In which I contemplate the more serious and significant things in life

We also got our first snow the other day, which brought this question to mind, inspired, as you might imagine, by my current profession:

Who prays harder for snow days, students or teachers?

And also:

Have I officially and terminally ruined the area rug that my parents got me as part of a "new bedroom" Christmas present when I was a teenager in NY by leaving it thrown over the back fence for the last month, ever since I came home from trick-or-treating with my nieces and nephews on Halloween to find an inch of water on my bathroom floor and half the carpet in my bedroom, the half with said area rug covering it, totally submersed in water?

Discuss.

New Year's in California, anyone??

So two of my very best friends are getting married - not to each other :) , one day and several hundred miles apart. I'll be spending basically two straight days in the car, but I WILL be there. Wouldn't miss it!

I received the wedding invitation for one of them yesterday, and stared at the picture for a long time. And, yes, I am cheesy, but the song that was running through my head was, "Fairy tales can come true, it can happen to you" - but I wasn't thinking about me - I was thinking about the girl in the picture, my dear friend. It's been more than 2 years since she met the guy she is now engaged to, and she was impressed with him and liked him more and more as she got to know him, but he wasn't interested, for whatever reason, until just recently, even though they were SUCH good friends for so long. And when they started dating and then got engaged, it was like a miracle - she liked him for SO LONG before this FINALLY happened! And she is a FANTASTIC girl - he's a lucky guy, it just took him a while to figure it out. :)

So I just looked at the smile on her face - she looked like a little girl on Christmas morning - SO stinkin' happy! And I am happy for her, and I wonder if SHE has to pinch herself, daily :) , that this is really, finally, happening with this guy.

And the selfish side of me, which sometimes takes over :) , realizes that I'll miss her A LOT when they get married - he lives in the northwest, many hours away, and they'll live there. And I hope and trust that I will be that happy someday with the man I'll eventually marry, and I look at the smile on her face and am THRILLED for her. Fairy tales can come true, and sometimes they happen to the people who MOST deserve it.

T-shirts I saw on campus today that I enjoyed because they reminded me of my life

"Aged to perfection"

"Procrastinators unite! tomorrow"

Not sure I know what a "weekend" is.

So this weekend was crazy busy. I went to my parents' house to watch General Conference, and literally HALF of my backseat was FULL of work materials - 2 laptops, a big file box, a little set of file folders, a stack of baskets with junior high French homework to grade, and my school bag with books and materials to plan more lessons.

And none of it left the car all weekend.

erg

And please don't get me wrong - Conference was GREAT! Playing gospel bingo with the niece and nephews was...fun. ;) Being with the family was fantastic! But it was just busy.

And then yesterday I realized that, no, really, I'm sick. So I called in sick to a meeting at the junior high and a class observation at the university and basically sat on my couch all day. And it's too bad that life goes on, even when we are sick. I mean, I can't get a note from my mom saying, "Please excuse Mademoiselle from having to teach today. She was too sick yesterday to prepare lessons." Uh, no, it doesn't work that way. And even if I were to call in sick, I would still have to prepare the lessons for the sub.

All of which means that last night, when the drainage from my nose kept turning on and off like unto a faucet, I was up until 2am preparing for school today.

See, isn't that what weekends are supposed to be for?? Aren't they supposed to be a time to sit on your couch in your pjs and catch up on life and breathe a little and maybe do laundry, or grocery shopping or something else around the house? Well, I did that yesterday, ladies and gents, and I am glad that I did, but I am still sick, and I still need to catch up, and I'm getting tired of having every weekend s'dang FULL! I need time to breathe and absorb the fact that what I am doing IS my life, and I just don't have time for it! I think I have just gotten spoiled over the last few years of having so much of my schedule under my control, and being able to pretty much do what I wanted when I wanted. And now I have 7th graders expecting me to teach them French every other day. :)

So maybe just consider this the 2-yr-old-attitude rant of a 30-year-old woman. :) I'll get over it. :)

And now I will pack up and go to my other job.

I GOT PAID TODAY!!!

...and really, no I mean REALLY, that is enough news for a whole dang post. It has been way, way, way too long, people.

Holy crow!!

...I just realized that it has been a while since I posted, and it's not that I don't have things to say ;) but that I've been crazy-busy and unfortunately, blogging has been one thing that has dropped down on the priority list. Blogging and sleeping. Oh, and eating three meals a day. <whine>And I had been doing SO WELL at eating three healthy meals a day since I got back from France! </whine> Just gotta start again.

