Eeengleesh?

I'm back in the States now, and slowly getting my English back. While losing my French. I guess my brain doesn't want me to function really well in two languages. When in France, my English comes out funny. Now this is not like all those phonies who spent their semester abroad in France and come back speaking English with a French accent. Mine was fine up until recently. Or so I thought - it's probably been steadily declining over the five plus years I've spent in the country. And working with mainly Brits at the university has my English even more confused. I use the present perfect far too much, have trouble getting the words "college", "vacation" and "backyard" out of my mouth, and even feel like my intonation is all wacked out. So I thought, a nice trip alone back in the States, surrounded by good ol' American speakers 24-7, should help. It shure has, but when I talked to Paul over the phone after a week of Frenchlessness, it came out all funny. I asked him if I sounded funny to him, but he didn't seem to notice. Maybe he was just being nice so I didn't have a fit about it. I thought my accent seemed contrived, and I forgot how to say some stuff.

So I guess my brain's only big enough for one language. Now which one shall I choose...

procrastinating again! but almost done. i only have one thing left to turn in, then have to tackle grading which is due friday... but hey, me, worry?

found out last week that paul's going to paris. next monday. his boss and the director of the local branch of his company quit, so he's got sort of a promotion, but has to go to paris for 6 months for training. that means i'll have to move into our new place more or less by myself, which is a lot less exciting than moving in together, even if he will be around on the weekends.

but just one more month at his parents' house! what a celebration we will have, very very soon.

I thought it would be perfect. My flight left at 10am, so I could get up at a decent hour, I had just enough time to change planes in Francfort and then had a direct flight to Denver, arriving at 4pm.

Except that there's a blizzard raging in Denver right now and the airport is closed.

What is fortunate is that for once they were on top of things in Marseille and knew this miraculously at the check-in desk this morning. I was sent to the Lufthansa desk, where the two agents were furiously typing and phoning for the few other unlucky souls. An American girl, here for a year abroad and accompanied by her French host parents, kept exclaiming, "Je deteste la neige". The agent offered her a flight to Albuquerque, and a French couple at the next desk who got the same deal offered her a seat in the rental car they would then take to drive to Denver. Surprising for French people but they do surprise me like that sometimes. So when it got to me, I asked if they had room for another, and they said, well, sorry, there's already four of us, and with the luggage... unless we rented a minivan, ha ha! And then they left to catch their flight. So I got a ticket for Denver on Saturday. With a little luck the airport will be open. Please.

Don't know what it is about going on my blog, but as soon as I start connecting I get this feeling of guilt and think quickly of all the other things I should be doing. Ach, who knows, maybe I should just go back to the paper diary, but I've lost mine somewhere so this'll do for the time being. Besides, I think I only wrote in my diary when I was depressed, and therefore started a never ending cycle: when I'd pick it up, I'd reread my old entries and start feeling like shit again. But here, since I am in some sense writing for an audience, I'm a lot more conscious of what I'm saying--and I like to reread it, it brings back good memories. Guess you have to have both.

This is probably the busiest I'll get this year, since I have projects to prepare for classes I'm taking, grading to do for my lectrice classes (practice and other exams), and my own exams to start worrying about. But somehow I can't make myself work any more than I am now. I spent a day and a half over the weekend doing grading and research and such, and still didn't get any Chinese done or find a definite topic for my research project.

And tomorrow... we'll be signing a compromis de vente for an apartment! A condo, I should say, apparently "apartment" doesn't sound chic enough in the States, because you only *rent* apartments. It hasn't really registered in my head yet, though. I guess since it takes a few months to go through--we've set Feb 23rd as the move-in date (already!). Paul's mom asked me if we wanted it "meublé moderne ou ancien", and when I said we had no idea yet, she exclaimed in disbelief. I wanted to say, look, I have other things to think about these days! Yea, I can't wait to be in our own place...

library duty

It's nice and quiet in the English library where I'm working so I thought I'd pop on here. It's been a while, eh? I've been feeling a bit strange the last two days--I thought I was coming down with something, until I got on the computer just now and realized it's because my left contact lense is blurry. Funny how such a small thing can mess up your whole head.

Waiting for Paul to get home from surfing at Sausset. I have a translation to work on, but why do something when you can put it off and scramble to get it done at the last minute? I've told myself that I should have it done by Monday early afternoon, so I can go into town and work on the apartment hunt. After we learned a couple weeks ago that the apartment that we really liked was sold, I'm less than motivated. And now that we've seen something old, with character, even the nicest of the modern stuff we've visited just doesn't do it for us.

I wonder if we made a mistake.

But it *was* a lot of money, and with no parking, plus dealing with the quotidien (taking out trash at 6am, etc)... and the terrasse wasn't easily accessible, with it's perilously steep stairway.

*sigh*

Back to the old grind...

Back from the States

... and once again full of the rush of details that I love / bug the hell out of me.

- Flight from Brussels to Chicago. The airline hostess was soo nice. She called me "hon", and for once I loved her for it. Got warm fuzzy feeling about lovely American friendliness.

- Chicago O'Hare Airport: after passing three packed chain restaurants, got annoyed at the absence of any cafés where we could sit for our 5 hour layover with a cup of tea (for me) and an espresso (for Paul).

- Same place: a bagel stand. I was in heaven.

- Ditto. Waiting to board the plane: McDonalds right next to gate. In the two hours we sat there, every single fellow passenger bought and consumed McDo food. And nobody got a salad. We finally caved in. I got a salad, it wasn't bad, actually. I also mistakenly got a large fry that was about as big as the salad. Paul's eyes popped out of his head and we had to throw away most of 'em. Oops.

- Ditto again. As we ate our McDo, an overweight lady across from us wearing a college sweatshirt and baseball cap talked loudly on her cell phone for a half an hour, about relatives apparently. As much as I didn't want to know, I didn't have much of a choice. After getting off the phone, she read some teen magazine's most embarrassing moments loudly to her teenage daughter. I send murderous messages with my eyes, but they didn't catch on.

- Home. Paul decided to buy a shock for his bike. The guy didn't have it, and offered to call a competing store, where they put it aside for him. I wanted to kiss him for his wonderful customer service.

What else was great? The eating out--Mexican and Chinese, how much you get for your money, etc. And how friendly everyone was. Yea, it's a load of crap, or marketing, as Paul noticed, how they ask how you are and say your name and all that, but I kinda liked it. Guess it was just a nice change from the stiff bonjour you get here.

I was sad to come back to France--I guess that means that I didn't spend long enough at home to let my parents on one hand and Americans on the other drive me absolutely nuts. But I do hope Paul and I can move really, really soon, because I'm starting to crack...