According to centuries old tradition, muguet, or Lily of the Valley, is gifted on May Day in France, the sole day where anyone can sell bunches of the fragrant flower without permit or collection of tax. Self-proclaimed vendors appear in the streets offering sprigs of muguet to passersby. A smile and 2€ landed a participant a fistful of flowers in our little town. The bunch can then be offered to a friend or loved one as a token of good luck.

This weekend was an especially good ending to our first four months. On Friday night, Poppy spent the night with Granny and Grandad while Emily, Henry and I went out for Chinese food. A Chinese friend at school had recommended the place as one that serves authentic cuisine from the orient–thus, it wasn’t exactly what we were used to eating in the fine buffet establishments in America. All the same, it was Chinesey and delicious.

On Saturday morning we met with our conversation partner who continues to graciously welcome us into her home every week for tea and a healthy inundation of unscripted French conversation. At noon we headed to our professor’s house for a farewell party in honor of two families who have completed their time in France and are departing soon. Good time, good hanging out and, of course, good food. We can say that this was where we first had hotdogs in baguette buns, the hotdogs being the perfectly picante merguez sausages from North Africa. We will be having these puppies at home in the near future.

Then yesterday we had the joy of entertaining a newly engaged couple from church–our first time hosting French folks in our home for a meal. We made ham and potato soup–served with baguette, of course–and served a homemade apple pie for dessert. We spent the afternoon chatting about all sorts of things and I even got to bust out a newly acquired flash card phrase: le réchauffement de la planete “global warming”! I probably won’t use it again, but one time made it worth learning.

In the evening, we explored the château up the hill which turns out to be a fully functioning escargot and dairy farm. Surprisingly, seeing the snails do their thing (i.e., nothing) made us want to try them. How can you live in France and not try snails, right? One day…maybe…

I’m blessed to be part of an extended family who cares deeply about our shared family history–our heritage. We, like many Americans, trace our roots well beyond American soil and into Europe. Also, like many in America, our ancestors experienced a familial renaming upon landing in the New World. We gained the letter “u” in the process, going from Mast to Maust. My quest in search of my roots has consisted of following the story of Jacob Mast, my fifth great grandfather (eight generations between us), whom I believe was the same Jacob Mast who left Guggisberg, Switzerland, around the year 1737, set sail from Holland on the ship “the Charming Nancy” and landed in Philadelphia before making his way west across Pennsylvania to Mt. Davis where my Mausts currently live. Seems like a pretty wild story except that I’m currently writing this on the balcony of my home in France en route to Africa having just visited Guggisberg yesterday in celebration of my birthday. I guess wanderlust runs in the family.

Guggisberg is an exceedingly small, rural farm village in the canton of Bern in northern German-speaking Switzerland. We arrived yesterday just before noon and had a picnic on the lawn of the Reformed church in the heart of town. The town was quiet and reminded me immediately of a Swiss Mt. Davis. Change the architecture and add snow-covered Alps to the landscape of western Pennsylvania and you will very nearly approximate the feel of Guggisberg. The same smell of manure fills the air–the smell of “money” as farmers like to call it. Cows graze the fields between farms dotted across the rolling hills. I can only imagine the glee of my forefathers to leave one land and come upon one very similar to it thousands of miles away in the New World. Though doing their journey in reverse, I, too, shared their excitement and gladly drank in the idyllic countryside.

After exploring the church and its surroundings and polishing off a sandwich, I was ready to do some exploring. We first headed for the cemetery located just a short walk from the church. We split up in order to see if we could locate tombstones bearing the family name Mast. I immediately saw names that I recognized from western PA: Hostettler, Beyler, Lichty and others. And then at last we spotted a lone Mast gravestone bearing the name Lydia Mast. We knew we were on to something, but this cemetery wasn’t going to be of too much more use seeing as all the gravestones had been laid within the last thirty years. We needed another, older, more Masty cemetery.