But, see, life goes in cycles, and I am caught in one where I don't sleep enough. But only every other night. See, I teach part-time at the junior high, which in my case means that I teach every other day. So on days like today, I get to school at 7:45am-ish, already tired and stressed from staying up too late prepping for today, and not sure if the lesson plans will work. I teach three classes (two of which are combined French 1 and French 2 - oh joy oh rapture), and then after school I go back through the lesson plans for today to update them according to what I actually did and didn't do, print and file them, clean off my whiteboards and chalkboard (I have three and LOVE it!), maybe grade some papers, and then, usually, go home. I feel like I don't have to plan my next day of lesson plans today, I mean, I'm SO tired, and after all, I have all day tomorrow, right? Well, right, except for that whole "my other job" thing. So tomorrow I'll be SO tired from today that I'll sleep in tomorrow, NOT go to my other (flexible hours) job as early as I should, and end up wasting most of the day, and finding myself at 10 o'clock at night with three lessons to plan! So then I'll stay up too late to plan them, and head to school the next day, already tired and stressed, resolving to NOT WAIT UNTIL LATE THE NIGHT BEFORE I TEACH TO PLAN MY LESSONS.

And that is pretty much my life. Except that the "other job" that I mentioned has been getting started again the last two weeks after the summer off, which means that I really DO need to get there and get things done, so the whole "sleeping in every other day" thing has GOT to end.

sigh.

And I think, "Man, I need a SECOND to breathe!" And then I have a second, and instead of planning for what I need to do that day, sleeping, or eating a healthy meal, I open a book, and several hours later I have finished it and am again kicking myself for wasting time. It would feel better, I think, if the book was substantial, but short stories by L.M. Montgomery?! PLEASE!!

So the upshot of it is that I spend about half my time so panicked that I think I am not going to survive that day, and the other half of my time wondering what I am so stressed about.

And the thesis sits on my hard drive, untouched.

sigh.

But on the upside I just figured out how to save a couple hundred dollars on health insurance this year (no this is NOT a Geico commercial), and I got to see some of my nieces and nephews TWICE this weekend, and as I was leaving on Sunday my seven-year-old namesake niece said to me plaintively, with her cheek pressed against mine, "When are we going to see each other again?"

And people, it just doesn't get much cuter than that.

Alone is a lonely place to be

Heavenly Father answers prayers! And here is how I know:

So I'm single, and usually I can deal with that ok. :) But last night I went to the apartment of one of my dear, dear girl friends, to hear about her weekend. See, this boy that she has liked for two years flew in from out of state to spend the three-day weekend with her, and FINALLY, after two years of close, close friendship, initiated a dating relationship with her. :) :) :) So last night I got the dirt on the weekend, and rejoiced with her. Good times. :)

And then on the way home in my car I started to feel really lonely. See, for the last year I have had three main confidants, two male and one female. And within the last month or so, culminating with last night, all three of them got, shall we say, "attached." So even though I am happy for all three of these dear people - and I really am happy for them!! - it was a little hard last night to feel like one, two, three, bam, bam, bam, and I have lost all my geographically close people-you-go-to-when-you-can't-go-to-anyone-else- because-they-know-you-and-STILL-love-you. 'Cause when you're a girl, and your guy friends get attached, things have to change between you. And then this girl friend got attached, and I felt really alone. And I prayed and asked Heavenly Father for support.

And then today, just now, the friend that I talked to last night called, and told me that she was really glad to have been able to tell me about her great weekend and new boyfriend :) and that I was one of the people she had REALLY wanted to tell about it, and she expressed to me how much she values our friendship, and just basically reassured me that she wants us to continue to be really, really good friends. And even though as I write that it sounds so cliche, I trust her and I believe her and it was sincere, and I needed it and I cried. And after I hung up I realized that that was an answer to my prayer. And I cried again.

"I'm not dead yet!"

Brownie points if you know what movie that line is from, and DOUBLE brownie points to those who can tell me what animal is being struck against a wall in the background when that line is being said.

...but here is what has been going on in the last two weeks:

• I started my first French-teaching job ever, at a junior high.
• My sister got married on Friday.

And I think that is enough to 'splain my absence from the blogging world during that time period. :)

So now I am prepping for tomorrow's classes and gathering names of people who have offered to help me move this weekend. Good times, good times.

It's kind of crazy to have started as a "real teacher." I have been studying, talking about, reading about, and teaching about language teaching for the past, oh, six or seven years, but to be actually DOING it is a little different. I know, shocker. :) It's funny - I know and have so many different theories about how to prepare lessons for language teaching, and yet here I am, struggling to come up with what I'll do tomorrow. My mom, who also taught French, says that you "pay your dues" your first year or two, and then it gets REALLY fun after that. I don't think she means that the first year will be completely DEVOID of fun ("zero fun, sir"), but as I am designing my curriculum, and establishing my patterns and my style, this year will be a lot of work. Ready, set, GO!

