virginia, je t'aime

i received a lot of warning and advice before returning to the states for the holidays. most of it ran in the "be prepared, this will be really hard" vein. and traditionally i tend more towards reverse culture shock, with difficulty re-acclimating to america, so i was prepared to struggle. 
but home was wonderful. i knew i would be returning to france soon, so there was no homesickness for aix, and nothing makes you appreciate the little things about home and america like knowing you only have two weeks out of seven months to soak it in. 
there is a certain caché in popping into the states for the holidays. your presence is rare, and thus, very special. and this goes both ways. we didn't just go out to lunch, we went out to indian-american for the best food ever and who cares that i'm crying and my nose is running because it's so spicy, i'm not going to have it again until may, so i'm going to eat as much of this saag as i can! 
amazing friends traveled to see me (with my little receiving the all-star award).  
i was only home for about two weeks, so there was a type of suspension, i wasn't fully re-immersing myself or starting back up my american life. 
parts of it were hard.
my mom moved out of the house where i largely grew up while i've been in france, so i wasn't going "home" in that sense. i wasn't able to see or spend the time with some people i had been so looking forward to seeing. 
and returning to france was hard. i landed on monday and it was cold and raining in aix. that evening i had a friend over for coffee and i realized once again that this place is hard but it is wonderful and i love it and not everyone can do what i am doing. 
also, it turns out if you burn your hand and complain on your blog about the sad state of your coffee situation, people give you things like a french press, a stove-top espresso maker, and mugs. on that note, i was hit by a smart car while biking a few weeks ago (not a joke), so if anyone wants to spring for a driver, please go right ahead. 
in truth, seeing home, my family, small town virginia, the people i saw and didn't see, from this perspective clarified my love for them. it's the kind of love that cracks your chest open, that in their absence you lay on your bed and listen to bon iver and cry and just ache for a bit. 
but i don't know that i would have seen it clearly had i not gone away. not that absence makes the heart grow fonder (a little phrase i taught my students today), but that absence breeds clarity. absence makes you see what you had, and what you'll still have when you make it home. 

wine law

if i break the cork that means we have to finish the bottle, right? 

words

i think a lot about language and words. i could blame it on my job, but the job followed, though perhaps also amplified, my unabashed and somewhat nerdy love of words, languages, and linguistics. tied to those things come the questions of meaning and connecting and feeling and how as humans we attempt to use words as the ends to our communicative means. these are some works i've read that struck this vein in me. there's no real point to this post, just to ponder my favorite things in the world: words. and it just so happens my favorite word is ineffable, the word for that which has no words. 


"Maybe sorry’s the only sound

to offer pointlessly and at random
to each other forever, not because of what it means
but because it means we’re trying to mean,
I am trying to mean more than I did
when I started writing this poem, too soon
people will say, so what. This is what I do.
If I don’t do this I have no face and if I do this
I have an apple for a face or something vital
almost going forward is the direction I am headed.
Come with me from being over here to being over there,
from this second to that second."
      --bob hicok


"SADNESS OF THE INTELLECT: Sadness of being misunderstood [sic]; Humor sadness; Sadness of love wit[hou]t release; Sadne[ss of be]ing smart; Sadness of not knowing enough words to [express what you mean]; Sadness of having options; Sadness of wanting sadness; Sadness of confusion..." 
      --jonathan safran foer


"i love you both and i know i'm drunk but i mean it and i know love is a meaningless word to some but i can't think of another one."


"I distrust the incommunicable; it is the source of all violence."                                  
      --jean-paul sartre

i'm about to be...

this week!

i come to the states for the christmas holiday this week. here are some things for which i'm excited. 

i think they're trying to kill me

i'm excited to see so many people. but for reasons that are obvious, levi gets the top spot. he's so tiny! 

taking a bath

my shower consists of the very common french situation where the shower head is not attached to the wall so you have to hold it  the entire time you shower. great for conserving water, not so great for my right arm not getting exhausted holding the shower head up in the air. i'm sure there's a joke about the french not bathing/smelling bad in there somewhere. 

just kidding.

but seriously.

my "kitchen" is a corner of my studio. i broke my only two mugs and haven't made the trip back out to ikea yet. so for the moment i'm drinking instant coffee out of a bowl. this leads to me craving good, american-style coffee and being severely over-caffeinated. 

i'm really happy here in france, but i'm so excited to come home to the one thing i get truly homesick for: people. i fly in thursday and will be in the states for a little over two weeks and if you're reading this, chances are i want to see you. so let's make that happen! à bientôt, mes chéris! 

no and because i'm dumb.

i love when my students unwittingly insult me with their questions in english. today's gems: do you have any friends? why didn't you go to harvard? 

et quoi d'autre?

some nuggets about teaching:

• i say "soooo" about 43 times in a class. just like i laugh over french people saying "bon" or "doncuhhhhh" as fillers, my students pointed out how i say sooooo whenever filling a silence or connecting thoughts. but being able to stall naturally in a language goes a long way towards sounding like you know what you're saying when really you're racking your brain for a word. 

• i say "what else?" about 26 times in a class. even i'm getting tired of hearing myself say that, so i'm thinking about asking them to please expound upon that point just to add some variety. 

• some of my best classes are when i completely abandon the lesson plan and just let the lesson flow from the conversation. of course, if i were ever to come in not prepared with a lesson plan, they would be dead silent. so i come in prepared, but willing to drop the lesson if a really good conversation is sparked. 

• i hate chalk. it makes my hands itch. it makes horrible squeaking noises. it makes me sneeze. it shatters into a million pieces when i drop it. i hate chalk. 

• i will not give students good marks just because they told me i look like angelina jolie. but it definitely doesn't hurt either.