Janvier En Masse

I. Trip with Mom :

About two days before Mom arrived, Martin got hit with a flu-type of illness. He felt it coming and tried to load up on heat, fluids, medicine, and even soup (we don't have Cambell's here, so we have to makeshift our own and I didn't have the stuff for home-made chicken noodle.. So basically, soup consisted of vegetable bouillon stuff), but to no real avail and was sick for the entire trip. Wouldn't believe how many apologies I received before, during, and after her trip for basically being bed-ridden except for a few bursts of energy he had.

But, it worked out well because the point of the trip was for Mom to visit me, rather than a get-to-know-Martin kind of trip. Most of her visit consisted of talking, specifically about me being an adult and how to handle specific situations.

There was contention about the 'state' of the house here, and I discovered that under no circumstances will I allow Tom to come stay here. I still buckle under parental pressure, which thankfully both Martin and Mom attempted to stop me from doing, but I know Tom would relish in it. I would find myself agreeing to whatever he said was best for me and wouldn't be able to have a voice of my own. Guess some of my emotional scarring hasn't faded, but at least I'm reassured with the idea that it's fairly normal for kids growing up to buckle. I guess I just don't trust Tom to push me to be a person rather than a robot.

It was really good to see her again, and it's actually kinda made me miss the rest of the family even more. I really appreciate the support both Mom and Carl have given me in becoming a real person, and regardless of familial drama and differences of opinion, I cherish the nurturing parenting they've both given me. I honestly can't wait to go visit and see that stupid impish grin creep over Carl's face as he makes a (usually) bad joke at my expense.

The stuff we did while she was here was more or less inconsequential, partially due to funds, partially due to Martin being sick, but mostly due to my wanting to just take it easy and be relaxed while I saw my mother for the first time in years. I'm sure if anyone were curious, she would be happy to talk about the stuff we did, but it really wasn't the highlight of the trip for me.

II. Post-Mom

After she left, I caught Martin's flu. Basically got bed-ridden (more or less, I hate staying in bed all day, much to M's chagrin) for two weeks, which stuck my job application stuff on hold. As a result, I probably won't be hearing anything from anyone until late February at best, since school terms just started and they're not exactly looking for anyone to fill any teaching slots just yet. Not much to say about this, really, just 2 weeks of misery that put things on hold. Kinda pissed me off.

III. Lorraine's Wedding

Odile and François made the trip back about a week and a half ago to attend their niece's (Martin's cousin's) wedding. Thomas, Martin's brother, was supposed to attend, but hurt his leg and couldn't get on the train for a few days. They "hinted" that I should go, but I refused on fairly legitimate grounds. It was Lorraine's wedding day, it was not a "meet and greet the American immigrant". I wanted no attention on me on someone else's wedding day, it just didn't feel right. So I spent the day alone, which is when I worked on my resume, and sent a couple out (I plan to send more, but getting to that). Not much to say here, aside from hurray for Lorraine? xD (Having never met her.. yeah.)

IV. Post-Wedding

After the wedding, it was a fairly typical "Odile and François are here" week. Arly and Taran "mentioned" Diablo II, and the next day, Martin was all over it. I was actually fairly surprised, since the last time we'd talked about it, he wasn't all that interested. Yes, it's pirated (Kinda.. Martin has purchased the game twice, but we'll be damned if we know where the boxes are). No, we can't play on B.net, don't even ask. However, we can host games from Martin's computer, and we've helped Arly set it up so he can host. Since we currently can't afford either of our MMO vices, this is what we've been doing the last week when not playing Rockband (which we could only do once.. But again.. Getting to that).

On a less-happy note, Mistee and her "family" can no longer afford internet, so she is "stealing" wireless from her Aunt's work when she's able to. Next time she can will be Thursday/Friday, so I expect those will be late nights for me, as she's apparently going insane with only being able to talk to Dwayne and her Aunt.

Yesterday, Thomas came to stay the night, which is the night we played Rockband. Thomas kept saying (in French) "this is so cool!" as he kept failing out on the guitar. It was fairly comical, but amusingly.. We did not actually "fail out" of a song, so he did better than Mom. *hides*

V. February

And then today, everyone left. So now my life gets to start again! Yay! It's been a fairly weird month, and between visits and being sick, I felt like I've spent the month doing practically nothing. It was busy, but not necessarily productive. Aside from discussing in depth with Martin's parents about dropping the apartment. We're waiting on locating the original contract for the apartment to know when we can declare that we're moving out, but frog-leap trips to Renens are on the menu for February, to clean and pack shit. We can't both go because someone has to stay and take care of Aglaé, but that's okay. While one is in Renens, the other will be working on organizing all of our shit in the bedroom downstairs, along with bringing stuff upstairs to place in other rooms. So either way, we'll both be working. And to be perfectly honest, I'm almost glad we're doing it this way. There are a lot of Martin's memories, and I don't want to influence him into getting rid of something important to him which looks like junk to me. This arrangement will let me take care of what I'm comfortable taking care of, and let him handle his stuff.

