Month: October 2019

C’est le jour last

C’est le jour 1, celui qu’on retient

Celui qui s’efface quand tu me remplaces

Quand tu me retiens, c’est celui qui reviens(!!!)

These are the lyrics to the chorus of this song a lot of my students love. It’s called “Jour 1”, and it is sung by a French artist who uses the name Louane. She sings beautifully, and this song it fun, but I prefer her songs from the film “La Famille Bélier” – Michel Sardou really does have some great songs.

Anyway, we are doing a version of escape rooms as my departing gift to my students (the quarter ends tomorrow). I spent a lot of time putting them together these past couple weeks, and I had the upper level classes today – they went beautifully. Especially the French III was particularly awesome. ::big heart

Tomorrow is the French II and I turns at the escape rooms… I am nervous.

I so far have one helper from French III for each of the classes, and then three students in French II who will be moderators for the three sections/rooms.

For a class of 25, that still makes me a bit nervous…

However, I know that four boys will be home for French II (supposedly, anyway), which drops it to 22 total, and only 19 doing the puzzles… aka about six members per section – that sounds so much better.

I have a plan for how to make it all work – fingers crossed that it goes beautifully and flawlessly, that we all have a wonderful time, and that I give the boys an appropriately love-filled goodbye (I’m singing and playing ukulele for them for a specific blessing/prayer sort of song I love.

De la force!! ❤

Post-a-day 2019

Yikes

I bit a new record tonight.

At first, it was a 9pm departure from school, due to an evening event.

Then, it was a 9:30pm departure, due to working and chatting comfortably with a teacher or two (one at a time, but two of them).

Tonight, as I finished up everything for my super excited escape room style of activity for tomorrow and Friday, I saw the one guy studying away for his LSAT, and knocked on his window to give him a quick hello and chat (he always likes having a forced pause in his studying).

We talked for our approximately average amount of time, and then each went home.

And that was at 10:30pm… crazy.

It is now past midnight, and I can barely function and barely keep my eyes open enough even to read what I am typing…

Anyway, night-night!

Rockin’ it

Tonight, I went to another art exhibit.

And alone, too.

Yes, I ended up meeting friends there, however, I was going in the first place, whether they accepted the belated invitation or not…

And it was wonderful.

I loved the art, I had fun with the friends, I felt myself, and I felt totally loved, and for being just that (myself, I mean).

And I didn’t even think about this as being an improvement on who I am being in life until after the fact, upon further, late-night reflection…

It was wonderful.

It has only taken me years, but I am finally beginning to embrace and to take advantage of the wonderful arts scene found in Houston.

I am finally going to museums somewhat regularly, and am even going on my own, at times, now.

And I love it.

And I love myself for it, too.

I love being myself, the self I have always had inside, the one who wants to be a museum/goer, who can be found on her own at a museum, contemplating this or that piece with curiosity.

It’s really cool, y’all… really cool.

Post-a-day 2019

Oopsie

Today, at the beginning of one of my classes, my students had an oral quiz.

For oral quizzes, they always have to call the same phone number, which is a Google Voice number I chose years ago for this express purpose.

These students had used the Google Voice number before, and most of them just have it saved in their phones, since we use it every time.

A few students, however, did not have it saved today, and so asked for me to write the number on the board.

Okay, sure.

I think about it for a minute, and then write out the number, somewhat confidently and totally surprised – I always have to look it up constantly at the beginning of the school year, and I hadn’t realized that I had re-memorized it again already…, but go, me!

Within thirty seconds, a few students are telling me something…

‘Is that number right?’

‘I think so,’ I reply, ‘but I can check.’

And so I pull out my own phone to go log in and check the number, which is what I usually do in the first place, so it’s no biggie to me.

‘I don’t think that’s the right number,’ others tell me, a sense of assuredness in their voices.

‘Oh, really…?’ I consider…

Suddenly, it hits me: “Oh!… That’s my best friend’s number!” I declare, quickly erasing the number from the board.

Laughing, I put up the correct number, and I marvel at how similar the two are – extremely similar, with just the middle numbers swapped with the end ones.

I shake my head, and I wonder if anyone had already been in the process of leaving a message….!oops

Guess it would be good to give her a heads up… or, perhaps, it would be more fun to leave her with a voicemail of someone praying in French… 😛

After all, that’s what friends are for, right? 😉

Post-a-day 2019

Nostalgia, an early onset

I finish this teaching assignment on Friday.

And I’m already super nostalgic… and I mean super…

I keep wanting to plan something amazing and sentimental to send myself off…

And I kind of feel silly for wanting to do that – it isn’t actually that big of a deal… so I keep telling myself.

I think what I’m aiming to figure out here is how truly it is or is not a big deal.

I’ve never been so myself as a teacher, and so, perhaps, I have never been so willing to be vulnerable as I have been with these guys… perhaps this is te closest I’ve ever been with students, and the best I’ve ever been as a teacher…, and so, perhaps, it actually is a big deal.

However, if I am off to be my best self the rest of my life, then this is merely the first of many fabulous situations in which I get to be my true self and allow the students to do the same, and we all love each other and get to be super sentimental all we want, any and all the time.

Nonetheless, I keep wanting to play guitar or ukulele and sing a song to and/or with them as a final goodbye.

I don’t have any French songs that come to mind yet, though… jut a bunch of honest and sentimental songs in English… and even a Spanish one, kind of.