We turned our attention to three older ladies talking near the steps and tried our best to carry on a conversation with our limited German and budding French. They said that this was the only cemetery in Guggisberg and that we wouldn’t find any Grabstein “grave stone” from the 18th century. Feeling a little disappointed I then pulled out the big guns and asked if there was perchance a town historian with whom I might speak. The ladies said the inn in town would be able to put me in touch with the historian, Lydia. Imagine that, a town historian!

At the hotel I whipped out my sheet a paper on which I had my German friend explain in German the reason for my visit to Guggisberg. “I believe my forefathers came from this town…” etc. The woman immediately figured out what was going on and called up the town historian. Thirty minutes later my father-in-law, Nigel, and I were sat around the table with Lydia the historian having cups of coffee chatting about the origins of the Mast family. She spoke decent French, but no English and constantly kept switching between French and German. Thankfully, we were able to communicate what we needed and managed to have a meaningful conversation considering the hurdles. I showed her my sheet of paper and she happily claimed the family name “Mast” as one of Guggisberg’s own. She went on to add that the Masts were late in leaving Guggisberg and didn’t do so until between 1730-1760, which fits with my Jacob catching the Charming Nancy in 1737.

Still curious about cemeteries, I asked where we could find Mast gravestones. You can’t, she replied rather sadly. For years people had been buried right around the church, but the church grounds became so cluttered that they decided to turn the church grounds into a lawn and move the cemetery down the street. Even today, every 25 years they wipe that cemetery clean and start over. No chance of finding any ancient Mast gravestones! She was able to show me a picture of a Hans Mast (a farmer–with a pipe!) with a young lady named Elizabeth (his wife?) in her history of Guggisberg book. Is that what my ancestors looked like?

Well, if we can’t find any dead Masts, what about living Masts? She said only two Mast brothers remained in the area, Hans Peter and Werner. I got directions to Werner’s farm and we headed down the road to see what we could find. After ten minutes of following windy mountain roads and driving through a toad crossing area (that’s what the sign said!), we came to the lane at the end of which we were told we could find a Mast in the flesh. We stopped halfway down the lane and Nigel jumped out to ask some folks working outside if they knew where Werner Mast lived. Yep, his farm is down on the end.

Sure enough, we rounded the bend to find a small farm with a John Deere tractor parked out front and a man working in a vegetable garden. “Herr Mast?” (Mr. Mast?) I shouted out the car window. “Ja?” (Yes?) he replied with a warm smile. He, his father-in-law who spoke good French and I conversed for the next twenty minutes about Guggisberg, my origins and the Mast family. I really think they thought I was out of my mind. I showed Mr. Mast my line of descent from Jacob and he laughed. That was such a long time ago! he said. In quizzing him on the family I asked if he knew whether his ancestors were Anabaptist. He in fact knew that they had been Amish! At least he got that key point.

I ended up talking so much yesterday that I’m hoarse today. I can’t really say that I learned anything new about the Mast family by visiting Guggisberg as much as I was struck by the uncanny likeness of the land the Masts left and the land the Masts settled. It is truly quite remarkable. While the Mast name has almost completely disappeared from Switzerland, it certainly lives on in western PA and on Mt. Davis in particular and happily in my own family as well with my son Henry Andrew Maust.

Life has its scary moments. As parents we raise our children to be adults. We don’t raise them to hang on to and keep under our wings for the totality of their lives. We raise adults and let them fly the coop. Since life has its scary moments, we do our children no favors by sheltering them from the reality of conflict. Plus, skipping the scary parts deprives them of an essential element of the story. Skip the scary parts and neuter the story of its resolution–the denouement–because what is resolution without conflict?

The way we shepherd our children through the scary parts is by reading them and watching them together. We reassure our daughter, who will be three in a couple of months, that we are there with her and that we’ll read or watch together. Additionally, rather than say “Everything will be alright,” we say “Let’s watch together and see what happens.”