Aside from that, I'll be looking more in-depth into sending my resume out to the private schools in this canton. Along with spending time (2-3 hours a day) in front of Rosetta's Stone. If by the 15th I'm not happy with my "forming sentences" progress, I'll be attending the course at the UP for level 5 French.

And that... Was January.

Calm, yet crazy

I got my results from both classes as of yesterday. I'm not entirely happy with French, but I did sort of see it coming. Ultimately, though, I remind myself that the point is not to "make the grade," it's to learn, which I did. A passing grade more or less determines that you would be capable of moving on to the next level. I'm not entirely confident that I am.

French "Exam" (not really an exam, per se, just an evaluation of progress) : 49/62 (42 required to "pass")

Psychology End-Grade : 87% (B+)

I got the Psych grade yesterday, and so I wanted to share with everyone today. Kind of proud of that one, since I was borderline-C before the final project and minor grades came in.

As for next semester, I'm hoping to get the info from Mom about the other student she mentioned, soon, about wanting to teach English over-seas so I can go back and forth about approaches with them. I really wanna get a job, but I don't want that to stop my schooling, either. End-game plan is to be an English teacher at a public school here in the Jura Canton, so I can't just stop schooling. I won't sell myself short there.

Ever since school ended for French, Martin has been very supportive and celebratory, thus my extended absence from everyone. We did get Lego Rock Band, and that's been fun. We're trying to unlock the fun stuff before Mom gets here, if only so we can geek out at her and stuff. Some of the stuff on there I actually detest, like Good Charlotte's Boys and Girls. Ugh, seriously. And I'm starting to think my singing sucks! I was acing everything on regular Rock Band on expert, now I'm struggling to get 90%! At least now if Mom gets a "bad" grade, she won't get to say 'See? I suck.' My lowest so far is 46%.

And yes, I am a dork. And on that note, Martin also got me Disgaea 2 and 3 for Christmas. It's like extreme OCD overload. I've been doing a bit of playing on 2, and he's playing 3 for now. It seems pretty much right up my alley, in that it's totally strategy based. I won't squee about that too much, because I know it can be obnoxious.

I've been doing these things as a kind of way to not stress about Mom's coming. I'm really excited she's coming, but I'm also pretty scared at the same time. It's been almost half a decade since I've seen her, and I'm worried that I'll really just be a disappointment again. It also of course doesn't help that this will also be a "meet the parents" ordeal, which I've never quite stressed out about as much before. Amusingly, Llere, Taran, etc meeting Martin kinda scares me more. I mean, they're the sibs, and while parents are expected to be judgemental, judgements from my sibs will ultimately (hopefully) be bluntly honest and unbiased one way or the other.

I'm probably over-thinking things, again.

I do that, a lot.

Pictures! (No, not of us yet)

So I've been playing with the camera, and discovered the purple haze stuff they were talking about. As long as it's not on people or specific things, it doesn't bother me too much for the time being. It's a hand-me-down, not gonna complain xP

Starting with the yard (which has haze) :



The plant on the side of the house here is actually really interesting, and we may have to trim/remove parts of it before too long as it may start tearing away at the walls. It actually has grown around the corner and is - I believe - rooted just around the corner of the house at the far end there. It's f'ing huge. During the spring and summer, it blossoms with purple/pink flower-like leaves. It's absolutely gorgeous. Only sad part is, can't go on the terrace because I'm terrified of the bees it attracts. I've never been stung, and I don't ever wanna be stung.



This one kinda looks like crap. The purple haze + shivering (it's below 0 Celsius out here atm) made it kinda difficult to get a good shot here. The tree with the branches hanging down is kind of a willow tree, and when it grows the leaves back, I've seen Aglaé, and the dogs (while they're here) curl up under it for shade. I'll try to take good care of the camera so I can take pictures when these trees start really blooming in a few months. Nana and Papa got nothin' on this yard. 'Cept maybe the tire swing, that was fun. *coughs*



This one was more me experimenting on the big tree in the first picture. I thought it came out kind of artistically. Might just be my lack of art-sense, though.


Kittens (No haze, but they suck at posing) :



This is Aglaé, she's somewhere around 15 years old, and they got her from a farm when she was just itsy bitsy. She's grown really attached to me since coming here, and will at times curl up on my knee (I usually have my computer at the couch and am sitting cross-legged) and just hang out. However, she really hates the flash and it took me 10 tries to get an even somewhat-decent picture of her. Our plan to get good pictures is to eventually get both cats out in the yard during the daylight. They were actually in a picture-worthy position last week, but I didn't know there was a camera lying around then.



