Photos by Sarah and Robin Stufflebeam

My Year of Fear: Part I

When I was thinking about New Years resolutions last month all the obvious options came up: lose weight, eat healthy, be more organized, etc.  But then I realized what I really needed to conquer this year: Fear.  There are so many stupid self limiting beliefs I've filled myself with, so many things that are holding me back, and it's been eye opening and humbling thinking over these different fears.

It's February and my "Year of Fear" has gotten off to a rough start.  But fear does that; it holds us back. 

Some of these fears I'll talk about on this blog, some I will not, but this last week I decided to face a self-limiting belief that has plagued me for years. That I can't learn French.

Somewhere in my brain this belief sprung, and it's crept into my attempts at learning Japanese.  If I can't learn French, how can I learn any language?  Learning languages is not one of my talents.

But I struggled with reading growing up, feeling stupid all the way through my very last semester in college (it took me 12 semesters to graduate with a 4 year degree).  It wasn't until I was in music literature 304 that I realized I wasn't stupid in English.  That's when I finally realized I could write.  So many signs leading up to that very last class proved I was good at writing, but my early struggles created a handicap in my mind.  Being pulled out of class in the 3rd grade with a couple other kids to get special learning haunted me.

It's amazing how we can let stupid, silly, little meaningless life events dictate who we think we are.

And somewhere I've come to believe I can't learn French.  I can't speak it.

And somewhere I know this isn't true, but this self-limiting belief keeps holding me back.

What am I afraid of?  Not being perfect.

I'm a visual thinking person.  Auditory skills are my weakness, which is ironic because I have a music degree.  (I failed second semester music dictation at BYU, retook it that first Summer getting a C, and if I had failed the second time I would have been kicked out of the school of music.  I cried so many times those few years.)

But I want to be a linguist!  I love listening to different languages being spoken, even though I understand nothing.  The idea of it thrills me.  And I love listening to music in different languages.

And just yesterday I was really struggling with my depression and didn't go to the LDS mid-singles ward/congregation I attend.  It was a few minutes before 1:00 pm, and if I wanted to partake of the sacrament I only had one option, and that was to attend the Spanish ward.  I snuck in the back, feeling ashamed, really, but even though I couldn't understand anything, catching a gist here and there, I still felt the Spirit.  And it was fun listening to the hymns I know so well sung in this different tongue.

I want to learn Spanish, too, but only after French.  First French, then Japanese, then Spanish.  And after I'm confortable with those three I'm going to learn Italian, German, Irish, Portuguese, Korean, Greek, and Hebrew.  Maybe I'll throw Armenian in there at some point, as well.

But it must start with French.  It's my childhood dream.  I took two years in High School, and another two years in college.

And now I have so many tools I didn't have back then.  The four main resources I'm working through are Frenchpod101.com, FluentU, Duolingo phone app, and the Michel Thomas method.

Those are good places to start.

And as a note: Studying the Michel Thomas method is like standing under a waterfall with your mouth open, wondering if you'll ever breath again.  But it sure works.

In Which I Won't be Going to Japan this October

A few months ago my going to Japan this October was really solid.  Plane tickets purchased, got a really good deal flying into LAX on September 28 for the layover and then onto Narita Tokyo airport.  Paid in full for an apartment in Tokyo.  Down payment paid for an apartment in Kyoto.  Hotel reserved for three whole days at Tokyo Disneyland.  (Going to Disneyland would have been my very first activity, taking the bus or JR line from Narita.  I was so very excited to finally visit Tokyo Disney Sea.)

Then a couple things happened:  My brother wanted to get a new job; his wanting this began in early May.  And after the Chili Volcano eruption in April I was prompted to google Mt. Fuji, regardless of the fact I knew it was a low risk volcano.

Last thing first: Mt. Fuji.  

(I must quickly insert that Mt. Fuji isn't the reason at all why I'm not going on this trip.  When my Mom was 17 she visited the Egyptian Pyramids and got to go inside.  One friend got claustrophobic and turned around. My Mom decided to proceed, stating that if she was going to die, she would rather die in a Pyramid.  I must state that I've grown up hearing this.  And if I was going to die in Japan, I would be perfectly okay dieing in Japan.  You can't live in fear.  I can hop in a car and get in an accident down the street.  More people die in car accidents then in airplanes.  We've got to live our lives.  What I state below is what I found out, and being into Geology I had to tell my whole family the craziness that is the current state of Mt. Fuji.  That aside, I live next to the devastating Wasatch fault line which is due to fracture at any moment, and trust me it's going to be really, really bad.  I won't get into it.  But you never know.  I'm visiting California next week and we all know about the San Andreas fault line.  The Ring of Fire is on fire.)

