- slept in some after an amazing dinner last night (see above)
- went to class and had a worthwhile review for our exam next week. I feel pretty good about the upcoming test, which is relieving for my first exam at the Sorbonne.
- stayed after class and met some cool kids; went out for coffee with them (it's very hard to meet people in the French system... it can be very lonely at times). We laughed a lot. It was lovely.
- the Arabic class I have been dreading for the last week was far less painful than I had feared. Actually, it was incredibly helpful and laid-back. I don't know why I was stressing so much.
- stayed after class to chat with the prof for over an hour in what ended up being a great conversation
- Walking out of class, I felt an enormous amount of stress just drain right out of my body. I could physically feel it leave my ribcage.
- got on the train and helped an American couple find their way. They were so unbelieavably cute, and very grateful for my help. That made me feel good.
- ran over to Pennsylvania Boy's house to meet the little pupster
- came home happy, smiling, and feeling that I've gotten a lot out of my day.

I guess I was just exuding a sort of calm, collected happiness. I think this truly does rub off on people, because everyone I came into contact with seemed more goofy, more fun, more open than usual. It's been a good day. It feels great to say it and smile just thinking about it. Maybe I've just had too much caffeine.

2.

I'm working on a project right now that involves searching for a lot of information on French companies for the years 1997, 1999, and 2001. At base, the project is simple, and were I doing it in the US, it would probably be finished in a heartbeat. At least the data collection process would be, which is what counts because I'm on data duty.

But alas, here I am in France, trying to get "historical" information on French companies, and there simply aren't any resources available on that topic. Because, you know, who would ever want to know what a company was up to in 1997? Or 1999? That's absurd! People think I am out of my mind.

The problem is that all of the information would be readily available to me in a nice, easy-to-read format were I were only interested in 2003. Then it'd be a snap. They'd have all of this info on a handy CD-ROM and I'd just print up some pages and be done.

But no. That's just not the case for anything before 2003. So I asked, "Well, where can I go for the same information but for previous years? Is there another CD-ROM, or a book, or something that chronicles the same information as the CD-ROM, but for 97, 99, and 2001?"

"That's not possible," the Librarian Lady said, with a bit of scorn. "No, there's nothing like that. We'll have to come up with another solution."

What we came up with involves me searching through each company's annual reports, year by year. That means pulling each company's file, looking through to find the appropriate year (if they even have it there) and then going through the report until I stumble across the information I'm looking for. I've seen a lot of graphs and pie charts in the last few weeks, let me tell you.

All of this would be ok if the library where I consult these reports - which is also the only library in France that has such information - didn't lay down the following ground rules:

- The library is only open from 10.30-16.30.
- You can only look at 10 annual reports per day because, well, they're too busy to keep getting the files out for you, and it would be wrong to expect them to do their job, what with such a long workday and all.
- The library is closed on Friday.

This means, technically, that I can only look at 40 companies per week. And that's IF my schedule happens to allow me a few free hours to go to the library between 10.30 and 16.30, which is rarely the case.

But no matter, I've learned to work with the slow pace achieving things seems to take in France. As the head of this project says to me, "Well, everything in France takes about 20% longer to do than it would in the US." Try 50%.

Still, I've gotten the Librarian Lady to be a bit more on my side - she's even breaking the second rule so that I can get everything done before my deadline. I think she's just trying to get me out of her hair as quickly as possible; little does she know that I'll be back in January with another 400 companies to investigate. Her stupid smile still drives me friggin' batty and her absolutely unnecessary hoo-ha about how stressed out she is is even less appreciated, but the Lady gets me the annual reports, so I just go with it.

Today, however, she marked a few companies (off of the nice, new spreadsheet I made for her) as having already been given to me, but when I looked at the pile (I am, of course, also only allowed to take the files one at a time), they were nowhere to be seen.

After asking her about them, she hastily responded, "No, they're right there. You must have missed them." They weren't. But, while leaning over the little roly thing she had put the other files on, I noticed an interesting book on the bookshelves just behind the cart:

It was a book, from 1997, with all financial data concerning several hundred companies for that year. Coincidentally, it was the print version of the handy-dandy CD-ROM I could have used, were I interested in 2003. Strangely enough, it was EXACTLY what I have been needing, this entire time, that nobody had thought to suggest to me. Even worse, the book has the same friggin name as the CD-ROM. It wouldn't have taken a genius to think of that, had the genius known it existed. And since it's on the special reserves shelf that only the librarians have access to, I'm assuming the Lady knew it existed.

