Happy New Year, a month late....

Well the semester is back in full swing now, I've officially been back and teaching for the last week. I am quite pleased to report though that this semester I am teaching a much less heavy course load, now allowing me to have lots of free time, to which I have of course translated into learning! (wow, I want to learn and study with my free time..who knew?) I have decided this semester to follow several of my colleague's courses; I am taking a 2nd year grammar french/english class (this is very good for me, as most of the time, even though my french has gotten a lot better, I am afraid I still sound like an ignorant foreigner trying to communicate) I also had my new favorite class for the first time yesterday, translation! It is a french to english or english to french translation class and I am taking it with my good friend Marica (another lectrice and my american soulmate I have come to find in France) and it is taught by our friend Charlotte (a Frenchie who you would think is actually american by her accent, I couldn't believe it when I found out she was French...she's so good it makes me want to cry, I found myself spending the latter part of the class contemplating the size of her brain...) Finally the last class I am taking is a Russian class. This my friends, is the trial of my week, to learn 3rd foreign language as taught in your 2nd foreign language will make you head want to explode, just thought i'd put that out there for you. So far I have discovered I have a knack for translation, that I really suck at grammar and that Russian, may not be as hard as I thought.

The end of the christmas holidays wound down with a bang as I ended up going mano e mano again with my french landlady...it's a long complicated drawn out story that ends with me, and most likely Siobhan (my other flatmate) moving out of the flat. (If you would like an in depth email as to why I am happy to send you one). However since said experience with said landlady, I have found myself more involved with people watching here, and taking note of all the little idiosyncrasies that these people don't realize are just strange as hell (well, to me anyway). For example, you have at your disposal three types of French students, those that we call "achievers" that sit in the front row, answer most of your questions, actually want to speak English and do speak english all through class. They generally shower, wear a fresh pair of clothes and have at least brushed their teeth before coming to class equipped with at least a pencil and paper. Then we have our "tourists," they are what I like to think of as the hippies of the group, they shower a lot less, and their style in clothing (as french young people are either jcrew or hippied out with MC Hammer pants that I really thought would never exist again...I'm not kidding, and in the ugliest colors you've ever seen) they tend to answer some of the questions, but thoroughly make you want to bathe yourself just by looking at them and pull that ugly piercing out of whatever inappropriate part of their face that its attached to. About 3/4 of the "tourists" end up flunking out and never coming back. That leaves my least favorite kind of students "Beavis and Butthead." Those two jackasses who like to sit in the back row, talk all the time, pretend they don't speak english, and mock your french when you try to explain what you already said in English. Generally you have to emotionally abuse these students, at least that's what it feels like to me when I single them out in front of a room of 30, make them stand up, move seats, remain standing speak to me in English outloud while I ask them if they remember who the professor is, let them sit back down mortified and then end up kicking them out five minutes later because they still won't shut the hell up. I really am going to have to re-learn appropriate teaching methods when I get back to the states, as most of the time here I feel like a lion tamer with a long whip...ha, I am the Indiana Jones of students...or something like it.

The end of the holidays here passed much too quickly as usual and I very soon found myself with LOTS to do and not a lot of time. I corrected over 360 exams in a little under two weeks (and drank copious amounts of beer to go with it, because when you ask a 1st year law student what the difference is between a red state and a blue state in the US and get the response that the "two colors represent the EYES of the world" it really makes you want to cry). My personal favorite, as Marcia and I were both grading our exams and sharing our favorite mess ups, was when she asked a question about Thoreau's influences (as we had learned about civil disobedience) and one of her responses cited Ghandi as one of THOREAU'S major influences...not that I'm a genius here, but I'm pretty sure several decades passed between those two, and as far as I know, Ghandi didn't have a time machine....oh my. I do hope that some of this is making you laugh, as it made us laugh till we cried, which is good, as you need a sense of humor when marking franglais essay exams, otherwise you might just cry cry, and that's no good. However, there are those students who make up for everything in spades, and I do have to say, I had the pleasure of being invited to lunch with said favorite students this week. We chatted for two hours about everything (all in French as well...which is good for me, as the majority of French I speak, be it a lot, is with non-francophones, so switching to actual francophones at their normal speed and being able to keep up is quite an accomplishment for me, especially when there's 5 of them and one of you).

So then, these have been the happenings in the adventures of Sarah lately, not too much terribly new to report and I'm sorry it's taken sooo long for me to get another post up. Friends coming and going, parties and re-entry back to school kindof took it out of me these last few weeks. I hope everything is well back stateside and I wish you all a very good start to your new years as well.

I love you, I miss you,

Sarah

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