I thought I’d give a little update on the planning (am calling it planning since there are really no plans as of yet and will likely not be until April) for next year. I’ve decided to try to get my coursework done by August. That meant I had to take a lit course this semester that I’m not nuts about; I think I just need to relax and not be such a freaking perfectionist about it. All I’ll have left is two summer courses, and they’ll be my Ed electives. One of our profs might be teaching a curriculum design class this summer, which I hope to take.

So I’m searching for lectrice jobs in the hopes that I can take my report work abroad with me and get that done in the fall. Given the amount of free time I had in my last position I think it’s a very good idea. I don’t know what to write it on. I have like, 50 areas of interest:

1) Modern English loan words into French and how that might affect the teaching/learning of English by French speakers
2) Discourse analysis (which I know very little about but is fascinating)
3) Immersion teaching and how to make it better
4) Teaching culture
5) Learning to perceive/make new sounds

It’s a report, not a thesis, so there will be no real or mass data collection.

So I’ve sent off my CV to 10 places now, two in cities where I know people, one to a reach university in Paris where I’m not even sure I could really afford to live anyway. The French are really nice about responding to cold e-mails about this, I find. I’m surprised. I had one of my ex-students tweak my CV which was useful.

Anyway here’s my process for looking for lecteur-ships in case anyone out there is wondering…

1) Write French CV, take dorky photo (if I took a new one I might do it in something other than a t-shirt but whatever)
2) Write French lettre de motivation
3) Write basic e-mail to front these two things
4) Go to university websites in cities I might like to live/work. Find Presentation link, then Composants, and look for UFR de Langues or whatnot. (The composants link doesn’t always exist. Sometimes the UFRs are hidden somewhere else.) Look for link to département d’anglais/études anglaises/nord-américaines/etc. Look for any sort of relevant contact. Very rarely is there a link for the person who’s actually in charge of lecteurs, but I’ve found people are really nice about forwarding.
5) Tweak letters for each university (especially changing the address and name! I always double check this several times because I’m afraid I’ll send one to the wrong place.) and send off e-mails.
then
6) Receive very friendly responses telling me everything is pourvus for des échanges until otherwise, but they will definitely let me know if otherwise happens. The responses vary in their enthusiasm or friendliness, but I’ve really been impressed that people respond 90% of the time.

As part of #5 for the “reach” university in Paris I explained what Macalester was which required new sorts of vocabulary (used “premier rang” for “top tier” and “liberal arts” for “liberal arts”). I thought about mentioning Kofi. I decided that was silly and decided not to carry on the Macalester tradition of acting silly about Kofi (e.g. putting him on excessive admissions posters AND the how-to-install-the-internet dorm welcome CD cover).

Am waiting for the UPS guy to deliver the new AT&T locked phone I bought on e-bay. Turns out if you unlock your phone, it can sometimes attach itself to any network it finds randomly which may or may not work. That, apparently, is the problem with my French phone. I really hope he gets here soon. I didn’t go grocery shopping so I could wait here for him. It feels like waiting for the plumber and I’m starting to get irritated. Am worried because my doorbell has apparently been removed what with all the residing. Really don’t want to sit around and wait again tomorrow afternoon for his third try. Also do not want to get on bus and try to get to UPS place because they have this dumb signature rule. It’s just a freaking cell phone. I paid $25 for it. I WANT IT NOW.

Sorry for irrelevant rant.

Again from Strange Maps

I wore my contacts today (for just a few hours but whatever) for the first time in a month. This whole rainy/humid/icy week has brought me back to life. Just to give you some perspective, the pollen count last week was 35,000. Guess what it was yesterday?

7.

Sorry to be cheesy but I’ve used that on a few people today and it doesn’t get old. I’m overinformed on allergies these days. Perhaps. But then I think the overinformedness has kept me sane. It helps to understand the evil.

I feel like a new person. I’m probably annoyingly chipper. I’m not going to be overly optimistic and be unprepared for the stuff to come back in a week. But this has cut a week out of my suffering, and after this point, I think the count starts dropping sharply anyway.

Oof I’m sleepy. But I had a great pollen-free day. I got to wear my contacts. Weeeeeeeee Also I started tutoring my French tutee and I think it is going to be enjoyable and productive. Also, I am growing a zit that is possibly the biggest I’ve ever had. No one else can see it yet. And yet I feel like I’m growing a second chin. At some point it will rear its ugly head upward out of my skin and people will think there are two of me (normal me and the second me on my chin), and start asking it questions about mountain cedar since clearly that is my main topic of conversation.

And on that note I leave you with this (inverted) chart of my emotions over the past month:

(I wasn’t here on Jan 7th, unfortunately. It looks like it was awesome. There was probably a flood or something.)

1) Anna’s willingness to take me places
2) Anna’s willingness to feed me
3) having a headache and being able to lay down and relax because I don’t live next to a band
4) my apartment in general
5) finding a French tutee today, he’s interested in working on his speaking skills twice a week, yay!
6) The grey, rainy, humid weather we are having this week that has caused this:

for the first time today. Why did no one ever tell me it doesn’t taste like pickles? It was delicious. I think I’m going to have it on my burgers from now on.

album Through the Windowpane always brings me bizarrely straight back to March-April-May 2007 in Bar le Duc and Nancy. It is freakish and a little heartbreaking. I think I was as happy as I’ve ever been then.