Thursday afternoon

So I got an email and then a phone call today, and, while the two were not connected to each other, the combination nevertheless sent me into tears and deep "life contemplation" mode. And I am currently trying to compose a blog post about it, but it may just end up in my journal rather than on the internet, depending on how personal it gets. (I really like DYM's lingerie analogy about how much to share on a blog.) (Especially the part where she invokes the power of Greyskull.) (But I digress.)

And at the risk of posting something that could be read as really dramatic and cause my friends to overreact and call me in a panic to make sure I am not DYING (oh no, wait, that's what I did to Josh ;) ), I have a good friend, who has been an emotional outlet and strength and a "wow it's been a while since I had a friend that close and it's really nice" to me, that I feel like I need to stop depending on so much. No, that's not quite right. It's that I feel like it needs to be that we are not so close, and that we don't get closer. I've felt that since the last part of my time in France, and it makes me sad, and it hurts a bit. And the other night I had another friend over for dinner, and while talking about HER life, and about a friend that I had several years ago, I suddenly had the thought that now comforts me about this other friend. It was one of those "you realize something is true and right AS you hear it being said...by you" moments. So here it is. Get ready, it's profound. :)

Just because you are not as close to someone now as you once were doesn't cancel out all the good that they did for you.

And it sounds so simple, and it is, but thinking about the hole that this friend will leave that will somehow need to be filled in other ways and by other people, it is very comforting to me right now. People change us, friendships change us, but sometimes we only need them for a while, and then we can hold on to the lessons that we learned through and with and because of them, and let the person go so that we, and they, can grow and move on. Not that we were holding them back, per se, but just that the time is not "now" anymore. And the value is in what we learned, and what we took, and what we gave, and how it changed us.

And now this does sound really dramatic, and no, no one died, and I am fine, but I have just been thinking a lot, and, as one of my friends in France said, "Don't reflect on things too much. Reflecting too much creates distances between people." But in this case, I think it is ok.

I ate a dessert called "Death By Chocolate," but it only made me stronger.

And now you too can make this cake! You can even make it four times in a two-week time period, if you want to be like me.

Death By Chocolate Cake

Ingredients:
1 cake mix for Devil's Food cake chocolate cake
1 bag of milk chocolate chips
1 box of Cook 'N Serve chocolate pudding

Directions:
1. Make the pudding as directed on the box. (This requires 3 cups of milk and about 15 minutes.)
2. Mix the hot pudding with the cake mix powder.
3. Put the mixture in a pan (after having greased the bottom of the pan).
4. Sprinkle* the milk chocolate chips all over the cake.
5. Bake according to the directions on the cake box. (For me and my 9x13 pan, that means 35ish minutes at 350.)

And don't wimp out and get semi-sweet chocolate chips or instant pudding, people. Just follow the directions.

P.S. It's really yummy.

P.P.S. I feel morally obligated to tell you that the title of this post is not original to me. So you can stop thinking that I am really clever now.

* Do NOT attempt this if you left the bag of milk chocolate chips in your car for several hours, or even one hour, in 95 degree weather. It's, uh, hard to "sprinkle" a cake with one big ol' chocolate chip. So just go buy another bag for the cake, and dispose of the first bag as you, ahem, see fit.

The joys of today

Things that made me really happy today:

Thing #1: Lauren learned how to hyperlink!

Thing #2: The following conversation with my sister, recently returned from 11 months in China and recently (as in, 2 hours ago) reunited with her fiance who, you may have guessed, was NOT in China with her (neither of which has anything to do with the following conversation, except that since she is now in the same country as me we can have these types of conversations, or really, any conversations at all!):

Her: babble babble joy joy about the fiance being back

Me (NOT as bitter as this sounds, in fact, not really bitter at all, since I am also extremely fond of her fiance and am also very happy for both of them that they are back in the same continent, state, and town): Ok, go take your test now.

Her: Ok, can I just tell you one more thing?

Me: Sure.

Her: BOB THE BUILDER! CAN HE FIX IT? BOB THE BUILDER! YES HE CAN!

The trip home, in more ways than one

One week ago today I was picnicking and hiking in the Pyrenees, and today I am trying to convince myself that even though I have been back for five days it really is ok if I spend "one more day" in recovery mode ( i.e., reading a book) before I plunge full-speed and full-force back into my "normal" life again.

During the entire month that I was in France I thought, and told everyone, that I was coming back to the States on Wednesday the 26th of July. Because of the time change, I would leave in the morning of that day and arrive home in the evening of that same day. And since we get a half-day off from work right before we leave, I was planning on doing lots of things Tuesday afternoon - taking a MILLION pictures of friends, doing some shopping, collecting messages to bring home to a friend in the States who knows people where I was in France, etc. So Monday, which is a day off for us where I worked in France, after the morning of shopping for the picnic in the Pyrenees and before the afternoon picnic in the Pyrenees, I checked my flight plans...only to discover that I was leaving TUESDAY morning, not WEDNESDAY morning!