Two reasons for these two actions, reading/watching together and saying “Let’s see what happens.”

We read and watch together to show the importance of having one another–family and close relationships in general. Conflict will come, in stories as in life. A proven response is to cling to family and friends and God. Life is best lived together, in fellowship first with God which fuels secondly healthy, loving relationships with family and friends. We need God and we need each other, especially in scary moments. “Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves. A cord of three strands is not quickly broken” (Ecclesiastes 4:12).

We say “Let’s see what happens” and not “Everything will be alright” because quite simply everything will not always be alright. While the short stories we read and watch with our children regularly promise peaceful, imminent resolution of conflict the same is not true of life. In God’s grand unfolding narrative in which we live, creation still groans for God’s final setting right of what sin continues to untangle. We are not promised in this life that everything will be alright. Case in point is the life of the One whom we follow, Jesus Christ. With Easter coming up we daren’t tell our children in the course of reading the passion narrative that “everything will be alright.” Everything was not alright. Jesus suffered beyond comprehension as he yielded his will to the Father’s. Nonetheless, he endured. Thus, with the Easter story as with life, we wait to see what will happen. What’s God up to? (Answer: resurrection!)

A disclaimer is in order. Even with the realities of conflict, we do not force our children to read scary books or watch scary movies. Just the other day Poppy began watching Finding Nemo for the first time and Nemo’s disappearance and the pursuit of him by his father proved too much for little eyes. (It is a rather dramatic scene and perhaps especially for children who may fear above all being separated from their parents.) We turned Nemo off. We didn’t endure. We didn’t fast-forward. Maybe we’ll watch later, but we needn’t seek out conflict and scary things. Rather, let us face conflict with one another and see what happens.

Side note: see how I’m in this weird place of using both British and American adjectives?  Its cuz  I’m closer in geographical terms to my roots yet still enjoying my U.S citizenship

Back to my new favourite singer.  I don’t even know anything about her but I’m totally diggin’ her sound.

Check out this video, then go and type ‘Oh Land white nights’ in to Youtube.

I had to do a little blog post about my HUGE accomplishment I had today just to mark my milestone because I’m so proud of myself.

We’ve been here for just over 2 months and I was starting to feel really discouraged that I wasn’t making any real progress.  I knew plenty of random words, but for the life of me I was having trouble stringing a sentence together .  It’s only been in the last couple of weeks that things have started to click and I’ve been able to construct the most simplest of sentences.

Today was monumental in my eyes and although I look back and laugh at the situation I’m so pleased that I took a friends advice and humbled myself.

Let me paint you the picture:
I’m standing at the bus stop wearing Henry in his carrier, just waiting for the bus to go and see some friends.  Suddenly a little old lady who came out of know where starts talking to me.  Well at the stage I’m at right now I don’t quite hear all that people say to me  I just pick out main words that I recognise.  So I thought she asked how old Henry was so I told her “6 mois”, then she asked if he was a boy, then she asked his name.  Phew! I was fine answering all those little questions.  Then she twigged that I wasn’t French or at least waited until this point to say anything.  What was awesome though was that she didn’t just stop talking to me she carried on asking me simple questions!  I was loving it!  She asked if lived here in town and I pointed to my apartment and told her I lived on the 2nd floor.  Then I asked her where she lived….  THIS WAS ALL IN FRENCH!

For me this would have been enough of an accomplishment but it didn’t stop there.  The bus came and before we got on she asked my name and told me hers.  We sat opposite eachother  on the bus and she continued to carry on a conversation with me.  I asked her if she was going shopping and she said she was going to buy ravioli for her daughter and grandchildren.  Then she asked me where I was going and I told her I was going to see a friend.  She asked if I was going to see the baby’s “papa” and I said no he stayed at home with my daughter…….oh it was just great!  We were on the bus for about 20 minutes talking the whole time.  She showed me a photo of her grand daughter on her cell phone who is the same age as Poppy.  I found out her husband had recently died from Cancer and I told her I was a nurse had worked with cancer patients before.  I recognised the words for chemo and morphine.  It was sad, because she went on to say she lived in a big house and it was only her, she did mention something about students though so I assumed she was letting out a couple of rooms.  She talked about her big garden that needed lots of work to keep it tidy.  But she was so so lovely and spoke slowly for me and asked simple questions and made sure I understood.