This is Alfred, we presume he's a he, though we're not sure yet. Aglaé started inviting him over about two and a half months ago, and he more or less lives here at least half the time now. We can pet him, but we haven't been able to check his gender. His name comes from how when he first came here, he had a collar with a bell. Martin and I both feel this is animal cruelty, so about a week and a half ago, we removed the collar entirely (Alfred Nobel). Partly as an experiment to see if his real owners replaced it or not, in which case, we'd know he's only here half the time. So far, he's still collar-less. Alfred doesn't seem to mind the flash from the camera at all, so I took a bit of an advantage with that. The lights in the house tend to be of a slight orange-ish nature, as you can tell with Aglaé's photo, but during the day there is a lot of outside lighting. So I just have to take pictures during the day.

Anyway, that's it for now, just me playing with the camera. Sorry no photos of us at this point. I'm still easing into learning how to work one of these things (took me half an hour to figure out how to turn OFF the flash).

Edit : I had to change the template AGAIN because the pictures got cut in half. Stupid Blogger.

Snow!!

Okay, so the pink finally got to me. This template isn't nearly as bad as that pink one, sorry for ruining everyone's eyes there.

I stumbled across a digital camera the other day, which apparently has a "glue" (?) problem. Seems to come and go, but when the issue is there (it's apparent with a purple haze on the little screen) allegedly the pictures taken are unusable. Martin checked, though, and Odile and François bought another camera (due to the aforementioned purple haze) and we're welcome to use it. Currently it's charging and I'll be playing with it to see about posting some pictures. So yay! Funny how that works out, heh.

In other news, we may have our first sticking snow falling right now. We had snow once before this year, but it was too warm to actually stick. I'm trying not to get my hopes up about it, but it's a great excuse to take pictures of the yard here. It's pretty cool, honestly. I don't know if this is also a trend in the US, but a lot of people here seem to plant trees and flowers and such that aren't native, and this actually contaminates the soil around here (I didn't know that, I knew about different kinds of dirt, but I didn't realize that it could actually hurt natural stuff to plant unnatural stuff). The yard here has a lot of trees, and all of them are native. And lemme tell ya, they are gorgeous. If the camera thing works out (for an extended period of time), I'll hopefully be able to show what it looks like in Spring/Summer.

A slight side note : My heart out to Mistee who is having a tough time right now, sorry I've not been around.

And hey, look! I didn't write an essay this time!

School Reflections

So as the semester winds to a close, I feel the urge to talk about my classes over the last 3-4 months.

For starters, I had 'français de tous les jours' (Everyday French) module 3. There was some stress right at the beginning, about whether I could actually sign up for the class. Odile (Martin's Mom) has been super supportive, though. She knows the guy who runs the vocational school system and more or less pulled some strings for me to get into the class. Makes me feel a bit guilty, but then I've since decided that the best thing I can do from here is to 'pay it forward' as Mom puts it. I think I have been, seeing as I can actually talk directly to Odile now rather than wait for Martin to be around to play translator.

The week preceding and the first day of class, I was full of anxiety. I hadn't paid for the class yet (we pay them the first week of class), so there was a large cowardly part of me reasoning that if I didn't go for the class yet, it would be a no-harm, no-foul thing. I was placed into Module 3 (second-highest for this course.. It actually appears to go up to Module 10 or 12 formally for language courses), and honestly felt it was a mistake. My verbal skills seriously lack. Read/Write, I am decent at, but Listening/Speaking I have serious issues with. I stuck with the course, though, obviously, and don't regret it at all.

About the class itself .. The people involved in the class are all extremely interesting. People from Peru, Africa (several countries, not gonna list them all), Sri Lanka, Turkey, Portugal, Spain, and Great Britain are all in there. There were a few memorable exercises where I became proud of myself, such as when I was asked to conjugate attendre (to wait) without prior coverage in class, and did so perfectly. There were some times when the teacher just astounded me, such as when we were discussing "beaucoup de" (many, or lots of).. Mme Oriet asked one of the Muslim students .. "Vous avez beaucoup des femmes?" (You have many wives?) and the entire classroom more or less fell silent. Seriously uncomfortable that day. Then there were times where I was put on the spot for being American. Aside from constant questions about US culture (which I typically astounded most of my classmates for not being all "YEAH, U-S-A, U-S-A!"), the most memorable is when I was asked something akin to "Avez-vous l'intention de retourner aux Etats-Unis?" ("Do you plan to go back to the US?") My answer was no, and I had to seriously struggle to explain that overall, I don't like the US. That was fun. Not really. xP

Overall, though, it's been a positive experience. I still feel left behind when some of my classmates will go into full-blown conversations and I'm stuck trying to figure out what is going on, but I'm definitely getting better. I don't feel like my head is gonna explode after leaving class anymore, which is a good thing.