Mild panic ensued, but I DID go for the hike in the Pyrenees anyway, and also, with the help of my great friends, DID manage to get the major things done that I needed to so that I could make it to the train station in time for my 6am train on Tuesday.

But it was weird, you know? To think I had one more whole day, to think that I didn't have to say my good-byes yet, and then to discover that I didn't have that day and so had to say some good-byes earlier than I had thought and wouldn't even have the chance to say some of the good-byes that I wanted to say.

So I made it to Boston, but the flight from Paris had taken off so late that I missed my connecting flight. They put me on the NEXT flight out of Boston, but the computer wouldn't print the boarding pass, and even when the airline person FINALLY got a flight coupon printed out, and called the boarding gate to let them know that I DID have a valid ticket and WAS on my way, the security people wouldn't let me through without a boarding pass; the flight coupon wasn't enough. Even though they would have let me on the plane had I made it to the gate because the lady had called them to let them know I was coming, security said that I "couldn't" get on the plane without the ACTUAL boarding pass, so they sent me BACK to the desk to try AGAIN to get that printed, and while I was standing there they paged me for the flight because it was ready to take off...

erg erg

So I stayed at the Hilton. And slept in a big clean bed with a PILLOW. :) :) And took a shower WITHOUT having to wait in line, and WITHOUT my flipflops on, in a shower that was big enough to move in and in which I could control the water temperature. :) And ate salad and rolls and jumbo shrimp for dinner in the hotel restaurant and FROZE from the air conditioning. Two weeks of 100+ degree weather does weird things to your body. :) And realized that I would have rather been back in France, even with the summer heat, eating French bread and a homemade salad with my friends.

And when my body woke me up at 3 the next morning, even though I didn't have to get up until 4:30 to catch my flight, I realized that my jumbled half-awake thoughts were in French and I was glad of it, but also wondered, sadly, how long that would last, now that I was back in the States. I am glad to be back, but part of me misses the adventure, and the new friends, and the CONSTANT LEARNING that I was immersed in - of language, of culture, of geography, of politics, of human nature, of myself.

I realized with a shock, part way through my dinner in the hotel restaurant in Boston, that I had communicated effortlessly with the restaurant and hotel staff. I had forgotten how EASY it can be to speak, and listen. My French is good, don't get me wrong, but since I was TRYING so hard to improve my language skills during the month that I was in France, I listened really carefully when people spoke to me, and concentrated on the words they used and how they said what they said and how I should respond. Years ago I passed the point of having translate things in my head from English to French before I say them, but I am not to the point of being able to say, effortlessly, anything that I want to in French. There were times, during this last month in France, when I felt limited by my French, or lack thereof. A few times it was wanting to better serve the clients in the place where I worked, but mostly it was when I was wanting, so badly, to know my friends better, and to be able to share more with them of who I was, but feeling limited by my vocabulary and my inability to discuss the abstract things that make us who we are. So I had WORKED to learn and to express myself more and more clearly, and it was WORK.

And now, in this hotel in Boston, I had listened and spoken without giving it a second thought, or even a first thought, for that matter, without concentrating on catching meaning, without planning in advance how I might need to respond to a possible question. So NOW I see the difference, and NOW I want that ease - in French. That just means next summer I'll have to stay longer. :)

So I'm not a kid anymore, they tell me.

So I'm 30, right? But I work and go to school at a university, so my peers are all college students, and younger than me, but we get along fine and have a good time and it's not a big deal. And I consider myself a "college student."

But I'm here in France, and I live in the dorms with the short-term youth volunteers, since I am a short-term volunteer myself, and all these kids that I live and work and eat and hang out with are younger than me (most are 18-23), and I'm used to that...but THEY are not. I have had a couple of the kids be REALLY surprised at my age (and then they tell me that they would have guessed that I was 21, or 25 :) ), and one of the men who lives here longterm asked me if I felt "isolated" by living up with all the kids. Uh, no, hadn't really thought of it like that. All my friends at home are the ages of the youth volunteers, so it's not a big deal to me.

But the fact that it is surprising to others that being with people so much younger than me is normal for me has caused me to reflect a LOT on who I am, and what has made me and is currently making me who I am, and why I do the things I do, and what makes us "adult." I'm with Lauren on the whole "sure that someday I'll turn into this insta-boring adult" thing, and yet the other day, because of some things that happened here, and the comments of a couple of good friends here, I thought, "have I already passed that point??" and I felt a bit panicked. And I just now remembered a comment that Josh made the week I turned 30 - I made some comment about 30 being old and boring, and he said that I wasn't but if I got that way before Friday night (the night of my big ol' party), he'd let me know. Uh, actually, please don't. I don't think I want to know.