I knew she was going to get off the bus soon so I asked if we could come and visit her sometime, seeing as we lived so close to each other.  I asked if she could write down her address for me and  then we said our goodbyes and she got off the bus.
I was elated and couldn’t wait to tell Drew who is always feeding me to the lions in the name of ‘practising your French’.  Haha.  All I could think was thank you God for this divine meeting that was probably as nice for her as it was a-mazing for me.  I probably sounded like an absolute idiot, getting all my tenses wrong and using the tu form instead of the vous form just because I was so desperately trying to stay afloat! lol.  Its all about humbling yourself and not caring too much that you sound like a babbling 2 year old

So pray we find time this following week to drop by her house and say hello.  I know she has plenty of family because she talked about her son and daughter and their kids, but that we could be her friends that could provide a bit of company now and then.  Her name is Sylvia if you want to pray for her, I believe she lost her husband recently because I picked up 7 months and she looked tearful while telling me about him.

And pray for me that I will continue to humble myself and just go for it.

We continue to have moments of glorious failure, too, as you might expect. Yesterday I was desperately trying to pronounce l’amour ‘love’ correctly but kept saying la mort ‘death’ instead. Those two are definitely not the same thing.

Savoyard Flag

Moving to a new country, learning a new language, and learning a new culture isn’t about doing what you’re used to doing (eating, drinking, etc) in a new setting, but rather it’s about learning to do as they do, eat what they eat, drink what they drink, etc. Plus, it’s a great way to have a lot of fun.

Since we live in Savoy, I checked out a Savoyard recipe book from our local library to see what some traditional dishes are for this region of France. There are many recipes for soaps and pies (savory meat pies) and many call for potato, sausage and cabbage. In fact, the huge cabbages we get here are called Savoy cabbages.

I wanted to share a soup recipe we tried this week. I call it Chou Soup, taking advantage of the play on words of chou in French (‘cabbage’) and ‘shoe’ in English. The recipe book lists it as Soupe de chou et diots. Diots are Savoyard sausages that have a delicate taste of noix de muscade ’nutmeg’. If you don’t think you’ll be able to find diots where you are, you may try adding a dash of nutmeg to your soup (but only a dash!). We enjoyed this hearty soup especially since it’s been well below freezing every day this week. But, I know, the recipe isn’t particularly exotic or “exciting.” It’s Savoyard soup nonetheless.

Chou Soup

Serves 6. Preparation: 20 min. Cook time: 45 min.

Ingredients

2 sausages (diots or kielbasa or bratwurst or whatever)
1/2 cabbage
4 large potatoes (peeled and diced)
1 onion (chopped)
3 cloves of garlic (minced)
1 tbsp vegetable oil
2 tbsp butter
1 sprig of thyme
1 bay leaf
salt and pepper
(nutmeg)

Preparation

1. Cut the cabbage in 4, carefully removing the core.
2. In a big pot, bring salted water to a boil and drop in the cabbage for 5 minutes maximum.
3. Remove from heat, scoop cabbage leaves into a colander, and quickly run under cold water before cutting into strips. Empty the cabbage water.
4. Over medium heat, add oil and butter to big pot. Add onions and garlic.
5. Add 1 liter water. Then, potatoes, thyme and bay leaf. Bring to a boil.
6. Lower the heat and add the sausages. Cook for 30 min, stirring occasionally.
7. Remove thyme and bay leaf. Remove and slice sausages.
8. In the pot, crush the potatoes with a fork and add the cabbage and sausage.
9. Continue cooking on low for at least 10 minutes before serving.