But instead of taking a moment to think it over, she had just said, "That's not possible." and we had gone looking for other options.

I meandered over to her desk and asked her about the book. "Oh, of course it would have all the information you've been looking for! That makes perfect sense!" she squeaked.

Yeah, Dumbass, hadn't I directly asked you if there wasn't a way I could get the same information available on the CD-Rom but for 1997? Couldn't you have said, "I don't know" and then checked out a few options? Wouldn't that have been better than making a big scene about how many annual reports I ask for per day? And better than having made me do this, one by one, for over two weeks, before realizing there was a book I could have been using the entire time???

So, I still have 99 and 2001 to do one-by-one, but Key-rist, I think I cut my workload down by at least a third today with my fortunate discovery.

But, I'll have to act soon, because my internet time has been reduced to next-to-nothing. It now coincides neatly with my morning bowl of muesli and my cuppa tea. I can't afford much more than that. Internet is like television: it sucks you in and it takes too much motivation to get out of its grasp. I just don't feel like I can risk the temptation at this moment.

Suddenly, I am drowning in work. My first way to combat stress is to freak out over my paperwork. Although I was notoriously messy in high school (never with paperwork though, my friends, never with paperwork), I've gotten quite clean in my old age. And, I'd actually venture to say I've gotten terribly anal about my paperwork, whereas before I was just "neat." I don't really like this aspect of myself (anal is just not a good adjective in general), but I do like that my papers are so purty. You should see my filing system, kids!

So Sunday was spent on the phone catching up with friends while simultaneously reorganizing everything I could possibly refile, rewrite, rearrange, or recycle. How good does that feel? Sooo good.

Now all I have left to do is all the work. Right, that part. It's like a huge gun, and I'm staring right down its barrel. That doesn't feel quite so good, though.

No matter. I'll be fine. As they say in Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead*: "I'm right on top of that, Rose!"

I finally came to the conclusion a few years ago that doing the work is better than dealing with the stress that comes along with not doing it. I would rather overwork and feel confident in what I produce/learn than underwork and feel anxious about the whack job I've done. So, I decided, I just have to do the damn work.

Today was spent: early morning bfast with the internet, off to school for a lecture on the French morphophonological system (don't know if that's a word in English, but it is in French... how ya like it?), off to the library for research for a few hours (librarians are such bitches in this country, even with that fake-ass plastic smile strapped across their faces. I can see right through them and hear their inner dialogues, "Why won't this stupid blond girl just stop asking for shit already?" "What? She wants yet another file? God, this girl is annoying..."), back to class for a two-hour lecture on predicats and quantificateurs, off to the grocery to buy some essentials because we've been stahving in this house, up the six flights of stairs to put away groceries, over to the desk to start the Arabic, back to the kitchen for a snack after three hours of steady work, back to the desk to work again for another two.

Now, I've given up and am just trying to calm down the adrenalin I've been going on all day in order to keep up the pace. Tomorrow, everything starts all over. Early morning trip to the library, evening class, several hours of work to follow. Wednesday, it should be more of the same. Next week, I start teaching (for real this time). So it's pretty much going to stay at this rhythm until I leave for Christmas.

I have adopted the What About Bob* philosophy: baby steps to the school, baby steps to the library, baby steps back to the house, baby steps to make myself sit down and do all this damn homework, baby steps to make up some lesson plans for next week. Baby steps. I can do it, provided I keep my notebooks in perfect order and color-code everything.

*Not quite sure about the references to such bad movies. Must be some sort of coping mechanism.

PS On a totally unrelated note, the BlogforAmerica site for Former Vermont Governor Howard Dean asked Americans to donate $360,000.00 to finance a tv ad that would counter an ad made by the Bush team. Dean's site gave us from last Friday to Tuesday (tomorrow) to come up with the cash, and the fundraising has already gone through the roof: at the time of writing, the total has already come to $431,968.53, with just under 24 hours left to go. It's a pretty cool thing to witness the success of his campaign on a daily basis.