I want to hold onto the things that make me young and that make people here think that I'm 21 or 25 :) but at the same time, it's OK if I don't want to stay up all night partying with the other kids.

Or is it? I have been thinking about WHY I do things and don't do other things - the "culture" that I am in here is SOOOOOOOoooooOOOoOo different from what I am used to!! Last night I was out with some friends, and I made a comment about not being totally comfortable where we were, and one friend said that it's just that it's different from what I'm used to. Um, yes, that is true, but is that the only reason I wasn't comfortable? And do I WANT to be comfortable in circumstances that are SO different from what I would CHOOSE for my life? I know that often FEAR keeps us from doing new things (back to that whole "getting out of the comfort zone" thing), but when is it "fear of things that I am not used to" and when is it "a good decision that I have chosen to make in my life"?

It's a pretty interesting train of thought for me, and I hope that I am different when I get back and that it's a good "I understand myself better and am more comfortable in my own skin than I was before I came here" type of different. And I hope that I remember (and record!) all these trains of thought so that I can continue to reflect on this and grow rather than just reverting back to the comfort zone that I left three weeks ago.

Weekend, blessed weekend. And also, dirt.

So I am tired. And I am sick to my stomach and have been all day long. Yuck. And I have not touched my thesis in 4 or 5 days, and I am supposed to be working on it regularly. erg

BUT!! I have clean clothes drying on the line, and we are done with work for the day, and for the week, and tomorrow is Sunday and I get to go to church, and the next day is Monday and we don't work. :) :) :) :)

It's really interesting to me the things that we can force our bodies and minds to do. For example: As I mentioned, I am sick. I feel like I have spent about half the day running back and forth to the bathroom. (Don't worry, that's all the detail you are going to get. :) ) But I also worked la caisse, the cash register, from 10am to 6pm (with a break from 12 to 1:45), which means that I was on my feet that whole time, moving, interacting with customers, carrying things, taking money and trying REALLY hard to understand if people said anything to me besides "here's my money" - almost non-stop. But I did it. :) I didn't die. :) But any time there was a pause in the stream of customers and I slowly and stiffly sat down for a second, I thought, "OH. MY. GOSH. I can't believe I feel this gross" and I would decide if I should run to the bathroom right then or if I could wait. But then the next customer would approach, and I would be on my feet again, ready to go.

And yet, even after doing that all day long, and finding that I had the strength to go on (that sounds SO dramatic!! good grief - it was just the cash register at a thrift store!), I have pretty much NO desire to do anything remotely active tonight. All I want to do is read my book and sleep. And not be sick. But all day I was able to manage. Huh.

Plus, let's talk about dirt for a second. I, uh, am a little bit of a fanatic when it comes being clean, and especially about washing my hands, especially after, say, using the bathroom. (Yes, I have a sister who is a doctor, and that might have something to do with it, but I prefer to think that if what it takes to get into heaven is clean hands and a pure heart I just like to be half-way there pretty much all the time.) Here, tho, they don't have the sink, or the soap (when there is any), in the same room as the toilet itself, and in the case of where I work, the sink with the soap is totally across the parking lot from the toilet. And you walk past the window to the boss' office to get from one to the other. So with all those times that I went back and forth today, I was really afraid that the boss was going to come out and ask me to explain to him, in French, of course!, exactly WHY I had to wash my hands 9 million times today. And really, I don't think he would want the details any more than you do.

Ok, but it's not just that! I am dirty - pretty much all the time. I lift boxes of books, handle money, carry piles of used clothing all day. And those are the CLEAN days, when I am not destroying furniture! And it's humid here, so I pretty much feel moist and dirty and smelly all the time. It's, uh, great. And you who know me even a little in real life know that I am the girl who always folds her towel the same way so she won't get dust on the side where she dries her face. (Go ahead and laugh. I'll still be here when you get back.) So, uh, it's an adjustment.

BUT - interestingly enough, not as much of an adjustment as I had thought. (See also: the things we can force ourselves to do.) So I am dirty. And there have been days when I have not washed my face at all, where I have slept in my clothes and then woken up the next morning, put on more deoderant, and gone on with my day, in those same clothes. I will NOT, however, CHOOSE to do that when I get home. I just don't allow myself to think about it, and somehow, it is okay, filthy-hand-towels-in-the-office and no-more-hand-soap-in-the-dorm-bathrooms notwithstanding.

Ok, now I'm shuddering with grossiosity. Enuf. I'm gonna go drag my sorry sick dirty self to dinner, and then, as soon as possible, bed.

Blog out.

