January 2003 archive
(89 entries)
January 31, 2003
¡Hasta luego!
I'm off to Spanish class with the THOTs again, as we're leaving from Valéry Larbaud at 4pm for our weekend of snow and NOT skiing. I shall not allow myself to be convinced to ski. I shall remain stubborn as a mule and keep my limbs intact, thankyouverymuch.
srah | 8:38 AM | TrackBack | Tags: assistantship, sports |
Snow snow snow
I spent yesterday afternoon and evening running around like a chicken with my head cut off, as the snow began to fall. I had all kinds of errands to get out of the way before the weekend, and meanwhile, we were being dumped on. These were the kind of snowflakes large enough to land on my nose and obstruct my vision for a few seconds before they melted. When I was done running around Vichy, I ran up to Presles, as we were having a big Assistant Potluck. I brought salad with green peppers, carrots, and mushrooms. By the time we left, around 11pm, there was about a foot of snow and all of our efforts to roll up our jeans to keep them dry were completely useless.
srah | 8:27 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Tags: assistantship, weather |
January 30, 2003
Ahem
Not only did I have class this afternoon, but they tried to get me to take the kids for four hours. I am not a substitute teacher, folks. What's more, they didn't tell me until I stopped by and asked at 12h55 that they wanted me to take the class at 13h. Funny, that.
srah | 10:02 AM | TrackBack | Tags: assistantship |
Communication problems
It snowed last night, so the roads were slippery. Usually when this happens, Veronique doesn't show up, so the first thing I did when I arrived at school was to go to the Vie Scolaire and ask if there were any profs d'anglais absent. They said yes, Veronique would be absent in the morning and maybe in the afternoon as well. I was pleased, as I'd been hurrying this morning to throw something together for the S1HOTs and now I could stop stressing.
So I wandered around for a while, then Victor, head of the Vie Scolaire, found me and told me that Veronique had sent a message that I was to take her class for the two hours. I could only take one, as I had another class the other hour, but as it was more a command than a question, I gave in and rushed off to type up what I'd planned.
I spent my break finishing it, then went to the class, where three élèves were waiting for me, out of a class of 17. We debated what was to be done for a while, then finally decided to have class. We did the lesson I'd planned, then chatted when it was over because you can't do jeux de rôles with three people for fifteen minutes.
Now I am sitting around waiting for someone to tell me if I have class this afternoon or not, as no one seems to know. I am hoping for not, but I'm betting on yes, because that's the way this day has been.
srah | 6:19 AM | TrackBack | Tags: assistantship, teaching |
Dream
I dreamt that I was in the movie or the game of Clue, and my mom was about to send everyone home because we hadn't found the murderer. I had an idea of who it was, so I tried to keep everyone from leaving. I was afraid to wander through the house alone, so I grabbed my sister, who was Mrs Peacock, to accompany me and told her I knew who it was. She rolled her eyes and looked disparaging. "Of course you do," she said, "You've seen the movie about a million times."
srah | 1:19 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack | Tags: dream |
January 29, 2003
Dream
I had a dream where I was trying to have class with the THOTs in a classroom I had built in my house, but they were completely out of control, so I hid in a little closed-off area at the back of the room and watched them on security camera feed as they ran all over the place, made a mess, and ate all the food we had.
What is with this déluge of remembered dreams, not that I'm complaining?
January 28, 2003
Excuses, excuses
I need a haircut, but I have an irrational fear of letting my hair be cut by strangers, especially strangers who don't speak English. Plus, I'm poor.
srah | 12:51 PM | TrackBack | Tags: assistantship, haircut |
J'm'deprime
I am in a funk where I claim to be bored even though there are letters to write, dishes to do, fruit to eat, books to read, and a blog-post beginning to develop in my head. I am tempted to go to sleep and put it all off until tomorrow, but that's been my plan of action all week and the dishes aren't going to do themselves.
srah | 12:49 PM | TrackBack | Tags: assistantship |
My sister is pretty cool sometimes
Becky found this t-shirt online, which I think would look pretty good on me.
Plus, sometimes I don't have to work at all
There is a strike today, of teachers and surveillants. Some people are striking, others aren't. I love strike days. It's fun to come to work when hardly anyone is here, and find out if any of the students have come to school for me to teach. It's different and adventury. And thankfully it's my half day, so I'm not concerned about the fact that the cafeteria is en grève as well.
srah | 3:01 AM | TrackBack | Tags: assistantship, france, teaching |
January 27, 2003
I have not yet decided who is the third member of this Axis of Evil
I have written before about the evil deceit of some citrus fruits, and I come before you today to warn you of another such menace: the clemenvilla.
