Today I put up new curtains in my living room and draped a big cloth along the wall. I hope to print off photos and stick them to it. Marie is going to give me an Ikea wall hanging to put on the other side of the room and at some point I’ll buy a clock. I also planted rosemary, thyme, basil, and chives in a window box and hung it out on my window railing. It looks much better and I promise soon to take pictures and post them.

Yesterday and the day before I hung out at the coloc because we have a friend visiting from Lyon.

Friday I sliced my finger open with a bread knife and, after stopping the bleeding, called Marie to take a look at it. She and Julien came swiftly, she cleaned it and wrapped it up, and we went downstairs to the doctor who lives below me. He took me since it was an urgence, and he told me he wouldn’t do stitches because he thought that would just make it worse. So I’ve got steristrips on my finger, and my finger is more or less curled until the wound heals over. So no violin, definitely weird typing, and no real handywork for a good two weeks. I can’t grasp too many things either. It’s the index finger of my left hand and it already has a scar on it from a history project in 1998.

Thursday night I had also gone to the coloc, ended up spending the night there, and came back first thing in the morning to get some real sleep in my own bed. I got up again at 2, showered, sliced my finger open, and almost passed out while Marie was cleaning the wound. She make me drink some apple juice and eat something since I hadn’t eaten since the night before.

Nothing too interesting, really, happened before then. Tomorrow I start teaching English to a six-year-old girl and Wednesday is my last class with my second-years. Then Friday I’m on vacation, except that I’ll start tutoring a girl in terminale that afternoon (which was supposed to start last Friday except that I cut my finger open).

I hope everyone out there, regular readers etc., is doing well.

It’s been a while since I last posted. Not much has been happening except the parental trip. We spent one day in La Rochelle/the Ile de Ré. La Rochelle looked fine but the Ile was definitely suffering the effects of the storm. Trees were down everywhere. The little lighthouse museum wasn’t open yet because there was still no electricity there. We stopped for lunch in La Flotte where there was only one restaurant open.

It was really yummy though. I ate the best shrimp of my life.

In La Rochelle we wandered around and also went to the aquarium (the parents being avid scuba divers this was pretty necessary).

Then we went down to the Bordeaux region.

The vines look pretty different in the winter. They were all just being pruned so some fields had one or two shoots coming off of each vine and some still had a big mess of shoots.

We went to two different chateaux for a tour—one in Médoc and one in the St Emilion region. It’s the low season so it was just us and one of the winemakers. St Emilion itself is a really pretty town. I’d like to go back in the summer.

I never blog well when I’m on a public computer. Not that my blog posts are usually well-crafted pieces of literature or anything.

Obviously the reason I’m in the mediatheque is that I’ve moved! The boy roommates helped me move Friday, though it was mostly Alexis because Julien threw his back out Friday afternoon. But he was very helpful when it came to passing the bed through the window instead of the tiny twisty staircase. It helps to have rockclimbing friends who know how to tie knots.

Anyway, I’ve been chilling at the new chez moi and hanging out with the new cool friends and trying to meet people. Everything’s awesome except that the girl above me seems to stomp around a lot. I think I’ll get used to it. I’m already used to the sun (lack of shutters) and the churchbells.

I’ve started reading Entre les murs which I saw last year in Houston with Anna. It’s pretty engrossing though a different experience from the movie. I’ve been reading back issues of the Language Educator which I haven’t read in months and watching old episodes of 30 rock and I even have a Foreign Language Annals to flip through at some point. And a student asked me for a letter of recommendation. The conference in Turkey wrote to me to ask if I’d be interested in doing an oral presentation instead of a poster so I said yes. I just have to grow some gonads because I think the thing makes more sense and will be more fun as a presentation. I also have this proposal to write for that conference in July and have to start thinking about how to turn my report into a paper. This is all easier to do when upstairs neighbor is sitting down (seriously am not sure she sits) or not there.

How is it already March?? It feels like yesterday I got back from the States after Christmas. Am listening to all the Indochine songs I was listening to just before Christmas, when I had just gone the long ridiculous route of getting Nicknameless Boy’s phone number and making contact.

In other news, I was told today that I was accepted to have my contract renewed by the university. Yay! Otherwise I would have been baisé-ed. Also I am quite happy to stay at this school for another year.

The roommates have gone out and it feels so wonderful to be alone. I wonder if that will change once I’ve lived alone for a while. I don’t think so though. I have so much work to get done (conference proposals, poster, start writing that freaking paper out of my thesis data already) that I’m looking forward to doing once I have no internet.

The crémaillère is looking to be the weekend of the 27th. One ex-student has confirmed that she could come then, Zandra might come, and it is apparently the only weekend in March-April that roommate Julien is not occupé.

Yesterday I spent all day doing stuff for the apartment. First I got my insurance (my conseillère bancaire was very nice as they always seem to be), then I went out to Chasseneuil du Poitou to order a couch. I ordered the one everyone liked. It was pretty comfy, and pretty small, but big enough for two people to sleep on every once in a while. I thought about getting a chauffeuse at the same time but they were all butt ugly. I thought about getting a pouf but then I realized if I get another chair-type thing I want it to be something that someone is actually comfortable sitting in. Then at 4 o’clock I met the landlords (and their granddaughters) and I got the keys and the contract! I went straight to Bouygues where they told me no one had used the line before me, so then I went to FT where it became clear that no one has had a phone line in that apartment since 2003. So it’s going to be re-opened next Tuesday morning. I think a few weeks without internet will do me good. I’ll read more, and listen to music more. I’m already trying to sort of load up on things to read. Plus I live practically next door to the médiathèque so besides Sunday and Monday I’ll have easy internet access there. Plus oh yeah, I have an iPhone.

I have new friends. They are a canadienne (T) and her French boyfriend (D) and I met them at the soirée polyglotte and they seem awesome. I had lunch with T yesterday and then that evening they took me to Géant Casino where I bought everything for my apartment. Everything except a cutting board, that is, which I only realized because T actually ended up cooking there. T and D were out of gas at their apartment so I said if they were up for eating on the floor they could cook at my new one since I had to drop the stuff off anyway. So we baptized the place by eating spaghetti on the floor.

I returned today at 5 to accept the delivery of my Troc furniture. So now there are four chairs, a small dining table, a coffee table, a nightstand, and lots of dishes in the place. I also called EDF today and got electricity sorted out.

Am hoping for a crémaillère the weekend of the 27th. Numerous people would need to come in from out of town though so am waiting for some confirmation that they could come.

I LOVE my new apartment! And I’m not even in it yet!