The "things" that define us

So here's the thing I realized yesterday, and today - I miss being around people that I TRUST, people who really KNOW me and who I trust. It is fun to get to know all these people, and it is an interesting study in human nature :) , but I miss the security of people that I trust.

But I also think that it is not bad to get out of my comfort zone. And let me tell you, lots of stuff here IS. The work is not that big of a deal anymore, and the French is getting better and better, but it is the whole "friends" thing that is throwing me for a loop a bit. It is interesting to try to figure out how to trust people and who to trust. I am a fairly trusting person, and I want to believe the best of everyone, but it is a bit weird when people do things that are EXACTLY against the rules of the community that is feeding them and putting a roof over their heads. I don't get it!

So there are things that are helping me get to know myself better, but also things where I think, "This is NOT me! How did I get into this, and how can I get out of it?!" It's kinda weird.

I feel very disconnected from everything that is familiar to me, and that is kind of scary. I guess I need to figure out who I am when the "things" I am used to - good friends, family, clean clothes ;) - are NOT around. I guess I never thought I would say that - we don't typically think of friends and family as "things," and I would like to think that I am secure enough in my self-image and all that to be okay, but I DO always say that relationships with people are very important to me. Too important, perhaps? I mean, REALLY, how much do we define ourselves by what we are around?

And here's the other thing. This is a very transcient society. We get new youth volunteers almost every day, and some go home every now and then. I have only been here for ONE WEEK, and already the group is REALLY different. And so we adapt. We move our clothes of the spare bed, and make room. And some of us become friends, and some of us don't. And life goes on, and you're only "the new one" for a day at most, and often only a few minutes.

I'm not sure what my conclusion is to all of this. I need to be MORE secure in who I am, that I think I have learned. And I have a CHOICE as to who I become. And THAT is AWESOME.

I sort the soda cans.

And let me tell you, it can get pretty gross. There was a rotten, fuzz-covered cigarette butt on one of them. Or maybe it was a cocoon or web of some insect. But really, either way - YUCK! :)

So I am in France! Woohoo!! :) I am working and living at a place where people can donate their old stuff, and we sort it and get it ready to sell. And if it is not sellable (is that a word? I don't speak English OR French very well right now, apparently), then we get rid of it. And that is where I come in. :)

We get to choose which part of the company we work in, and for the last three days, I have been working in the metal shop. It's fun - we destroy stuff! No, really. They bring us stuff that can't be sold, for whatever reason, and we dismantle it, putting the wood parts in the (HUGE) fire pit, where a fire is burning all day long, separating out different kinds of metals for recycling, and throwing out the rest. So today I tore apart a futon-couch thing, a knick-knack shelf thing from the 70's, and a baby stroller, among other things. And the other day, I sorted soda cans. See, you probably didn't know this, but some are made of different metals from others. So I went through two bags of cans, testing them with a magnet so I would know which ones to throw into which recycling pile. Good times. :)

And there are people here from all over the world. Yesterday we had a bunch of new volunteers arrive - a guy from North Ireland (HP fans? it's Oliver Wood's accent - oh my gosh, I LOVE it! and I have to be careful to pay attention to WHAT he says, not just HOW he says it ;) ), 4 girls from Poland, and 5 girls from Korea. And in the metal shop I work with a Frenchman, a Romanian, and a Swede.

And a 19-year-old Frenchman is in love with me. :) He's a little cutie, and his flirting really makes me laugh. He kept coming back to the metal shop, just to say hi and tease me about being a beautiful American, and the Romanian said to me, in front of the French guy, "He only comes here because you are here. Before you were here, he never came here." And the French guy totally took it and agreed that I was why he was coming there, and he made a funny little comment about how he and I should be together, because, he said, "American women are beautiful, and French men are handsome." And I laughed and teased him right back, and after he left I translated the conversation for my Swedish friend who was there working, since his French isn't good enough for him to follow conversations. And he said, "It's not true that ALL American women are beautiful," and I said, "Not ALL Frenchmen are good-looking, either," and he said, "No, you have to go to Sweden for that."

And I about fell over laughing. It was A.W.S.O.M.E. And he said it with such a straight face! Way to go, Fredrick!

Anyway, so things are good. And fun. And good for my beautiful American ego. ;) And I am making lots of friends, and having some deep conversations, and some conversations about French grammar and some about English grammar, and I am also doing some deep thinking, some of which I just may share with you, after I get it all settled in my head and heart.

But now, I am going to go take pictures of some real, live French people watching their team play in the World Cup. Allez les bleus!

Sneaking around

Ok, so I am leaving for France on Monday at 1pm, and it's Saturday at midnight, and I have had a busy day. Even though I have only been up for 12 hours. Whatever.