Like the tangerine before it, the clemenvilla tries to pass itself off as a clementine and it is only the Pure of Heart and Clementine-Obsessed who can unmask this fiend!
For the clemenvilla, while not as dastardly as the dreaded tangerine with its thick skin, sour taste, and seeds, has greater weapons of disguise than its comrade in crime. It is only slightly larger than the average clementine and to my eyes, the only way to be sure is to remember to check the sign in the supermarket.
And this must be done, citizens. We must continue our vigilance and must not give in to this thick-membraned, chewy, flavorless impostor, even if Casino's clemenvillas are attractive and orange and the clementines are a bit spotty. This is all a part of their evil plan of dominance.
Support the downtrodden and oppressed clementine!
Dream
I came home from work today, wrote the previous blog-post, and then fell into bed face-first. I dreamt that I was squatting a little pink house that no one wanted because it was pink, so I was pretty safe squatting there. I lived with a boyfriend who was not Alex, but I don't know who he was. Maybe he was no one I know in real life.
Renata and I had joined a literary discussion group, so we took a bus from a bus station located inside the Centre Jaude mall in Clermont-Ferrand, heading off into the wilds of Auvergne for our meeting. Most of the other buses, interestingly enough, were going to New Jersey. I don't know how that works.
It was a long ride to wherever we were going, so at one point we all got off the bus and learned all of the passengers were in the book club. We were sitting around a waiting room, and someone asked me how I liked the book. I got defensive and started yelling that I hadn't read it yet, but I was going to, so don't worry, and get off my back, and anyway, I prefer to hear the discussion and then read the book, plus I had already read Shall We Tell the President? and I wasn't a big fan of Jeffrey Archer anyway. Luckily Agnès called and woke me up before I started getting violent.
srah | 1:47 PM | TrackBack | Tags: assistantship, dream |
We (heart) murmurs
I always seem to find myself, when people learn that I've studied French and lived in France, discussing whether the French accent is as sexy as it is reputed to be. The assistants have had the same discussion, and can't really come to a clear conclusion.
It is certainly true that there is nothing remotely sexy or attractive about being the English assistant and hearing a bored 15-year-old French accent say "At the Christmas, I go to buy the jeu vidéo for my bruzzère."
On the other hand, it is always amusing to hear a well-formed sentence, especially from someone you didn't expect to speak English. What's more, the French generally study English in the UK, so when you come across a well-learnèd French person speaking English, there is usually a bit of a British accent under a light French one.
It depends on the voice as well. I have plenty of loud, boisterous students, but I have two in particular who murmur smoothly when they speak English, which - as long as it's clearly spoken and they're murmuring rather than mumbling - is unnervingly attractive. I hope they are not reading this.
So in conclusion, the answer is both yes and no, and it depends on many factors. Fascinating. I'm going to sleep.
srah | 11:15 AM | TrackBack | Tags: accents, assistantship, french |
Wasting away to nothing
Would you hate me if I told you that one of my big problems at the moment seems to be that I've lost weight? I don't remember this happening in Grenoble, but these days my pants seem to hang a bit lower, which means I have to cuff them, then I keep stepping on the cuffs and I have to yank them up so as not to expose my underpants. Whereas other people try diet after diet, I have never had any desire to lose weight, and here I am with what butt I had rapidly disappearing. Thus I bring you...
srah's diet tips
Be easily distracted and get easily bored while eating. Then at some point during dinner you will see something shiny across the room and when you remember what you were doing and come back, your food will be cold and unappetizing.
Live alone. If you're only cooking for yourself, you have no one to impress, so you can make the same really boring stuff night after night.
Be lazy. This ensures that you will probably only have two courses at the most - a main dish followed by a yogurt or fruit or cookies - something that doesn't require work or preparation.
Be poor. If you are trying to make those last 90€ last until you get paid at the end of this week when you will hopefully be paid, you will not be buying yourself exciting, fun new things you've never tried before. You will be eating pasta and salad.
Be forgetful. If you suddenly realize at 11pm that you forgot to eat dinner, it's simply too late and you'll have to wait until breakfast.
