turbo dreams. October 29, 2008

i have been kind of stressed the last few days, for really the first time since i’ve been here. the irony of being stressed on “vacation” is not lost on me. at least one person in my académie got paid yesterday, so hopefully mine will appear soon. it would be nice to not be poor.

towards the end of november, i will be taking 3 weekend trips. i am so excited! for the weekend of my birthday, i’m going to rotterdam (holland) by car with 4 other people, and i’m going with the same person to aix-la-chapelle (germany) the second weekend in december. we have a free place to stay, so all i have to pay is 9E for gas and food/whatever while i’m there. i’m really excited to meet new people… and i decided i am going to go to lyon as i previously mentioned, and two of my favorite people here (keri and christine!) are also planning on going.  it’s nice to have these trips to look forward to (although leaving on november 28th means i have to have my 50,000 words by then!!).

mes amis à minneapolis me manquent beaucoup. beaucoup.

hella music for halloween. October 26, 2008

mr. adam puncochar has given us the gift of punchtape vol. 5, with a halloween theme. kitsune noir has the tracklist up and some artwork (and is also a blog you should check out. i especially recommend the desktop wallpaper project) and you can download the mix HERE. part 2 is my favorite (around 20 minutes in) but the whole thing is awesome.

daft punk, tegan & sara, bel biv devoe, cut copy, T-PAIN, kid cudi…yes please.

heaven. October 26, 2008

in the morning. October 25, 2008

the trains here put me to sleep almost instantaneously, and i love it. yesterday i traveled to béthune, which is southwest of lille. it’s certainly not the most happenin’ place, but it’s cute, has good friends, and was worth seeing for a day or two.

this morning i was washing my hair in the shower when i heard a woman and a man speaking (i did not, however, hear a knock or a doorbell ring). a very french woman walks past me and tells me don’t worry, don’t be scared. apparently this woman is my friend’s landlord, who dropped in for a surprise visit. and who just walked right on in without even knocking. thank god that can’t happen at home, what do you do if your landlord walks in on you naked? in the shower? for a country that seems to be very concerned about its “privacy,” it was shocking to see how little respect landlords have for their tenant’s privacy. this also occurred at the apartment of someone in lille last weekend. i was also informed by the landlord (after admitting i didn’t live there) that i was not allowed to be there. in apartments where all the charges are included, you are not allowed to have guests sleep over, shower, or do anything basically besides sit there and breathe. i am very glad i do not have to deal with this situation (although my own living situation has its own drawbacks).

london has now been penciled in for the last weekend in january, but that’s mostly for the company and hanging out since i’ve already been there. i still don’t have a clue where i will end up traveling to while i’m here, but i figure i’ll start with the bigger cities in france (except paris for now, since that’s on the list for when punchy (hopefully) comes). i’m going to try to go to lyon the first weekend in december for la fête des lumières. there are all kinds of markets and special things that go on in december for the holiday season in france/belgium and i can’t WAIT!

future life plans… October 23, 2008

i finally started teaching this week and while day 1 was not that great (is anyone’s first day of teaching good?), day 2 was much improved. although i’m sure there will be bad days, i’m glad that i like it…since being a professor is pretty much my only future life plan.

p.s. October 20, 2008

considering my angst-ridden post the other day about my previously angst-ridden desires to be a writer, my excessive amount of free time here, the fact i already joked about it and erin mentioning that november is national novel writing month, i decided to take the plunge and participate. the goal is to have at least 50,000 words by the end of november. quantity, not necessarily quality: editing comes later.

i have no idea if i will even pass the 1,000 word mark, but it could be fun. all i know is that i will be writing “literary fiction” since it focuses much less on plot than other types of fiction, but that doesn’t mean that not having some sort of plot outline is acceptable. i guess we shall see what happens…

stuck on repeat. October 20, 2008

i miss watching the leaves change in minnesota and colorado. it is just different here somehow.

on friday night, i had some friends over for dinner. can i just talk for a minute about how much i love cheese…and bread…and wine (yes, i can say i love it now)…and cheese and bread and wine together? seriously, i’m in heaven here. my reaction to foods has been better the last week or two because i’ve been eating food at home more so i have more control over the “richness” factor, which is what seems to bother me. saturday i ate a baguette with lettuce and camembert, for 3.60E, and was probably the best sandwich i’ve ever had. the cheese here is incredible, people. INCREDIBLE.

after dinner, we got some drinks and later met up with some of our british assistant friends, heading to the palace cafe. our drinks came with glowsticks again (apparently this is quite popular here). one of the first songs they played was robin s.’s “show me love” – 90’s jams, yes please. a fun night was had, and sometime before 4AM sarah and i decided to go home (about a 45 minute walk). probably 2 minutes after we left, we ran into another assistant i had met before and his friend, who were also leaving the place we were at. this turned into hanging out in the street until 5:30AM when the metro comes.

when we were walking to go down into the station, my friend sarah noticed these two guys who were watching us and then they followed us down to the train. we get on and we were the only people on the train, and of course, the two guys sit directly in front of us. they start saying a bunch of random crap, so i figure if we pretend like we don’t speak french maybe they will leave us alone. wrong. they keep touching our legs trying to get our attention, and were being huge creeps. no one gets on the metro, so we decided to get off at the next stop so they don’t follow us all the way home. then i hear the guy saying to the other guy to get off at the next station, so i tell sarah we should just stay on. they get up to leave, but not without putting their hands in/on our faces, which included basically slapping sarah. their hands smelled like…. a toilet. it was the first time (here, or back home) that i questioned my safety; i didn’t know if they just wanted to make us feel uncomfortable (succeeded) or rob us or worse or what. but thankfully nothing happened.