I made a HUGE list this morning of all the things I needed / wanted to do before leaving for France, and I really have gotten most of them done. That is a good feeling. Of course, that one task, you know, the one that reads a little something like this:

1. Send complete draft of thesis to committee

Yeah, that one - it's not done. And, let's be honest, I AM disappointed about that. That means that I will REALLY be teaching myself this next month in France that I CAN work all day long and then in the evenings, too. And while that will be good preparation for this next year of teaching at two different institutions, I was really hoping to NOT have to work quite so hard in France. But alas.

OK, but let's look on the bright side - I did get TONS done today.

And now that we've got that out of the way, let's look on the not-so-bright side. Meaning the "sometimes I am not so bright" side.

So I have this GREAT aunt and uncle and big ol' family of cousins who live in town and who don't mind if I do laundry at their house and who don't mind if I know where the spare key is. :) And yesterday my aunt and cousins were talking about my cousins spending time at their grandparents' house over the next two days while both parents are out of town (my aunt left this morning and my uncle gets back tomorrow night), so when I realized tonight that I needed to do one more load of laundry before the France trip I thought

nice, good, kind generous family that loves me + no one home right now + spare key = available washer and dryer = HOORAY!!

So I went on over. And then on the way over I thought, "Wait, why would my cousins be sleeping at their grandparents' house? They are old enough to be home without their parents."

So imagine me, at 11ish at night, desperate to do laundry, pulling into the driveway of a totally dark house where I think, but I am not sure, that there are four kids sleeping. And imagine me sneaking around in the garage, using the little tiny flashlight on my keychain to search for the spare key, and imagine me HOPING that I don't wake them up as it takes me THREE TRIES to get the door unlocked. And imagine me sneaking around this dark house, NOT turning on any lights so that I won't wake them up. I know this house pretty well, so not turning on lights was not that big of a deal, I mean, I know where the furniture and the stairs and the laundry room are, right? Well, ok, except that I forgot that they rearranged some furniture (read: stuck it all in the laundry room) because they were getting the carpet cleaned. So I got safely to the laundry room, and then turned on the light - and then realized that yes, I WAS going to have to climb over all that stuff, carrying my laundry basket. But, hey, I'd made it this far, and I needed to get the laundry done.

So imagine me shleping my laundry over and around all the furniture that would fit in the laundry room, starting the load washing, shleping myself back over and around all that furniture, sneaking back through the dark house, sneaking back through the garage by the light of my tiny flashlight to put the spare key back, and sneaking back to my car.

OK, now imagine me doing all that sneaking with the back of me, from my waist to the top of my calves, TOTALLY SOAKING WET.

'Cause those automatic sprinklers in the front lawn? Yeah, they move.

And I feel like there is what my boss would call "one of life's little lessons" in all of this. And for those of you who missed it, here it is:

All you people who sneak into your relatives' houses in the middle of the night to do laundry, or really for ANY reason, and you notice the sprinklers on in the front yard, BE WARNED. Just because they weren't close enough to get you wet when you opened the car door to get out doesn't mean that they won't, 10 seconds later, be close enough to SOAK YOU TO THE SKIN as you get your laundry, or anything else, out of the back seat.

So there you have it. I finished out the night feeling like a genius. A not-so-bright, not-so-dry, genius. I wonder how you say that in French? I think I'll just head on over there and find out...

One Arabic speaker, please!

Ok, so I just reread Lisa's email, in the process of responding to it, and she made a comment about how the Lord really looks out for us.

Case in point:

I have, as I'm sure you can imagine, LOTS to do before I leave for France on Monday. So I have put in more hours at work this week than in previous weeks (which is good for the bank account but not for the thesis), finishing up some projects for my boss, who is also in France, but whom I will not see while I am in France. One of these projects involved aligning Arabic and English subtitles for a movie. I, uh, don't speak Arabic, so this has been, shall we say, fun?, for me to do. :) Today, as the penultimate step to this being DONE, I needed an Arabic speaker to proofread a couple of subtitles for me. I went to an office where there are usually a couple of Arabic speakers - both gone. I went to another building, where there are offices for more Arabic speakers. All gone.

So I walked up and down a few hallways, hoping to find someone who spoke Arabic. No dice. And it was during this process that I thought, "Heavenly Father, please help me to find an Arabic speaker." I just felt like this has been such a PROCESS, and I really wanted to be done with it today so that I could move on to other things tomorrow, and all I needed was ONE PERSON who spoke Arabic. I mean, c'mon, is that too much to ask? :)

Anyway, this is becoming a much longer story than it was in real life, because in real life it was really simple, and subtle. I couldn't find an Arabic speaker, and was leaving the building, and then! There, waiting for the elevator, was this guy named Steve (not Steve, unfortunately, or fortunately, I guess, since he speaks Spanish but not, I think, Arabic), who used to work in an office that we've done work with, and who also used to be the roommate of a friend of mine, and I said, "YOU speak Arabic!" and he said, "no," and I turned to walk away, and he said, "...I am studying Arabic." And I was like, "None of that false modesty with me, dude, I need your skillz!" and I got in the elevator with him and he checked what I needed checked in the Arabic text on the way up the elevator and down the hall. And he DID find an error that needed fixing, and I got it fixed, and voilà! Prayer answered, problem solved!