Don't eat anywhere comfortable. Although you want to eat in bed where it's nice and warm and comfy, you would spill stuff all over it. Instead, sit in a chair facing the bed, so that while you're eating, all you can think of is how much you would like to be finished with dinner and in your pyjamas.
srah | 6:39 AM | TrackBack | Tags: assistantship, food, health |
Zzzzzzzzzzz
I still have not recovered from Nicolas' birthday and Moulins. I had to make an effort to stay awake in the dark while the S1OLs watched a video on Martin Luther King, and I still haven't settled on exactly what I'm doing with the THOTs. Perhaps I will teach them how to nap � l'américaine, whatever that means.
srah | 6:29 AM | TrackBack | Tags: assistantship |
January 26, 2003
Painting Moulins rouge
On a fait la fête hier soir chez les Moulinoises. There are seven assistantes in Moulins, the prefecture of the Allier, about 45 minutes from Vichy. They were having a party, so we piled into Johanna's car (Stefan's orange bagnole is en panne in Poitiers at the moment) and drove off to their apartment, which is in the premier lycée de France, the lucky ducks.
Food, wine, beer and coca poured in abundance, then we played a game of Mafia full of suicide, German conspiracy, and Renata and Becky refusing to kill me no matter how much I begged. Everyone was asking themselves at this point exactly how much I'd had to drink and while it's true that I'd polished off quite a few glasses, they were all full of Coke and jus d'abricot. I'm just odd like that.
After everyone had had enough of Mafia, we played a drinking game and I drank two entire glasses of white wine during the course of the game, but afterwards felt less silly than when I'd been bourrée on Coke and juice.
Suddenly we realized it was already 3am - when we'd thought it was around midnight - so we got back into the car and came back to Vichy and into bed by 4.
srah | 6:03 AM | TrackBack | Tags: alcohol, assistantship |
January 25, 2003
Do the doo-doo
There is a French-English bilingual song that plays on the radio here, which rather bothers me. I'm hoping that it was written by a French speaker and that no Anglophone would write the chorus:
"I love it when we do what we do 'cause we do what we do till it's done.
I love it when we do what we do 'cause we do what we do and it's fun."
Every time I hear it, I think it's going to be a Mountain Dew commercial.
Siempre quieren hablar el idioma que no debe se hablar
In order to make it to the Scrabble tournament on time, I went to the Spanish class at 3pm instead of my usual 4-5 one. This meant I was with the famed THOTs, who were rather fascinated to see me there. They all started speaking English as they settled into their seats, and Sonia replied in kind. I think I heard more English in that Spanish class than I usually hear when I have the THOTs. Maybe if Sonia spoke English to them all hour and I spoke Spanish in English class, we would both accomplish more. Bueno. ¿Que vamos a hacer lunes en el clase de inglés?
srah | 4:57 AM | TrackBack | Tags: assistantship, spanish |
January 24, 2003
'I didn't know you were called Dennis'
Mr Unnamed Cybercafé Employee kept bowing to me tonight and calling me "your highness". I really don't know what to do with him, so I smile and continue clicking away as he enters and exits the room genuflecting and trying to make me laugh or at least pay attention to him.
It bothers me that I don't know his name, but I don't want to ask him because I think he would take it as a sign of interest and thus increased intimacy, when all I really want to do is surf the net, drink tea, pay, and leave.
So I have decided to make up a name for him. I shall call him Dennis. Not Denis, à la française, but Dennis, because I have decided 'e looks like one.
srah | 5:45 PM | TrackBack | Tags: assistantship, cybercafe |
Closer Proximity
The party last night was in Nicolas' apartment, which is in the same building as the other apartment I looked at, before choosing my current one. On a failli être voisins, but financially it's probably for the best that we aren't. In addition to the rent being higher, the building is right next-door to the cybercafé. The last thing I need is to be closer, because sometimes even when I give in to the 4€/hour mental protests, the thing that keeps me from spending my whole life there is walking in the cold.
srah | 5:39 PM | TrackBack | Tags: assistantship |
Más fotos
<-- Click on the various links to photos taken here for older photos.
