Virtually Home

Moments ago, I experienced a tragic data loss in transferring photos from my iPhone to my computer. I guess nothing better was to be expected, since the trip started off with my forgetting my camera -- an unforgivable failure. The photos posted here are the few that survived iPhoto's latest travesty. They may or may not be misrepresenting the order of events. For instance, the picture at left was taken on the flight home. Ahem. We, on analyzing the forecast for Thanksgiving Day, decided to skip town early and, when I had succeeded in attending the appointments I'd made for my "two" days in Tulsa, we all converged on the airport and took off for Florida. The way out of town was bumpy, and we were cutting through alternating clouds and clear sky all the way up to 10,000 feet. Each time we broke through the clouds, we were surrounded by towers of cloud. It was cavernous. Water streaming over the windshield and the wings from the condensation in the clouds. I couldn...

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...

Well, our washing machine still doesn't work. Also, we lost to Texas. I hate that a lot, but I can't say I didn't see it coming. It got cold in Bordeaux all of a sudden. It's already affecting my life, and it's not even below 50 yet. I just have very little desire to walk around aimlessly (which was one of my chief employments until this week) when it's cold out. All the shops and restaurants are starting to keep their doors closed and move their furniture inside. I hate it when it gets cold. I lose motivation to go anywhere, and when it gets dark earlier I'm much more likely to stay inside than to get anything done. It's not ideal. On the upside, the guy I left my lens with tells me he can fix it for around 30 euros, and to call back sometime next week. Hopefully this is true, because that's not a bad price at all. I was expecting worse. I'm copying the notes I took during the first week of class into some new notebooks. They don't r...

Today, I went to the university to try and figure out when my classes are actually going to be held, since school starts on Monday. I thought that by waiting until Friday I had behaved in a remarkably laid-back and French-compatible manner, and that surely, by now, everything was sorted out and communicated to, at the very least, the International Relations office, which would help me in my quest. What I found was a room with a table of schedules, unlabeled, sent from different departments, containing only that department's schedule. They were not even in a stack. They were scattered in no discernible order. This system is, evidently, not a problem at all for real French kids, because when they pick a major they take all the classes (and not really any others) on the agenda, at the same time as everyone else with their major, and that's that. For one such as me? Not going to work so well. Luckily for me, none of the four departments I have preliminarily aligned myself with ...