(Note how I slipped that French word right in there. This is how Reese Witherspoon got into Harvard Law, and this is how I got a job teaching French. Take note, people.)

And as I was leaving the building, after Steve proofread the Arabic for me, I felt a gentle nudging reminder that Heavenly Father had just answered my quick, simple, seemingly unimportant prayer. I asked for an Arabic speaker and I found one. It really was that easy. And even though I have kind of made light of it here a little bit, it was a neat moment for me when I recognized that answer to prayer. It made me feel like He is just waiting for us to include Him in our lives, decisions, and tasks, waiting for us to ask so that He can pour out help for us. I mean, really, that was so easy! I think that we are the limiting factor when it comes to how much He is a part of our lives. It made me think. And it also made me say "thank you," which is another thing that I think I neglect in my life.

Why I think blogs are fun

My dear friend Lisa just sent me an email, telling me that she had recently updated herself on my life by reading my blog, and added, on the end of her email, "Enjoy your week and remember to eat more than sweet rolls and otter pops."

:) I LOVE it!!

I mean, I would never think to tell anyone that all I was eating was sweet rolls and otter pops, but...now you all know! And see? Isn't that fun?!

Ok, maybe it's just me, but, uh, I thought that was a really fun comment. And this blog is, after all, all about me. So there.

Thanks, Lisa! Love you, too! :)

World of Warcraft and the Princess Bride

So the other day a friend of mine told me that his roommate, another friend of mine, has been staying up really late to play a certain video game. So the next time I talked to this friend, I teased him about staying up late to play, and he got a little bugged. Apparently lots of people had been teasing him lately about that, and he'd about had enough.

And during our conversation he said, "When people bug me about it it just makes me want to do it more," and that reminded me of the show "The Fantasticks," and the song in there about "We did it 'cause they said no." Or something teenagey-rebelious like that.

And it made me think about how often we do things that we KNOW are not in our own best interest and that we KNOW won't make us happier, or healthier. Take me, for example: 'K so I added this thing on my sidebar about what books I am reading and have just finished reading, and you'll notice that The Princess Bride is on the "just finished this" list. Great book! But the point is that even if I had had the "currently reading" list up before today, The Princess Bride would never have been on that list. Here's what happened...

I put the movie of The Princess Bride in on Thursday night because I needed to format my appendixes, and that is not an activity that requires actual brain power, so I thought putting in a movie would keep me sitting in one place to do it, and if I put in a movie that I have seen literally 9 million times and can quote large sections of then I wouldn't actually have to watch it, and so I would get lots of appendix-formatting done.

This worked reasonably well.

But then I felt the need, after watching this great movie, to, yes, you guessed it, read the book. That night. Until I literally passed out at 2am. And then finished reading it in about 15 minutes after my shower on Friday. (And no, I am NOT going to tell you what time that was on Friday. I would like to maintain some semblance of self-respect.)

But the point is that earlier this week I was so stressed out I thought I was not going to survive. And I still have all those things to do, so I fight hard to keep myself from completely freaking out from stress...and then I stay up REALLY late and sleep in REALLY late so that I can read the book of the movie that I just watched, and which I was only watching as an aid to getting some work done.

Genius.

And I know that if I read my scriptures first thing in the morning then I will feel better and have a more productive day, and yet I don't always do that. And I have been told that eating sugar weakens your immune system and since I am sick that is currently the equivalent of "kicking my immune system while it's down" and yet I am going to have one of Jenn's homemade cinnamon rolls for lunch. And I know that getting exercise will help me to deal with my stress better than will reading Calvin and Hobbes and eating Otterpops. And yet...

It's funny, because sometimes when I am around a child who is whining to try to get what he or she wants, I think, "Someday that child will grow up and realize that that is not the way to get what he or she wants. The way to get that would be to ask nicely and calmly" or whatever. But you know what? it applies to me to. Someday I will grow up and realize that if I really do want to feel physically good every day then I will go to bed early, and eat three healthy meals, and exercise...yada yada yada, I know, I know, I know.

So I have resolved to try harder to do what I know I should do, not "should do" in the sense of obligation, necessarily, but to do what I know will help me feel healthy and be happy and feel good about myself. We'll see how it goes. I think it's called "self-discipline."