Virtually Home

I tried to go to bed relatively early last night -- and by that I mean around 2 a.m. Instead, I was awake until sometime after 5 a.m., and woke up when my alarm went off at 10 in a haze of dream-confusion and grainy-eyed pessimism. I got online and bought a plane ticket from London to Geneva to meet up with Rachel on Christmas Eve. The next plan was to head over to the SNCF office and get a ticket from Bordeaux to London to visit Tom, since their website has been steadfastedly refusing to show me train schedules for days now. But after a comically cold shower, while on the point of pouring cereal into a bowl, I was surprised by a phone call from our landlady regarding the washing machine problem. Yes, the washing machine problem is ongoing. Yes, this is three months. And of course, since I can't stand letting cereal sit in milk for any length of time longer than strictly necessary, I halted my breakfast preparations. As it turns out, Auchan mailed the estimate to my address in ...

This morning I was walking to the tram past a couple of ladies with clipboards. I learned after the first week that once the ladies with the clipboards conducting the survey or trying to get signatures for the petition figure out that you're not French, they absolutely refuse to talk to you further even if you display interest. So I was walking by with my headphones and they made eye contact and I just told them sorry, I'm not French (except I said it in French) - and they're like "wait! Are you English?" (in English) and the confused, resulting conversation that took place in mixed French (on my part) and English (on theirs) was apparently intended to lure me into the church of scientology. I was confused at first -- aside from passing some Jehova's Witnesses at a tram stop once, I have not been proselytized to once since arriving here -- not even in all the churches and cathedrals I've visited. When I looked confused they said "Scientology...you h...

Here's why (with an apology in advance for any of my previous high school teachers who are reading this blog and may be offended by association, though I don't think that's likely to happen): NO ONE brought a computer to class. Almost as if they weren't allowed to. I'm glad I didn't, I would have looked like that silly American. People talked over what the professor was saying. Students tried to leave, repeatedly, five minutes before the lecture ended and had to be reminded that there was still time left. The desks were covered in graffiti -- "your mom" jokes and anarchy symbols mostly -- and all of this graffiti was in English. My favorite so far was a drawing of a smurf in blue ballpoint pen. I had five solid hours of class (not even any breaks -- a class would end at the same moment a new one was supposed to start, so I was always late but no one cared) with a lunch break that was too short to buy any food from the cafeteria. I went to my lin...