I only had two classes, which were actually two halves of one big class. In total, I saw about 20-25 students, I think nine the first class and something like twelve the second. The professor had obviously divided the class into two groups along a line determined by skill/interest: my first class was all girls, all hardworking, all interested, and all fun to teach. My second class was mixed, a bit more chattery (amongst themselves), and lots more difficult to teach. Still, I think both classes went well.

Actually, I was really excited after the first class. I had begun the class by introducing myself, telling them a bit about Michigan and why I am in France, and then I let them ask me questions. They were very curious, and we spent a good ten or twenty minutes just shooting the shit. They even got my jokes and laughed at the appropriate moments. At some point, I thought to myself, "Man, I'm a natural!" The girls kept calling me "Mrs." and I finally had to say, "Could you guys just call me LeeAnn... Mrs. sounds too old to me..." They laughed again and started calling me LeeAnn, which made me smile. A few girls stayed after class a bit just to keep on talking, and I thought I was smooth sailing.

Then came in the second class. I think this is going to be a challenging class because the skill level is so hard to determine. I'm willing to bet that some of the kids in there are actually quite good at English, but they are terribly shy. It was amazing, however, to see the difference between the two classes. Whereas with the first class, I said, "So, do you have any questions for me?" and I had to say, "Wait, wait, one at a time!", in the second class, there was just dead silence. "No questions for me?" I asked again, in case they hadn't understood. Nope. Definitely not. Still silent. "Well ok then, if you don't have any questions for me... I have some questions for you..." I said, and segued into my planned activity.

It's funny how much of teaching is just gauging and being able to quickly adapt. The first class had wanted to discuss so much during the activity that I was worried that we wouldn't finish (it wasn't really a concern... finishing wasn't the important thing). They kept coming up with new questions, or new ways of asking questions, or of rephrasing their answers. But with the second class, it was like pulling teeth; they just didn't want to talk. I made the activity as long as possible, and made sure to ask every student a few questions to see that everyone was paying attention. They were, they just weren't all that talkative. We ended up starting the second activity I had brought along, just in case we finished the first one. I had photocopied a few tongue twisters, thinking that if I did a couple tongue twisters throughout the year, the kids would at least be able to have a good laugh. I was glad I had brought them along: Sabrina was even willing to try the damn thing and she did it better than I did!

Even more interesting is some of the stuff I learned about the students. I work in a poor suburb outside of Paris, where most kids live in cramped apartments with lots of people. All but two of the students in my classes spoke a different language than French at home, almost half of them Arabic-speaking. When I asked if there were any only children, it turned out their weren't any in either class. I mentioned that I had heard that the birth rate was dropping in France, and one girl quickly corrected me: "It's true that French people don't have many kids. But none of us are French. We're all foreigners." One girl pitched in that she's the fourth in a series of seven.

In retrospect, I'm happy with the way the classes went. There are obviously a few things I would have changed, but I'm glad I got off on a good foot. The teacher called me to say that the students were really happy with the class, and that they had been disappointed to learn they would have to wait another week before taking classes with me again because of this whole contract problem. I was really touched by that, and also, I think, a tad relieved because I had feared the teachers at my school were starting to think I was slacking, even though none of these paperwork problems were my fault. It was good to know that they had gotten some positive feedback from the students to let them know I'm a serious and dedicated co-worker.

Anyway, I'm excited. And I'm also glad I have another week to plan. With twelve classes to teach per week, with all different levels and, in the end, something like 200 names to learn, I think I'll have my work cut out for me. But I feel ready for it.

No. I also help old ladies get stuff of the high shelves in the grocery store, ask tourists if they need help finding streets, and generally try to make waiters and waitresses jobs more pleasant by being a friendly and easygoing customer. But the fact of the matter is that sometimes in life you have to be mean. It's been a hard road travelled to get to the point where I can say that without flinching.

And sadly, in France, the power of The Bitch is even more important than back in the States. On the other side of the Atlantic, niceness can occasionally get you somewhere. Here, it only gets you screwed.