Más Valéry Larbaud
Clermont-Ferrand
Fête des S2OL
[so embarassing to those photographed that they are available only upon request]
Christmas Break with the Boyfriend
srah | 3:28 PM | TrackBack | Tags: antoine, assistantship, auvergne, clermont-ferrand, london, pato, photos, travel |
Régis suggests skiing uphill
I have been invited to go skiing (or "skying", if you prefer) with the S2OLs next weekend. This sounds like a fun, exciting way to spend a weekend, except for the whole skiing part. I imagine roaring fires, hot tea or chocolate, and perhaps tramping about in the snow a bit, but none of that nasty downhill nonsense, considering I have problems walking downhill or even descending staircases. Up up up for srah, or perhaps over over over, but certainly not down down down. Even better, perhaps, would be staying still still still, considering that I am unathletic and maladroite and I would rather not have seven or eight broken limbs (I will grow new ones just to break them) for the vacances de février.
srah | 1:42 PM | TrackBack | Tags: assistantship, skiing, sports |
My contribution: marcher
The Scrabble tournament didn't end up being quite as I'd imagined. Renata, Jennifer, Johanna (the new German assistant) and I were divided up and each put on different teams, thankfully. I say "thankfully" because it would have been very embarassing when we lost. Those kids were doués! They were regular little Scrabble champions, full of strategy and obscure two-letter words, and all around 10 to 12 years old. I think the assistants provided amusement rather than any actual help. My teammates were full of questions about England (it is a peculiarity of French elementary school children not to understand the vast difference between England and the US).
"How old are you?"
"You can't ask her that!"
"Do you speak German?"
"Where do you come from?"
"You can't ask that!"
"Do you know all the words in English?"
"In England, is the television all in English? That must be weird!"
"You know Buffy? You look like her friend."
I had a lovely time, and we will be written up in the newspaper and invited back later in the year.
srah | 1:32 PM | TrackBack | Tags: assistantship, scrabble |
Scenes from the Thursday edition of Taboo
"It's in the toilet."
The hôtellerie students and their assistant are rather surprised, as up to that point, all of the words they've been trying to guess were related to food preparation and service.
"Paper? Toilet paper?" comes one guess. She is encouraged to guess something else, and luckily comes up with the answer, water, before anyone starts getting rude.
What a creative way of expressing the word, when forbidden to use "drink" or "glass". I appreciate a good dose of imagination and creativity in a student.
srah | 4:06 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Tags: assistantship |
January 23, 2003
Perhaps perhaps perhaps
Mr Unnamed Cybercafé Employee sang to me as I paid him for my time online. He sang to me as he gave me my change. He sang goodbye to me. Next time, I have been informed, I shall be forced to sing Brassens' pornographer of phonographs song, so I must hurry up and learn the lyrics.
À venir...
Pictures are coming... temporary lack of floppy disk space prevents me from putting them up tonight. Meanwhile, enjoy the wacky dreams...
Sing-a-long!
There are only two customers tonight, so the cybercafé employees are forcing me to sing along with the music. Brassens, I refuse. Cake, I will add my little "Perhaps perhaps perhaps" just to please them. Woo woo! Thursday night karaoke party at the cybercafé!
srah | 5:24 PM | TrackBack | Tags: assistantship, cybercafe, music |
Klaxonner is a good word
Les assistants linguistiques de Vichy-Cusset have been invited to a Scrabble tournament. It is for a Scrabble club made up of young (not sure how young - but no older than middle school, I think) people, and apparently they were looking for competitors who don't have adult vocabularies. We are going to whup some nine-year-old heinie.
srah | 2:42 PM | TrackBack | Tags: assistantship, french |
January 22, 2003
Dream
What a dreamful week I've been having! I'm sure you don't care, but I like to record them and perhaps in reading them, you will realize exactly how bizarre things are in my head.
First I was on a tour bus in England and Neil Dudgeon, John Hannah and Joanna Roth were there as well. Neil was right behind me, but the other two were way at the back of the bus.
The tour guide announced that we weren't going to be able to watch the video she'd planned to show in the bus because she'd left it at the tour office. I had a video in my bag that I thought about suggesting we watch instead, until I realized it was the "Laurels are Poison" episode of The Mrs Bradley Mysteries, and thus two of our fellow tour members would be easily identifiable as celebrities.
We finally got to our destination, then we had to cross fields to get there. At one point we had a choice of going through the poopy, horse-filled stables or across open ground, so I chose the latter, but it turned out that involved crossing a "bridge" that consisted of one log and that had an enormous, poisonous spider building a web just on the other side. Then I woke up.
