Like a setting sun.
Lately I've been on a Mountain Goats, Bob Dylan, Neil Young kick. You know, guitars and male vocalists with hard-to-like voices (can't forget Conor, but I wouldn't call that a kick anymore). Today, I'm working on learning The Needle and the Damage Done on guitar. I'm making an effort to play more often, since I have all this time on my hands with which to learn while I'm, you know, not going to school.
I'm wrestling with myself over whether I should try to go to the university today. I have to turn in some photocopies of a paper I got back about two weeks ago, but every time I've tried the professor hasn't been in his office, since they don't necessarily keep office hours in this country. Some of them do, if they want -- one hour a week, for all of their undergrad and graduate students combined -- and they don't announce it in class, so you're just forced to show up at their door, if you can even find it, as that's not announced in class either, and see if anything is posted. And most of the time, it's not.
To make matters less convenient, the space under the door is not large enough to slip my paper under. This is annoying to me, as I'd really rather not see him (he gave me an excellent grade, he just wants to chat too much about sociolinguistics and his accent is sort of hard to understand) -- but I can't find the mystical room with the mailboxes in it. I suspect it to be one room near the secretariat, but that room is always shut and locked. Which really only confirms my suspicions -- of course the most useful room WOULD be locked.
I'd also like to pick out new classes for next semester, as they start on Monday and I have, as yet, absolutely no idea what I'm taking. What stops me from wanting to go do this is the almost-certain knowledge that, even if I pick classes I am interested in, their schedules will not be posted until the last possible minute (Friday at 5 p.m.), and I will, frustrated, end up going to the university to check over and over in vain.
So. Maybe I just will not pick classes until Friday. That way I won't be disappointed when it turns out I can't take them because they conflict with each other.
Still, this last several weeks has felt rather aimless. Having taken finals before Christmas, I really haven't done much of anything, except watch a whole lot of TV on my computer and see a lot of my friends, who were procrastinating their studying.
The weather has been pretty nice lately, in the upper forties and fifties, with not-so-much rain. I'm starting to miss trees a lot, not that they're a seasonal thing in Bordeaux. They pretty much just don't exist. And I'm really, really looking forward to the days getting longer. It's kind of depressing that the sun sets so early. Not that my being mostly nocturnal and sleeping in late helps anything. But by the time the pub closes (lots of noise from the people drinking on the street) and the house quiets down, it's always really late/early. Plus, I find I have little or no motivation to conform to any kind of schedule, since I have literally nothing that I have to do here. Learn French, stay alive. That's pretty much my checklist.
I'm wrestling with myself over whether I should try to go to the university today. I have to turn in some photocopies of a paper I got back about two weeks ago, but every time I've tried the professor hasn't been in his office, since they don't necessarily keep office hours in this country. Some of them do, if they want -- one hour a week, for all of their undergrad and graduate students combined -- and they don't announce it in class, so you're just forced to show up at their door, if you can even find it, as that's not announced in class either, and see if anything is posted. And most of the time, it's not.
To make matters less convenient, the space under the door is not large enough to slip my paper under. This is annoying to me, as I'd really rather not see him (he gave me an excellent grade, he just wants to chat too much about sociolinguistics and his accent is sort of hard to understand) -- but I can't find the mystical room with the mailboxes in it. I suspect it to be one room near the secretariat, but that room is always shut and locked. Which really only confirms my suspicions -- of course the most useful room WOULD be locked.
I'd also like to pick out new classes for next semester, as they start on Monday and I have, as yet, absolutely no idea what I'm taking. What stops me from wanting to go do this is the almost-certain knowledge that, even if I pick classes I am interested in, their schedules will not be posted until the last possible minute (Friday at 5 p.m.), and I will, frustrated, end up going to the university to check over and over in vain.
So. Maybe I just will not pick classes until Friday. That way I won't be disappointed when it turns out I can't take them because they conflict with each other.
Still, this last several weeks has felt rather aimless. Having taken finals before Christmas, I really haven't done much of anything, except watch a whole lot of TV on my computer and see a lot of my friends, who were procrastinating their studying.
The weather has been pretty nice lately, in the upper forties and fifties, with not-so-much rain. I'm starting to miss trees a lot, not that they're a seasonal thing in Bordeaux. They pretty much just don't exist. And I'm really, really looking forward to the days getting longer. It's kind of depressing that the sun sets so early. Not that my being mostly nocturnal and sleeping in late helps anything. But by the time the pub closes (lots of noise from the people drinking on the street) and the house quiets down, it's always really late/early. Plus, I find I have little or no motivation to conform to any kind of schedule, since I have literally nothing that I have to do here. Learn French, stay alive. That's pretty much my checklist.
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