So recently, I've embraced The Inner Bitch. I don't know what it is, but all my life, I thought I should keep her locked up in the very depths of my soul, never letting her out unless absolutely necessary. Maybe I thought people would fear that, deep down, I'm not nice (oh no!). Or that, possibly, I have a slightly dark side (God forbid!). And even worse, that maybe my niceness isn't 100% genuine, 100% of the time (gasp!). But the truth is, you know what? Deep down, I know I'm a good person, despite my dark (ok, slightly gray) side. And plus, nobody is 100% nice 100% of the time. The only people like that are those who have scary, plastic smiles painted on their faces and host morning talk shows. I'm not like that. And anyway, who really gives a shit about coming across as being nice? I'd much rather come across as any of a host of more wortwhile adjectives: elegant, phenomenal, hilarious, together, badass. Anything more enticing than "nice."

But moreover, what I've come to realize in the last two days is that, WOW, that Inner Bitch of mine can be pretty effective when she wants to. I finally got pushed to my limits (and believe me, I give a lotta leeway in these sorts of things) when it came to my job, after getting pushed around a fair amount. Today, after weeks of waiting for a response from The Powers That Be, I finally got down and dirty, leaving a pretty pissed off message on a certain someone's answering machine. Only hours later, I got a call-back. And sure, it was full of excuses, and yeah, it was all bullshit, but the fact of the matter is that I know it was my Inner Bitch who brought forth the immediate reaction from my boss. If I hadn't let The IB out of her cage, I think I'd still be quietly whimpering at home, wondering why I wasn't getting the respect I deserve.

So I'm gonna make a concentrated effort to let The Inner Bitch out more often. If I feel her knocking at the door, I'm just gonna open it and watch her strut, shaking her ass on the way. We'll see what kind of havoc ensues.

And now, as I like to be on a first-name basis with all things in my life (my plants, my former coffee machine, the bums on my street, various parts of my body), I think the Inner Bitch needs her own name, especially considering she and I are buds now. Any suggestions?

Ay, but they're a nice lot. The 'rents and I visited the city and saw the sights this weekend, and although Dublin is a nice enough place, most of our energy was spent just enjoying one another's company and making fun of each other. That's true family fun. Mom's on crutches, which made movement a bit more difficult, but I don't think anybody seemed to mind: we were all on the same wavelength as to how much of an effort we really wanted to put into sightseeing. I was grateful for that, because, really, I didn't feel like hanging out in museums or the Guiness brewery, although both were options. Instead, we got coffee, wandered (hobbled, in Mom's case) around for a bit, bought some Irish goods, ate a lovely dinner, and called it a day. I guess I'm getting old, but I consider that to be a fabulous way to spend a Saturday in a new city. Sunday was equally as pleasant, although cut short because we had early evening flights to make.

I had just started getting into the relaxed pace of vacationing with my parents when I had to return to Paris. Upon arrival, I learned that:

1. I have to be at my first day of work tomorrow at 9.30. I haven't prepared a lesson yet, and I think I'll pretty much be winging it come tomorrow morning.

2. Someone killed himself today along the train tracks that would have taken me into the city from the airport. So instead I had to wait around for a whole lot longer in order to catch the overcrowded Air France shuttle bus. It's four euros more and takes twice as long, but ach... had to be done.

3. I have so much Arabic to prepare for Friday I think I'm flipping out! And I'm not really the type to flip out about homework! Our teacher sends us homework via email. Whoa nelly. I missed class on Friday (to take an afternoon flight to Dublin) and man, now I'm waaayyy behind.

So, for all the relaxation and good a nice weekend with my parents did me, it's back to the grind tomorrow morning.

The good thing is that I can now tell my English students that they shouldn't worry so much about pronouncing their "th"s anymore. They can just pretend they're Irish and say them as "t." No questions asked. That takes some of the pressure off me now, doesn't it?