Maybe a German song is actually the way to go… perhaps that would be best, simply because German is more my God-love language than any of the others… and that is good for them, even though it isn’t French, because 1) God and 2) still a foreign language…

Hmm…

Let me think on it…

Maybe I’ll just do the birthday song I always do… I love using it for birthdays especially, but it can apply to any day – the Lord gave you life today when you awakened, just as much as He did on the day of your birth… hmm…

I’ll reflect some more, and trust that God will give me exactly what to do. 🙂

But I seriously am already nostalgic, and it hasn’t even ended yet… I shake my head at how silly this is, yet that changes nothing – I am still nostalgic for it all.

Post-a-day 2019

Nasty creatures and decay

Well, they exploded all over again today – by the time I went up after lunch, there were about forty of the disgusting things up in my room, doing their odd version of mixing and mingling with one another.

I still didn’t cry, but I definitely felt the panic within me.

However, I acted as was necessary to move things forward with clearing them out of there, hanging several flypaper ribbons around the room, covering my clothes with blankets, and getting the **** out of there myself.

I prepared myself mentally for the possibility of not sleeping in there tonight, as they were kind of all over, and, though I wasn’t seeming to be freaking out at the time, I knew I wouldn’t be able to handle staying in the room without cleaning it… and I knew that they might not all be gone yet, too.

This was a fortunate mental preparation, as I am currently sitting on a pallet on the floor of the yoga room, getting ready to go to sleep, feeling oddly exposed out in the open, likely to be found by the first teacher tomorrow morning.

Nonetheless, I am rolling with it… this is what I can afford right now, and this is the neighborhood in which I want to be living right now, so this is where I live… sucks and all…

Anyway… sweet dreams and restful sleep unto us all tonight. 😉

Post-a-day 2019

Yikes

Twenty.

It sounds like an entirely reasonable number, right?

Even twenty to thirty of something sounds reasonable, low in number, even.

However, this idea seems to disappear, whenever we consider things that aren’t meant to be in groups more than just a few.

For example, toes… on one person.

Kind of weird to consider, right?

Even worse than that, however, is blood flies… in one’s bedroom…., to be discovered when one arrives home late at night after a long week, and just wants to go shower quickly and get to bed within the next half hour, before 11pm, even…

Two and a half hours later, I sit on my knees on the floor of my room, hunched on the ground, typing this.

I have myself killed approximately thirty flies at this point, and the hanging flypaper has handled around four.

I spent about ten minutes downstairs a little while ago, hoping things were finally handled, but giving some time for any loners to move to the overhead light.

Unfortunately, two more had appeared by the time I came back up here.

Now, I am almost paranoid about getting ready for bed – if I go shower, and then have to deal with more, that’s eew, but, also, if I go to bed, but they aren’t finished, will I be the warmest thing in the room, once the lights are off?

They are attracted to the light and heat…

I have lit a candle underneath clove, peppermint, and eucalyptus oils, and so am considering leaving my downstairs door open, so that any others would leave my room due to the smell, and head to the light and the warmer temperature of the room at the bottom of my stairs.

But I’m just not entirely convinced yet that it is safe to proceed.

In case you’ve forgotten, flies are one of my greatest fears in life – totally absurd a fear here, but that in no way changes the fact that the fear is there.

No, I did not cry tonight… however, I think a big part of that was the slowness of the things, so the situation was much less panicky than last time.

I certainly cursed a lot.

But that is to be expected – extreme stress brings it out of somewhere within me.

I was debating whether to go to the gym in the morning, and so perhaps this event was a means of forcing me not to go – I will not have had a reasonable amount of sleep by 7:45am, when I would need to awaken (given that it is currently just after 1:30am).

Dear God, please let me learn whatever lesson I need from this now, and give up having this happen, please – I would like very much to be finished with these things, and for them to leave my life permanently.

Amen.

Post-a-day 2019

Just chillin’ after work?

How do you spend your afternoons and evenings after work?

Napping in your chair at your desk, because you hear rain and thunder (despite a stated 10% chance of rain)?

Followed by finally leaving after you awaken, accomplish some more work, and hear that the rain has stopped?

Followed by stopping for gas just in time for a torrential downpour, with extremely strong winds blowing in varied directions, shooting sheets of water every which way, on three-minute increments?

Which leads to just sitting on the ground, already soaked in your jeans, semi hiding behind your bike as wind/rain protection?

Followed, finally, by a release in the rain that allows you to resume being soaked by it, but that is safe enough for driving again, and so you head home super cautiously, get super soaked, and arrive he to blue skies and no rain, because the clouds have pushed through so quickly, but flooded street sides and driveways bottoms?

Despite a 10% chance of rain?

Yeah, that’s about how I spent my afternoon and evening today, too.

😂

And this was after the initial explosion

Post-a-day 2019

Girls, girls, girls

A conversation via text message between two girlfriends around 10:30pm one weeknight:

H: I have this slight problem in that I can’t find my pants

N: Ya

N: Ha.

N: I—- [her daughter] scraped her knee and got blood all over mine

N: Which reminds me to move those to the dryer

H: 😂

[thirty minutes later]…

H: Ah! I’m almost certain that they are sitting on the shelf in my office 😂

You know, the usual place to keep one’s blue jeans. 😛

Post-a-day 2019

Some days, part something

Some days, you just end up staying late at school, working well and being sociable and comfortable with coworkers and friends….., and you arrive home well after 10pm, although your desired bedtime is 9pm…

… and you determine that it is okay not to do the gym in the morning, because you need to take at least one day off a week, and you are helping a friend do unpacking and home arranging right after work tomorrow, and so it would be good to be not exhausted from lack of sleep by 6pm…

… yet you are so tired right now, you can even seem to figure out how to get your teeth and body cleaned (or even how to get up off the floor of your room), and you wonder if you’ll make it to bed anytime soon to have the delayed morning alarm even worth it…

Some days… 😛

Post-a-day 2019