So I’ve been pretty much awol the past few days because I was at ACL and had very little energy/time for much else. Jessi (from Reims) arrived Friday morning and we went to Zilker Park around 1, which was our pattern all three days. My pictures of the bands are generally crummy (I need a better camera) but I’ll put up the best ones anyway.

Vampire Weekend is the first band we definitely wanted to see. I seemed to be having something of a sun stroke problem though so while we started out up near the front, we had to go toward the back to sit down so I would stop wilting.

I met up with Jessica from high school and some of her pharmacy school friends (one of whom was also named Jessica) to watch N.E.R.D. who, I have stay, I found pretty entertaining.

J and I started out Day 2 with the Fleet Foxes, who I had never heard of but who were pretty good.

I don’t remember who was playing in this picture. This one’s just more to give an idea of the size of the herds of people that were there.

Me and Conor Oberst

These are the only good pictures I got of Beck. (My camera can’t really take pictures at night.) But he was a great show. The lighting was really interesting. It actually added to the show which was a first for me.

Trying to do these in chronological order. This was on our walk back to downtown the second night.

The Raconteurs (well, mostly just Jack White)

I didn’t get any good pictures of Band of Horses but I love them so much that I had to put this in. They were really good live. I think they were surprised at how many people there were for them. But they were the high point of the festival for me (and I knew they would be).

So! Otherwise, I also saw (trying to do it in order…):
Day 1: part of Jamie Lidell (still was trying not to pass out here), Gogol Bordello (although I was mostly talking to Jessica during this since we hadn’t seen each other in two years), Jenny Lewis (though briefly because of sun stroke problem), Manu Chao
Day 2: The Drive-By Truckers, Eli Paperboy Reed and the True Loves, CSS, MGMT, Iron & Wine (kind of disappointing)
Day 3: Gillian Welch (with David Rawlings), Stars (though I didn’t pay much attention), Neko Case, Okkervil River

And I passed up Tegan & Sara (who I’ve seen twice, once in March in Paris) to see Band of Horses (who I’ve never seen). It was hard. But it had to be done. I just hope a lot of other people showed up for them.

I had no idea music festivals were so exhausting. I think it was the sun/standing/walking. Fortunately I don’t have class tomorrow. Unfortunately I have to get 50 pages read by tomorrow afternoon so we can try to have a group meeting.

about my plan to go back to France and teach EFL instead of staying here and teaching FFL. I sent out an e-mail to the IFE people just asking some questions about the Masters with Internship program and I got some pretty positive answers back. So I’m thinking of filling my spare semester with that (in which case that would be fall 09). Only issues are 1) should it relate directly to my masters report? 2) how to do that if so? I mean technically I am specializing in teaching French here, not English. But my immediate career goal is to go back over there and teach English. The other option is to intern with a study abroad program for Americans over there. That could be fruitful. Thoughts?

Other question: exactly how to explain it all and convince the advisors (who are very nice people)?

Hung out with MA, couchsurfing ex-assistant, today looking for books in French. We discovered there are none in town, except a few children’s books at Book People downtown, which we were actually pretty impressed with. So we think we will be ordering French books from Intellectual Property on the Drag, who promised us they’ll order us anything at no charge. Now, recommendations for recent fiction/literary books in French? That are not by Amelie Nothomb? (I have nothing against Amélie Nothomb it’s just that I would like to branch out.) Only hitch in the book club plan is that she might be moving to Zambia. But it would at least get me started.

I thought I would just update on the neighbor situation since my last post was so full of anxiety.

The guys played from 5:30 to 11 pm yesterday when I went over and asked them to stop. I didn’t even have to explain why I was there. And they did quiet down immediately.

But I wrote to the secretary today anyway who notified the landlord who stopped by this afternoon to talk to them. And something magical has happened because I can just make out a drum set so they must have moved to a different room or something. Honestly I don’t know how they did it but I really hope it stays this way. In any case now I know the landlords are sympathetic and effective.

Soon my life will get more interesting, I promise.

I sent off the letter with the sad list of lost things. (Am missing my phonetics book especially right now since I’ve forgotten all those rounded French vowels.) And the landlord said he’d go talk to the boys next door about “several complaints” of noise so maybe I’m not the only one?

Another couchsurfing ex-assistant francophile and I are thinking about starting some sort of informal French book club. The only problem is where to find the books! The UT library has a good number but only one copy of each, of course. So tomorrow we are going to go scouting because I don’t have my methods class.

This weekend is ACL! American J from Reims will be here! And so will Jessica no-longer-B from high school!

I really, really hate it. I don’t think I would have moved here if I had been warned. It’s a great house and the roommates are great. But I absolutely hate living next to all this noise.

They have a bad habit of playing past 11 on school nights. I think I could probably work out some agreement with them on this (especially since the city ordinance for noise is for 10:30 pm.)