Me: I'm sorry?
Her: I said, "This class is totally pointless."
Me: Yeah.
Her: We're not learning anything in it.
Me: (That's funny, I feel like we are) Yeah, well, we've been going over some things a little bit too much. Just circling around the same points from time to time.
Her: I only come in case I might miss something, but frankly, I don't feel there's been anything to miss. This class is worthless.
Me: (Did she even hear what I said?) Yeah, I dunno.
Her: Absolute crap, I tell you! It's just such a stupid, stupid class.
Me: (She's actually kinda scary) Well, the section is pretty good.
Her: Yeah, you're right. But the lectures are dreadful. Have we learned anything? I mean, really, have we? It's just amazing how bad this class can be for such a reputable program. I'm totally shocked.
Me: I just hope they're prepping us for the exam.
Her: But that's what I mean!! They haven't gone over bblaq qod sgoin qlksndg qoinblckn (I've stopped listening at this point, just nodding and making approving grunting noises) qljgqkdg...
Me: Yeah.
Her: And they're not doing anything on qlnkgqoi lqknboqin lqnksdgoqigd. And absolute nothing having to do with lkqnq oinqdsglkn.
Me: Yeah.
Her: I mean, how are we ever going to pass the CAPES?*
Me: Oh, you're doing the CAPES?
Her: Yeah. Of course. That's why I'm here.
Me: Really?
Her: Yeah... (confused).
pause
Her: This is the CAPES class, no?
Me: No.
Her: It isn't?
Me: No. It's French linguistics.
Her: Oh my.

She gathered up all of her shit and left. But she must have really wondered why I was nodding my head and saying "Yeah" so much, when obviously I had no idea what the hell she was talking about. Actually, I had started getting a little worried that I hadn't been understanding my class this whole semester, because she had been rattling on and on about something having to do with the etymological breakdown of the word habiter. Glad to know I'm on the ball after all.

*The CAPES is an exam that Frenchies take to become teachers. I think.

The Boy makes fun of me and says I am supporting someone who doesn't stand a chance. But I figure, it's better to go out on a limb with an unexpected and surprisingly successful candidate than to go with a more mild "safe bet" like Clark. The only way Bush is going to get out of office is if someone is seen as radically opposed to his stance, and Clark is too near to the center to do so.

But, it's not just about getting Bush out of office, although, sure, that's pretty damn important. I actually find myself nodding my head with Dean everytime I've listened to one of his speeches, seen him on "60 Minutes," read about his position in the paper. I like the way he presents controversial issues, and the way he lays down the law on, say, abortion ("I will unflinchingly defend a woman’s right to choose against those who would take away this right.") or gay rights/marriage ("I will work to expand equal rights to same-sex couples and ban workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation, strengthen federal protections against anti-gay violence, give federal employees the right to name same-sex partners as beneficiaries, remove bias from our immigration laws, and end the military’s 'Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell' policy."). He has a lot of other good stuff to say, go see for yourself.

I like the idea of Americans, who had never before been politically involved, coming together to oust the greedy bastard currently in office. It may be a long-shot, but to me it feels a helluva lot better than just shrugging my shoulders (I kid you not, I just wrote mistakingly wrote "shoulders" as "soldiers") and saying, "Well, Bush is going to win anyway, so there's no point." Even if Dean fails, it's better to have made the effort than to have given in. If anything, it'll be nice to see that there are other Americans out there who want to get that dumbass out of office.

I'm going to my first meet-up in December in Paris. I've never been very politically involved, but I feel this time, something needs to be done. Hopefully I'll be able to meet up with some Dean supporters Stateside while I'm home for Christmas.

**Note: I must be more excited about all of this than I realized, cause I just burned my first loaf of zucchini bread in over 15 years of making it. I can't believe it. I also can't believe that I can say I have been making something for over 15 years. I feel old. And like a bad cook.

1. This is not his house and
2. I'll answer back by saying something really average like, "Ok, that's totally fine with me. I was just wondering, though, did you manage to pay the phone bill we got last week?" in English, and he'll respond with a simple, "Shit."

That's how our attempts have gone over the years. I've also put together lesson plans for him, sat down with him with books, tapes, whatever... but really, we can't help it. I'm not his teacher, and we're used to speaking in French together. Old habits die hard.

Plus, I think it's frustrating for him. He has a really hard time with verbs, mainly with problems of when to use which tenses and forgetting proper endings, so he often says things like, "I going." or "I'm say you" (for, "I'm telling you") and so on.

Which is why, yesterday, our breakthrough was so extraordinary. He was listening to yet another African singer (Koffi Olimode), and he insisted on yet again going through the 8-minute-long song in Lingala, translating line by line so that I could appreciate the beauty of Koffi's words (I think some of that beauty must be getting lost in translation). I noticed some arbitrary pattern in the verbs, and, fascinated, I started asking him questions about Lingala. After a lot of talking and translating and laughing and comparing, we were surprised to see how many verb structure similarities there are between his language and mine.