When I fell asleep again, I dreamt that I was at this Lord of the Rings museum with my mom and sister. There was an interactive movie with some trolls and whatnot, so we sat down to watch it, but my mom and Becky kept leaping up and coming back later. At one point a shemale came along and sat in Becky's seat and when I told him/her that the seat was taken, he/she glared at me with hatred in his/her eyes.
The next time I saw Becky, she had acquired a wheelchair. "What happened?" I asked my mother, horrified. "Nothing," she answered, "She just wants attention." Becky got frustrated quickly, though, trying to navigate the chair through the crowds, where everyone was concerned with getting where they were going and didn't notice her.
Next thing I remember, I was in a big city. It may have been near Leicester Square in London or Times Square in New York. There was a big back-to-school barbecue dinner going on in the middle of the street and members of the Star Academy kept showing up in the windows of a building above and making the crowd cheer. Jillian (my friend from Albion) and I were looking for seats. I was upset because they'd "borrowed" my table and chairs and I still couldn't find a place. We decided we wanted to sit at the table that Mathieu (a BTS Optique student from Valéry Larbaud) was at, because he was kissing everyone and apparently we wanted some of that. So we sat down next to Antoine (former French assistant at Albion), but he was saving the seat for Fanny (his wife, former Spanish assistant at Albion). So I asked Annamaria (classmate from Grenoble) if there was any place near her, but she claimed there wasn't. It was an odd mix of people and I don't know what any of them were doing there.
srah | 3:56 AM | TrackBack | Tags: alfie, annamaria, antoine, dream, england, fanny, jillian, joanna roth, john hannah, lord of the rings, mathieu, mrs bradley mysteries, neil dudgeon |
January 21, 2003
Secrecy and intrigue at Valéry Larbaud
I am having a super-secret torrid affair. It is so super-secret that I didn't even realize I was having it until Renata told me.
Apparently one of Andrés' classes today (the THOTs, I believe) told him that they knew about him and me. Renata and I assumed this meant romantic entanglement, but I suppose since I'm getting this third- or fourth-hand, I could be missing something. Maybe we're about to get fired instead.
srah | 1:44 PM | TrackBack | Tags: assistantship |
Srahsildur's Bane
One of the main problems in my job as an assistant is side conversations going on in French. I have to try to convince the students to stop what they're talking about and to join the rest of us, trying not to lose more students while I'm doing that.
What makes it even more difficult is when I want to join in...
srah | 6:10 AM | TrackBack | Tags: assistantship |
Poule furieuse
I am such an idiot. I didn't have class until 11:00, but at 10:00, I went looking for Agnès to show her an article I'd found, about schools implementing retinal eye scanning in school cafeterias to identify students and make sure no one was eating anything against their dietary regulations. I showed up and she got half of the class together to go off with me.
"No, I don't have them until 11," I explained, "I just came to show you this article."
She looked puzzled. "No, you have them now." Somehow I had convinced myself that I had class from 11 to 1 today instead of 10 to 12. I was, of course, completely unprepared. My students were happy not to start right away, while I ran away to get my bag and the key to the multimedia cabinet. Meanwhile, Andrés and the THOTs had a good giggle, seeing me running around like a chicken with its head cut off, as I kept going in the wrong direction and scrambling back and forth in front of the windows of their Spanish class.
srah | 4:35 AM | TrackBack | Tags: assistantship |
I am bored
And I don't have class for another two hours. My students are here in the library with me, but they're being very studious and working, so I don't want to bother them and I wouldn't have anything to say to them even if I did, other than. I may have to start reading the dictionary or - even worse - surfing Encarta and digging up super-neato facts to share with you. Mwah ha! If you want the torture to end, you should write to my school and demand some answers on why there is no Internet. If I've understood correctly, the last I heard was that we're not a very high priority for the Académie de Clermont-Ferrand, and that it's them who have to fix us up, or at least pay to have us fixed up. Eejits.
srah | 3:41 AM | TrackBack | Tags: assistantship, internet connection |
No - gollum gollum - I am not bitter
Why does Sarah come to school over three hours before she actually has to teach anything? And more importantly, why didn't she bring anything to read? And even more importantly, why can't she spend all of this free time surfing the Internet?