I just thought I’d mention that because I’ve got iTunes on shuffle and it jumped to Redwings, which isn’t even a song I listened to on its own, only when I was listening to the whole album.

This is where we fall from the trees
This is where the sky covers up
Daft killers of joy, you made a man out of me

So I’m leaving my best friend
Just for the hell of it
Just for the sake of it
But how much I loved you

Some things are very obvious in retrospect, how wrong we were for each other, how fucked up he was, how it would have been better if I had cut it off when I left France the first time, and then I listen to a song like that and it reminds me how beautiful he was at moments, how very much I wanted him to be happy, how that year changed me so much, and how much I ended up loving him.

Wtf, Guillemots, wtf. Way to ambush me, iTunes.

Let’s hope they’re right.

Went to a different doctor for the foot problem today and his opinion might change some May scheduling and hopefully nothing more. Will report more when I know more.

I’m considering wearing an eye patch to keep my right eye protected every time I go outside. Or somehow taking my classes online so I can stay inside the apartment all day. I was in such a bad mood when I got to class this afternoon after being outdoors for twenty minutes. This is just so tiring, I am so ready for it to be over, and I know there are at least another two weeks of it. There are so many things I’d like to get done–I need to buy paper for my printer, I need to go buy my French lit packet, I need to clean up the apartment and take out the recycling and the bathroom garbage (which grows exponentially faster just as my store of toilet paper disappears exponentially faster from the use of so many tissues), I need to find e-mail addresses for places I might want to work next year and e-mail them, I need to find an optometrist, I need to figure out how to get the HPV shot done at HEB. And I feel motivated to do none of it, and I have to leave the building to do most of it.

The thing is it’s not terrible today (okay, my eye did hurt while I was outside walking to and from the bus), it doesn’t compare at all to Monday morning when I thought all I could do was cry and lay in bed with a wet towel over my eyes, and yet I think my tolerance goes down every day.

I normally hate wearing my glasses and I’ve even gotten a little used to them, mostly because I’m resigned to wearing them until March when I hope to put my contacts back on. But I don’t feel like me in them, I don’t look like me in them, I can’t see as well in them, not to mention all those other little annoyances (oh yeah and every time I sneeze a tiny bit comes out of my eyes so they get dirty way faster). I’m thinking of getting wireless frames if I ever get my butt to an optometrist.

I’m just so tired and apathetic about everything. I want to feel good being outdoors, like maybe it’s a healthy place to be and not a place that incapacitates me. It’s crazy to think that I spent three days outdoors at a music festival in September without dying.

I want my life back, I want it back now, not mid-to-late-February. Or I want to be just turned off until then. I mean like hibernation, turn me off and turn me back on when this shit is gone. If not for anything else than just so I can stop feeling so freaking sorry for myself. I don’t like myself this way. I don’t like whining to everyone who will listen just because there is nothing else on my mind. I don’t like resenting people who don’t know what mountain cedar is. I don’t like searching for sympathy because the allergy pills don’t work and that’s really all I’ve got left. I don’t like being this crabby and gross and selfish. I wasn’t prepared for this kind of fatigue and apathy and general resentment at life. I thought I’d just be dealing with the itchy burny eyes and the runny nose and the congestion and the sneezing and the coughing.

I start poking around at job options back in France it depresses me. I’m not sure why. I’m still waiting for an answer back from my boss from last year, which doesn’t really surprise me, I’m pretty sure that even if they can take me back it would take some poking around and be a bit complicated. So I sent messages to a couple of friends who know people at other northeastern universities to see if they know anything. I’m not sure why this gets me down.

The mom decided to go with the other girl for her daughter. Oh well. I got hired by another tutoring company tonight; hopefully this one will actually get me some students. As much as I like my coworkers and managers I wish I could quit my job and spend more time doing things I’m interested in and visiting my parents in SA. But if I quit the job I’ll feel bad every time I go out or eat lunch in a restaurant, like I did today with Anna in between classes.

I’m just not sure what I’d do if I don’t get back to France. I’d like to teach in a private or international school in the northeast U.S., but to find those jobs I think you have to have a network and I know no one in that type of position, although one of my professors used to teach in something like that, I believe, years and years ago. I’ve been cultivating a network in France for the past two years. I think being a certified teacher might help, which is a confusion all in itself.

It’s cool that 78% of the country realizes Bush was a fuck-up, but I’m still bitter that they voted for him. Shouldn’t those of us who knew he was a mistake all along, and said the war would be an unjustified mess, and knew the Republican party had a history of racism that made his response toward Katrina not such a huge surprise, and knew that the French/Germans/English/etc. were all right all along to be stunned at the direction we were taking because we’re better than that—I’m saying, shouldn’t we get some special thumbs up and apology?

I’m very happy Obama is our president, that it actually came to be that we have a president I’m proud of (I thought of messaging one or two French friends today and saying “My president is better than yours” but then thought maybe that wasn’t as funny as I thought in my head-fogging glee), but part of me is still pissed that it took most of the country eight years to get here.

Not to be a downer. Obama! Change! Woo!