I found out that the 2011 earthquake that caused the major tsunami in Sendai Japan caused Mt. Fuji to go from a low risk volcano to the top of the high risk volcano list.  From wikipedia: 

"Following the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, much attention was given to the volcanic reaction of Mt. Fuji. In September 2012, mathematical models created by the National Research Institute for Earth Science and Disaster Prevention suggested that the pressure in Mount Fuji's magma chamber could be at 1.6 megapascals, higher than it was in 1707. This was commonly reported in the media to mean that an eruption of Mt. Fuji was imminent^. However, since there is no known method of measuring the pressure of a volcano's magma chamber, such research is speculative. The other indicators mentioned, such as active fumaroles and recently discovered faults, are typical occurrences at this type of volcano."

An optimistic 2012 WIRED article by Erik Klemetti said, "Little is known about how much magma or whether it is eruptible, so as of right now, there are no signs that an eruption will happen soon at Fuji – next week, next month or even over the next few years."

Then in 2013 professor Masaki Kimura of Ryukyu University predicted that Mt. Fuji may erupt by 2015.

And last July, 2014, many scientist from France and Japan went to investigate.  From the Telegraph, UK:  "We have no direct observational record about the next eruption of Mount Fuji," Shigeru Suto, a volcano expert at Japan's National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, told The Telegraph.  "We simply do not have enough data. There are 110 active volcanoes across Japan and 47 of them are under close observation because there are fears they could erupt, but it is very difficult to get precise observations and to make accurate predictions."

10% of the Earth's volcanic population lives in Japan.

It's the risk of visiting.

I'm okay with this risk.

Then my brother got a job offer, on my birthday, in which he wouldn't be able to take off vacation time.  He passed on that job, going with a job that would allow him to take the time off.

Then last week the perfect job, which pays great and is right in line with his major, came out of no where.  We decided to cancel the Japan trip once and for all.  I was devastated.

A couple days ago, in a valiant effort to take a fractured trip to Tokyo, I pitched the idea of not visiting Kyoto, but staying in Tokyo, because our plane tickets are fully paid for, and the apartment is payed for.

That fell through, for good reasons, honestly.

And after a three hour conversation with Delta in which I found out what I could do with my ticket credit, which was non-refundable, I'm now going to . . . France!

I'm going with my Mom, and she's thrilled.  We're staying with one of her, and mine, dear friend, who I call Tata Patou.  (Tata means Aunt.)  Patou is super excited.  And we may visit Scotland.

I've honestly been depressed all week, because of how desperately I want to visit Japan.  I know it's not the end of the World.  I know others are going through far worst.  But it's been hard.

After my ticket was changed, suddenly this feeling of peace flowed throughout me, and I could hear the words in my mind: This is right.

Ironically my Calender this month has a picture of the Eiffel Tower.

I'm still going to Yume No Yume: Dream of dreams.

And study kanji because I really need to.

 

And I'll keep wearing my Japanese CTR right with the character Gi (rightousness) on it, which I've been wearing for over a decade.

And I'm not going to stop studying Japanese.

 

I'm going to visit one day.

It will happen.

meanwhile I need to start studying French again! 0_0

French is the bane of my existence.

My Wild Escapades in French

(View of the Paris hotel from the Bellagio in Las Vegas)

"Sometimes we're so focused on where we're going

we forget how far we've come."

~ Sarah Stufflebeam

Yeah, I just quoted myself, and I'm sure someone else has said this too, but it's a thought and feeling that keeps running through my mind.  And this thought came to me after my wild escapades trying to learn French.

You see, Monsieur français et moi have never been on very good speaking terms.

Back in High School I took French for two years and didn't really learn much of the language, besides "ananas" meaning pineapple and the life history of my teacher.  Then at BYU, for my Bachelors of Arts: Music degree, I was required to take another two years in French.  This time I did learn something, but so overwhelmed I was in my music studies French suffered a little, and I managed a happy C- in both French 102 and 201.  I was really discouraged, overwhelmed, and terrified for the upcoming 202 class.