I have heard a nasty rumor that the administration (including the dastardly Señor Tails) still have Internet access, while the rest of us suffer without. We must try not to believe such rumors, for to do so might make flames shoot out of our ears and singe the nice students sitting nearby. Mustn't hurt nice studentses. But if that mean tricksy syssssstem adminisssstrator has our preciousssss, we wants it, and we just might have to start chewing fingers off to get it.
srah | 3:06 AM | TrackBack | Tags: assistantship, technology |
Dream
At some point last night, I dreamt that Renata, Jennifer, Gandalf and I went to the Raelians' headquarters, which was a lot more like a Michigan Militia compound than an alien-worshipping cult. The cult members were all rather grizzled woodsmen with guns.
Later, I had a nightmare last night where I was being attacked by a dressmaker's dummy in a bathroom, but someone was controlling my mind and trying to make me insane, so he had somehow convinced me that it was me who was attacking myself. Then the mind-controller came into the bathroom, naked, and I thought he was going to finish me off, but I woke up, before I got to find out who he was.
January 20, 2003
Podriá 'nar gitar las vachas ame vosautres?
Traditional folk songs have stupid lyrics. Are we agreed? No one will argue that Camptown ladies singing this song (doo dah, doo dah) or hats with feathers in them called Macaroni (is the hat or the feather Macaroni?) are lyrical masterpieces, I hope, but I don't think we really think about that while we're singing them.
I've checked out from the library one of the volumes of Canteloube's Chants d'Auvergne, orchestral arrangements of Auvergnat folk songs, sung in the original Auvergnat language by Kiri Te Kanawa. You may know "Baïléro", the most famous of the songs, which is very beautiful and is about (like most of the songs) horny shepherds and shepherdesses calling to each other.
Much to my amusement, there is a lyrics booklet with the Auvergnat lyrics, but also their English, French and German translations. Listening to pretty music and operatic-style singing, you would never really realize that when you heard lines like "Quond onorèn o lo fièïro, ié!", what the lyrics actually meant were:
When we go to the fair, hey!
When we go to the fair, ho!
We shall both go, Anthony,
we shall both go!
We shall buy a cow, hey!
We shall buy a cow, ho!
We shall both buy it, Anthony,
we shall both buy it!
But the cow will be mine, hey!
But the cow will be mine, ho!
The horns will be yours, Anthony,
the horns will be yours!
srah | 5:19 PM | TrackBack | Tags: assistantship, music |
At the end of the journey
I have finished The Return of the King, the third part of The Lord of the Rings. All I want to know is if they found the Entwives. Is that too much to ask? Treebeard starts talking about them the first time he meets Merry and Pippin, then never shuts up, sounding for all the world Middle-earth like a horny, lonely old man. One of my goals in finishing the books was to read about the glorious reunion of the Ents and the Entwives, and the birth (planting?) of cute little Entlings. BUT NO. I'm going to dig up JRR Tolkien and make him write it.
If these books weren't so full of Pippins and Legolases, I would be upset.
Now what am I going to read?
srah | 3:46 PM | TrackBack | Tags: books, lord of the rings, lord of the rings: the return of the king |
In the course of a game of Taboo
"It's a bird..."
"Chicken!"
"Duck!"
"Pheasant!"
"Turkey!"
"Cream!"
"Non, mais oh! Cream, c'est pas un bird!"
Never mind, it was funny to me. Funny enough that I kept thinking about it for the rest of class and giggling to myself. It's funny how I will miss some of my students when the year is over.
And yet others, not at all, as the game got a bit too competitive at around this point. So srah stopped giving points and started giving bunnies and ducks and boats and teepees, in the hopes that they would stop berating their teammates and turn their attention instead to their insane English assistant.
Another good one came later, when the student holding the word "tuna" began "It lives in the forest...". Apparently he had not understood exactly what a tuna was. It's not nice to laugh, but sometimes it's unavoidable.
srah | 12:34 PM | TrackBack | Tags: assistantship |
'I shall call you... Mini-me'
Is it excessively bad to have still not learned some of my students' names... and to have forgotten some of the ones I did know?
srah | 11:38 AM | TrackBack | Tags: assistantship |
January 19, 2003
Then again, some songs are just written like that
As you may know, I am completely deaf when it comes to song lyrics. Which, I hope, explains why I am hearing, "Wish there was a way to give back homework" and "Mistaking together our underwear".
srah | 6:20 AM | TrackBack | Tags: misheard lyrics, music |
It is hard to describe what I was like in high school
Sometimes I wish the French had a word that meant dork. In the subtitles for Ghost World, they translated it as naze, which is more like loser. The French have grosse tête, which is something sort of like egghead, but they don't have anything like nerd or dork, to say that someone is socially inferior due to their intelligence or interest in intellectual pursuits. I miss the word, but I kind of like that they don't have one. It makes me feel like being a dork isn't a bad thing here.