I've also been taking Psychology online at UMass Framingham, which has been an interesting experience in and of itself. There are a lot of times where I feel like I put more effort into my assignments than my classmates, and it especially showed in both of our group projects. The first one was a PowerPoint presentation, which (out of 2 weeks) took a week and a half for my groupmates to actually get the assignments out to everyone. Maybe I should have taken charge more, but I more or less laid out a plan.. And had to wait for people to agree to do different parts. The second project was a 5 page paper about a hypothetical psychologist's review of a patient. This also took a week and a half of 2 weeks in order for people to get organized. This time, though, I couldn't even work ahead of time because everyone was focused on a live chat to discuss the details. When we finally got into the chat (Weds), they more or less had 24 hours (project due Friday) to get their pieces to me. I think I managed to throw everything together in a way that will get us a better grade, but I really didn't like pulling a 30-hour day, waiting for everyone to send me their parts. My sleep schedule has been a wreck ever since. Side note, if anyone wants to see that paper, just let me know. I'm somewhat proud of it.

Ranting aside, I feel really good about Psych. I'm hoping to keep a steady B for the final grade (I was so stressed out one week that my A dropped to a B due to not completing a couple assignments in time), but probably won't know until Christmas or there abouts (the 5-page paper hasn't been graded yet and is 20% of my grade).

While I haven't done heavy-school for half a decade, I feel more and more comfortable as time goes by. It also strengthens my want to become a teacher. Might sound weird, given all my bitching, but it makes sense to me. There's frustration in every job, from what I can tell, and the process it takes to get that job. I have one more week of school left, this semester, and am actually looking forward to taking more classes in various subjects.

Yes, it's pink

So, I've decided, once again, to start blogging. Hopefully I'll actually stick with it, and feel more confident about posting. My major hangups have been mostly the battle between sharing my thoughts with people (there's a fair amount of my thoughts that some would find offensive) and my feeling of unimportance when it appears that no one has actually read my posts. Confusing, I'm sure.

As for a basic overview of where I am and where I plan on going :

I'm currently taking "Tous les jours," at a local vocational-type school, but fret not, for it's an adult class for immigrants. My French has improved dramatically over the last few months ('bout time), and I'm feeling more and more confident talking to people in French. I've even swapped to partially and occasionally speaking French with Martin. I've already felt some changes in how I perceive the two languages, as I focus primarily on learning concepts rather than translations. It does make things more difficult sometimes, but words I don't know I look up in a French dictionary (not English-French), and word-hop until I get an understanding of what the word(s) mean. Martin and I have already talked about swapping our primary language to French once I've completed a Université Populaire (Module 4, to be precise) course in French. It'll be a rough change, but it's something I really want to progress to.

Career-wise, I'm looking at becoming an ESL teacher. I really am quite fascinated by language, and the more I learn about French, the more I question and re-analyze English. For instance, there are just as many tenses in English as there are in French; however, I hear a lot of complaints about how many complicated tenses there are in French. As I discussed with Mom, I'm pretty much of the opinion that English is taught very poorly in school, given all I've learned here. I mean, I didn't know how adverbs worked or were identified until last year. That's fairly indicative to me. Anyway, rambling now, I'm looking at taking a TEFL course online, but am still unsure how I will be proceeding next year. I'll be discussing with Mme Oriet about whether she feels I'm ready to move on to the Module 4 course at UP after the test next week (class ends next week), and depending on her answer, I will be focusing either mostly on continuing to learn French or focusing on my career. God, I have a career plan. How cool is that? Took me long enough!

In non-academic standings : I am still a computer nerd, still play video games, and I've since decided that of all the things I could be doing in life, being able to amuse myself on my computer, with or without other people involved, is not so bad. Amusingly, I've lost a lot of weight and my health issues have rapidly been decreasing over the years. I still have some shoulder problems (I'll never be a pitcher in baseball again... *snaps fingers* Drat), and the whole PCO is still affecting my cycle, but overall, I am getting healthier and I'm becoming more confident with who I am as a person.

My best friends (in no particular order) are Mistee, Colin, Pom (Andy), Jon, Alt (Eric), Arly (Kenny), and of course Martin. They've all been a backbone for me in both emotionally distressing times and supporting me as I tackle the endeavour (<- that may be the british spelling, the spell checker picked it up, but it also picks up "favorite," so meh) of actually getting my shit together. If you read, and if I continue to update, you'll hear a lot more about them as time goes on.

Couple notes, the title here is inspired by Martin who was inspired by Noam Chomsky. It actually is a completely grammatically correct statement, however it makes absolutely no sense. My interest in language has made it a particular favorite phrase of mine.

Second note, I am amused by the pink, but will probably whine, beg, and plead with Mistee to make me something more original and "me." All of the defaults sucked.