These fears didn't soften at all on the first day.  By 202 the professor speaks entirely in French (well, they really start you in on that in 101, but the vocabulary is so much richer), but that's not what startled me.  My fellow classmates were also speaking fluent French as well!  And I was still tripping over verb conjugations and tenses.  This went on for some time, with a couple other students freaked out like I was, until we realized all those other students were returned missionaries.  

Technically returned missionaries aren't supposed to take 202, but are supposed to start right in on the French 300 and above classes, but somehow many of them snuck into the class.  This didn't help my confedence any, but I did all the extra credit, and was studying between 2-4 hours a day, on top of my intense music training. Somehow I pulled an A- out of the hat after the final.  I earned it, but I was so discouraged by my fellow classmates, never managing to speak easily in the language, that I didn't feel I deserved this.

Of course after graduation I completely let French go, and have now forgotten most of it.  I still really want to be fluent!  So I've been going through my books and dictionaries, and I'm going to start at the basics and really learn this time.  Third times the charm!  But as I go through books, or hear a piece of French in a movie that I'm able to translate, I know it's still in my brain, and I realize how much I really did learn.  I was so busy comparing myself to others that I didn't realize how far I had come.  

And now, instead of focusing on becoming fluent, I'm going to have fun and rejoice over every little grammer fact and memorized vocab, because each step is a step towards my goal.  And going forward, albeit at a slow pace, is better then not moving at all. 

Sarah

Saints and Soldiers: Airborne Creed, Movie Review

Rating:  2 Stars out of 5

What's tragic is that everything the first movie got right, Saints and Soldiers, the second movie got wrong.

The first movie, which came out in 2003, was miraculously filmed entirely in Utah and under a million dollars (yet it looks like a major motion picture.)  From beginning to end the WWII epic has non-stop action and heartfelt moments.  The characters are strong and the story is focused.  Definitely a must see with a strong 4.5 out of 5 star rating.     

The followup movie, Saints and Soldiers: Airborne Creed, is overwhelmingly confused.

The exposition fell flat, and there was no real setup for how our cast of characters end up in enemy territory.  Yes, there is an opening scene involving the Germans, but it only connects when you listen intently to a small bit of dialogue somewhere in the middle of the movie.  (Since they choose to begin the movie this way, the main character should have been either the central German character, don't know his name, or the French resistant girl, Emilie.)   Then we are suddenly shown a bunch of people jumping out of airplanes.  If you go to the films website you learn this is the 517th Parachute Regimental Combat Team.  They volunteered to land in enemy territory, with a chance of no backup, to help the French Allied forces.  But there was no setup to this.  You get the gist gradually as the film progresses.  If I would have known the risk of their mission at the start, and the purpose of what they were doing, I would have been far more engaged in the plot then I was.   

Another major fault of the film is a lack of a main character.  Since this is a Saints and Soldiers film, it's safe to assume Jones, played by David Nibley, a man strong in the Catholic faith, is the central character.  He gets a lot of flashback time after all, only problem is a couple other characters received a lot of flashback time as well.  Instead of a main character with the support of a strong cast, we get a bunch of characters vying for our attention.  The result?  A huge mess with the lack of a focused story.      

As much as I enjoyed Corbin Allred as 'Deacon' in the first movie, it was a mistake to bring him back and have him portray an entirely new character.  Watching the trailer as many times as I did, I assumed Corbin was reprising his character.  Airborne Creed is a prequel to Saints and Soldiers, not a sequel, and Deacon could have been brought back.  Instead of taking advantage of a great opportunity, the writers choose instead to leave me questioning who Corbin's new character is, and that caused some distraction.   

One of the brilliant aspects of the first movie is the ambiguity of the Main character, Deacon's, religion.  You assume he's LDS, with a fair amount of clues leading to the fact, but this is only confirmed in the DVD commentary track.  The first movie tackled brilliantly the psychological hardships of war, questioning morality and what truly makes someone an enemy.  This new film tried to do the same, but did not succeed.

What's truly sad is that a lot of these problems could have been fixed in the script writing phase of pre-production.  This could have been a great film.

Sarah