Dream
I had a dream last night where I was an assistant for my own high school graduating class. Veronique was my teacher and we spent a lot of time watching videos. I think the school was on a boat, too. Alex kept giving my underwear away to my students, but I don't think he knew it was mine. I was much more popular with the students than I was when I was in high school or than I am here, so I hung out with all of the cool kids, who in this alternate reality were not junkie smackheads. At one point, we went to an "authentic 50s diner" (like in Ghost World) and someone remarked that "this is really authentic" (like in Ghost World).
January 18, 2003
Apologies to Four Weddings
I am listening to the radio broadcast of the NRJ Music Awards on the radio. Phil Collins is mangling the French language, but I am so proud of him for speaking French at all. What happens at concerts where the singer doesn't speak the language? Do they just drop the between-song banter, do they do it in their native language and ignore the fact that the crowd probably doesn't understand, or is there someone there to translate?
Mariah Carey is also at the awards. You may ask what I think of her. Unfortunately there I run out of words. Perhaps you will forgive me if I turn from my own feelings to those of another splendid bugger: S.T. Coleridge. This is actually what I want to say:
"Swans sing before they die. It would be no bad thing if certain persons died before they sang."
srah | 4:22 PM | TrackBack | Tags: mariah carey, quote, tv |
Parlez-vous extra-terrestre?
I am excessively fascinated with the proximity of the Raelians (or the proximity of their origins, anyway). Now I find myself wondering if the people I see every day are secretly members of the cult.
According to their website, the cult gained popularity quickly in French-speaking countries, which makes complete sense to me. If aliens landed in the US and emerged from their spaceship speaking English, we would think nothing of it. It would be completely natural for them to start speaking English and if they didn't, we might tell them to pack up and get back into outer space where they belong. I can see the French, on the other hand, hearing that aliens landed and being rather uninterested until they learned that the aliens spoke perfect French. At this point, they might start listening, as these aliens were obviously the kind of civilized being that they would want to associate with.
srah | 2:52 PM | TrackBack | Tags: assistantship |
Three reasons to stay home
1) It's sales season in Vichy and the streets and stores are packed, which makes me claustrophobic.
2) The price of a demi-baguette has gone up from 30 to 32 cents, making things very uneven and ensuring that I get a handful of nasty little copper coins instead of an even 10 or 20 cent piece.
3) There is a clown playing the trumpet in the Rue de l'Hôtel des Postes. As I walked by, he was attacked by a dog, but unfortunately it was part of his act.
srah | 11:46 AM | TrackBack | Tags: assistantship, vichy |
Frequent Visitor Discount?
Either I am the little chouchou of the cybercafé, or they have atrocious math skills. My time of arrival was marked on the board as 14h00. When I went up to the desk, the clock said 4:45. That should have been a total of 2h45, or 11€, but Mr Employee Whose Name I Don't Know only charged me 7€. I wasn't abotu to correct him, althought that would have been the honest thing to do. Maybe they gave me a discount for when Franck hijacked my computer for five minutes to scan something. Or maybe they love me.
I hate you all
Why did no one tell me about the Raelians?
"One December morning in 1973, journalist Claude Vorilhon was on his way to work in the French provincial town of Clermont-Ferrand. But - according to a book written by Mr Vorilhon, who is now known as Rael - instead of going to the office, on an impulse, he drove to a nearby volcano. There, he says, he was contacted by an extra-terrestrial being who emerged from a flying saucer and told him - in fluent French - that humans were created in laboratories by people from another planet."
These are important things that I should have known! I am so proud to learn that such an exciting even happened so near to me and that they are so closely tied to the famous ClonAid group. Where are they based now? I highly suspect it is my apartment building, because Jennifer and I have already identified it as the Center Of All Things Weird.
srah | 10:41 AM | TrackBack | Tags: assistantship |
The Onion makes me laugh so hard I cry
I am not the most up-to-date on current events, but sometimes