Note: to say "his language" is a little deceptive, mainly because he has four mother tongues. There are two national languages in the Congo (French and Lingala) and then he speaks two regional languages as well, Lari and Kitouba. And he seems like he's most comfortable in Lari (his mother's native tongue, and the language that all of his childhood friends in Paris speak with him) and French, but he argues that Lingala is the most worthwhile. It's spoken in both Congos (the DRC and Congo-Brazzaville) and apparently even spreads to certain parts of Angola.

So, given the newly-discovered resemblance between our two languages, and my general obsession for all things language-oriented, we ended up sitting down and putting our heads together for a few hours to figure out the overall structure of verb tenses. That's when you know you've got somebody really special: when you spend three or four hours talking verbs. It was an enlightening experience for him, as he has never sat down and thought much about the language; he's just simply spoken it all his life. Much like most Americans do with English.

It was a helluva lot of fun. And, via his exploration and my discovery of the language, we both learned something new. He managed to clarify some of the fuzzier parts of English verbs (like the difference between "I eat." and "I am eating" - something that trips up anyone that tries to compare English to French), as well as the purpose of certain endings ("ing" and so forth). I, on the other hand, now know how to say, in Lingala, the following:

- I sleep. I'm going to sleep. I'm about to go to sleep. I am sleeping. I was sleeping. I slept (variations on all of these sentences for he/she, it, you, we, and they)
- The above sentences with I eat. I leave. I go. I speak. I can. I want. I shit.

Notice, of course, that I have no understanding of any nouns, and that I have instead just gone straight to the verbs. The nouns'll come. I'm excited. I don't think I'll be fluent or anything, but it's a REALLY easy language to learn. Very straightforward with unbelieveably simple phonetics. Just the way I like 'em.

Mainly, though, I think it's just fun for the two of us to discover the others' language via his/her own. It's really groovy. And makes for Good Quality Together Time, too.

Of course, The Boy got really excited at the idea of teaching me as well, and we've decided that he'll teach me Lingala and I'll teach him more English, and we'll see where it takes us. He really hates learning foreign languages, but I think that teaching me about his language is a whole different ball game. And also, he had never learned English via Lingala, he had always learned it while trying to make the not-quite-right connections between French and English. We've both agreed that he should drop that technique, and instead use either Lingala or Lari (which apparently follows the same verb structure, roughly) to get a better grasp on English. In The Boy's case, he has the words, he just doesn't know how to use them. Hopefully Lingala will help him get them organized in his head. And hopefully I'll get to learn a lot, too, in the process.

We're both very excited about it. Me especially, because I can never seem to get him as interested or fascinated by languages as I am. I can blab on and on about morphemes and phonemes or Prodrop vs nonprodrop languages, and I inwardly know that he doesn't give two shits. But with Lingala, he's actually interested and wants me to learn, and enjoys figuring out the "code" behind a language he has spoken his entire life.

The proof: we just bought a Lingala grammar guide.

Along the same lines, in my linguistics class, we're learning how to analyze languages structurally. That is, if given a page of quotes from one language, and translated into French, are we able to come up with a few grammatical certainties about the language? For example, how does one know if a word is in its plural form or not? How many different plural forms are there? What are some different verb endings? Can you identify any prepositions?

This sounds easy but it isn't, necessarily. In our latest example, we were given these two sentences and had to figure some things out:

Ibibiindi byiiza byaa Peetero biri he?
(Where are Peter's pretty vases?)

and

Ikibiidndi kinini cyaa Peetero kiri hariiya?
(Peter's big vase is over there."

Do you see how fun that can be? It's like a huge logic puzzle. I've got a whole bunch of 'em. I get really excited for this class every week because it's just so interesting to me. But you know what? It's even more fun to do it with a live example at home.

I'm a nerd. But maybe I'll just one day be a quintilingual nerd, and then you'll all be jealous.

And on that note, I'm already thinking ahead for my master's thesis (not due for another year and a half, mind you). Why not work on Lingala? I've seen how much literature there is about it out there. Judging by the looks of amazon.com, there ain't much.

Na kei!