22. Picard and Dathon at French Class

In the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode Darmok, Picard et al meet with a race called the Children of Tama, or Tamarians. Thanks to the Universal Translators, these little gizmos built into Starfleet personnel's comm badges, they appeared to speak English, but what they said made no sense. In an attempt to forge an alliance Dathon, the Tamarian captain, kidnaps Picard and the whole episode hinges around the meaning behind language instead of the words themselves. It's a great episode and I thought about it a lot this week while attending my French classes.

"Now see here! You cannot just kidnap a Starfleet officer, give him a dagger,
 and expect him to-- what was that noise?"

21. The Agening

Time, ladies and gentlemen. It raises mountains and excavates canyons. It smooths stone and roughens flesh. In human terms it can take an unobtrusive island in the middle of a meandering river in an unremarkable shallow valley and turn it into one of humanity's most fabled cities.

They say time is the fire in which we burn.
Oh, do they? Who says that, exactly?
I, ah, I just...it sounded cool.

When the Romans built a barracks and weapons depot on what we now call L'Ile de la Cite, they couldn't have known that centuries later Paris would sprawl across either bank, that the island itself would house Notre Dame cathedral. And when my parents held me naked and screaming just after I'd peed on the doctor, wondering what would happen in this tiny life just beginning, they couldn't have known that I'd be celebrating my 37th birthday here.

But I did.

20. French Class

 I was about to tell you a story about when we returned to Recloses, the the tiny village we visited over Christmas and where we met Shahar and Tali and their two younguns. Our return became a comedy of errors as we messed some things up and felt guilty about it and so projected reactions onto people that...what I was going to say is that I'm not going to tell you that story, because I started a French class.

19. New Year's in Marrakech

Let's jump into my Delorean and go back in time a few weeks. Just after our Christmas in Recloses Megan's parents came to visit. There's this guy named Hamid, an old family friend of the McMullans. He lives in Algeria but was in Morocco for the holidays. He wanted to see us, though, so he flew us to Marrakech for a few days.