on saturday, i went to a party with jeremie that some of his students were having (most are in their 20’s so it’s not creep city or anything). it was really fun and i enjoyed myself… despite being stupidly sick and losing my voice by the end. i met a lot of really cool, nice people. everyone here is so welcoming – the complete opposite of what i was expecting (apparently this is not so much the case the more south you go in france). we left at 3AM or so, and since jeremy lives in the opposite direction as me, this walk was by myself. it’s all on one big main road though, so generally safe, although i was a little creeped out after our metro encounter.

this a little too much “dear diary, this is what i did this weekend…” but i didn’t have much else to contemplate. i’m almost finished with the first season of mad men, and i’ve grown quite fond of it. i also bought a sweatshirt with a giant cat on it because, well, i love cats and i love sweatshirts (excuse the camera phone picture).

simplicity. October 18, 2008

there is nothing better than a delicious dinner at home with some good friends.
we had quite the series of adventures last night, but i’ll have to save them for later…

once upon a time, i was a writer. October 16, 2008

so a few weeks ago out of some serious boredom, i looked through some of my files from when i had websites in 1998-2000. the designs were “untouchable” – 9374934 frames, drop down menus, font widths minimized, thinking we were css masters with hover and text decoration (ha). layouts often centered around photoshopped pictures of girls who were too thin and our favorite song lyrics, best viewed with a 800×600 resolution on IE 5.0.

anyway, last night after seeing something linked to the internet archive, i decided to try and look up my old websites to see what was there. neither of the domains i owned were there, and all i could find of the other sites linked to in my files were old splash pages linking to newer sites. there was one site i used still up there with my entries, but i am definitely NOT linking to it, a part of me i would rather NOT share.

but it got me thinking about how the internet was “back then.” our sites were incredibly private despite obviously being public. we didn’t use search engines, we used webrings. there was a certain hierarchy to how your site worked – first you made a site on a free hosting site, and then linked to as many popular sites as possible hoping one of the domain owners would like your site. if they liked you, they would offer to host your site on their domain, and hopefully they were one of the “elusive” ultimate domains. and only then, if your site got “too popular,” could you have the right to buy your own domain, and then in turn, start hosting others. people thought you were gutsy to buy your own domain without being hosted first. today this concept is ridiculous – “hi kottke.org, just wondering if you had any spots open for hostees? my site address is freespeech.org/burningred.”

and who is the “we” i refer to? i’m not entirely sure. primarily teenage females whose lives revolved around a constant state of angst and despair. we interacted through message boards and “publishing” our stories (the only one i could find of mine is awkwardly here, obviously about columbine). we wrote multiple journal updates a day because we thought someone else could fix us if they knew enough about us. we all thought we were so unique, with unique problems, and unique perspectives. we listened to bikini kill and thought we were feminists (even though ruining our bodies in various ways usually fell pretty high on our priority list).

i read my old entries and so often i found myself questioning why i was putting all of this out there for anyone to read. over-sharing did not exist. we published our sites without any fears of our friends, family or employers finding them. i wrote more openly then than i have at any other time in my life, and without any hesitation. our sites were free from google and we didn’t think anyone would ever be able to find our sites except people like us. yet here, when i know who’s reading it for the most part, i really struggle with writing (which is why lists are a good cop out…). i’ve gone back and forth about even publishing this because i can’t tell if it’s boring or not.

there are less than a handful of people currently in my life with whom i’ve shared what my life was like back then, what all my writing was about (i probably only told a handful of people then anyway). i used to be a writer. i kept a journal for 12 years, i wrote hundreds and hundreds of poems, i was poetry editor of the literary magazine. i don’t know if i was ever any good, but i used to be a writer. i used to want to BE a writer. i miss being inspired and like erin says, i miss “watch[ing] the world with wider eyes.”

ce que je n’aime pas… October 15, 2008

things i do not like about france so far:
- the not shower showers. having to hold the shower head the whole time does not equal a relaxing experience. under this category also falls my general dislike of french toiletries – my toothpaste sucks, my soap sucks, my shampoo sucks, my deodorant sprays on and sucks, mascara that DOESN’T suck is 20E or more (i guess thankfully i don’t wear any other makeup). i basically never feel clean.
- invasion of personal space. i posted about the cheek kissing before, and even though it’s odd to me, it doesn’t bother me as much because it’s not something done between strangers. but strangers here love to get as close as possible to you in the métro, while waiting in line, and while walking. today while i was buying a coke this lady was so close to me, her nose might as well been up against the back of my neck smelling my hair. just not cool.
- nothing is “to-go.” there is no coffee to-go, no food to-go (that i have discovered anyway), no leftovers to take home. my favorite thing about chipotle and such places at home was that one trip would result in multiple meals. here i am forced to throw anything extra away.

i guess if i, someone who constantly complains about everything, can only think of three things i don’t like about france, i must be doing pretty alright.