But what do I do about the evenings when I want to stay in and study? Or the Sunday afternoons when I have to stop doing work because I can’t concentrate in my room (as in, RIGHT NOW)? Or even when it’s not an entire band playing, when it’s just one guitarist, I STILL hate hearing the low drone come through my wall for hours on end. Then it’s not even that loud. I mean how reasonable is it to go next door at 5 pm on a Sunday and say your music’s bothering me? It’s not reasonable and I’m sure they wouldn’t see it that way. I’d never dream of doing that if they were playing the flute. But then, a flute is an awful lot quieter. Maybe a trombone is a better example.

I actually think it provokes anxiety for me. As soon as I hear it once I can’t stop worrying that they’re going to go on all day or all afternoon or late into the evening. I can’t enjoy a lot of things, like watching movies with my headphones on in an effort to not hear it. I find myself pausing to hear if it’s still going on to see if I can relax or not.

It drives me crazy. I don’t know what to do about it. Do I go on anti-anxiety pills? Do I trade rooms with one of my roommates who’s hardly ever around? Do I move (eugh, that’s not really an option)? Do I talk to the landlord (our houses are owned by the same people)? Do I go explain my entire complex to the guys next door? They are pretty nice–they shared their internet with us for a month–but I think they would think I’m crazy.

I really don’t know what to do. But it makes me cry and I don’t think I can just ignore it and try to get used to it.

It would probably have been more blamey if they hadn’t lost so much stuff that the list takes up so much space.

I can’t believe they lost so much awesome stuff. And so much stuff that was about French and American cultural relations. It’s almost too ironic to be coincidental…

S and I went to the Old Pecan Festival on 6th street today. We ate barbecue. I bought rings.

FINALLY. The AT&T tech came today and gave us a real phone jack. It is so wonderful. I mean, I more or less had internet from the neighbors but the signal dropped too often to do anything like chatting.

Otherwise, not much news here. Am going to the farmers’ market and then the Pecan Street Festival tomorrow.

Because this is where our phone jack goes:

It’s so ridiculous that it’s comical. Not a single one of our phone jacks is actually hooked up to our service box. And it costs $100 to get one connected. Am counting on the landlord seeing that this is purely his responsibility.

The reason, if you were wondering (you were, don’t deny it), that I always title my posts even with just meaningless punctuation is that if I don’t, the template makes the first line the title and everything else gets squished down into one little column and it takes up more space.

So now that I’ve solved that mystery for you, I’ll ramble on some other topics that I don’t think I’ve rambled about yet or for a while.

I’ve been planning out my degree and though normally it is a two year program, I don’t see any way it will take me two years and I’m not particularly determined to make it work that way, considering that I’m living on loans and whatnot. So it’s quite possible that (even with not being here this summer) I will be done next December. Questions….
1) If I finish in December what will I do with myself for six months? I hope to sign this lease again next August for another year so I’ll still have the room in Austin. And the rent’s pretty cheap. Would it possible to make any money living here? I guess I could temp. Oh God, I don’t want to temp. I’ve never tried it but all I can imagine is data entry. It doesn’t feel like a good way to celebrate a masters degree.
2) Is it possible for me to come up with some fantastic research project that takes all of fall semester and requires me to take no classes? Like, could I intern at a bilingual/international school? I know there are some in Austin but one is montessori which I know nothing about (except that Emily H assured me many times that it teaches you how to pour really well) and neither website looks very promising in terms of latching myself onto the schools in some way.

Relevant France-related plans involve applying to work at American Villages next summer because it looks adorable. I’m going to ask to work with the adorable age, which I imagine will be exhausting but adorable.

Afterward I am of course hoping to go back to France in some way, shape or form. I could write to my ex-boss and ask if she wants me back. I could apply for other lecteur/maitre de langue positions because I only did it for one year and as far as I know you can do it for two. Or I could be an assistant again. I think I’ll probably go with one of the first two options (because that assistant salary just doesn’t seem that attractive anymore).

In the meantime I am seriously considering passing the CAFEP d’anglais (unofficial acronym explanations here) to teach in private Catholic schools in France. Normally it’s a two-year program with the first year spent studying and the second year (after passing the exam) spent interning and taking pedagogy classes that, according to my ex-stagiare friends, are useless. But that year you’re paid so whatever. But I think it would be easier to arrange all of this if I were already in France, spending another year as a language-teacher-peon-type as I have been. That way all competence interviews and information-getting could be done with actual people.

As for the present, I’m eating lunch with two francophile couchsurfers tomorrow and then Friday I’ll be sitting around in the morning waiting for the AT&T guy to come make our internet work (we’re still sharing with the neighbors even though we have a very pretty AT&T modem/router finally). And by the way, you do have to pay for the tech visit here in the U.S. too. Over the past month I’ve come to the conclusion that U.S. internet providers are no better than their French couterparts. Both seem adept at the abitrary. Except that I had good luck in France and bad luck here. And then there’s a department potluck Friday evening and then I’m going to San Antonio to househunt with the parents. I may also buy a bathroom rug. Alert the media.