Today I was feeling really down at work cos a) I didn't feel as though I was coming up with anything and b) the stuff I was coming up with was all exhibitions and things going on in New York and I was all 'according to the user survey (completed just before I started work) about 80% of the readership comes from France, followed by Canada (Quebec, betcha) and Belgium and the Maghreb, and no-one is going to know/care about the stuff I post about London and New York'. And also, tomorrow everyone is going to get together and look at the work I've done these past 3 weeks, and supposedly this is not at all meant to be a judgement on my work, but pretty sure I'm going to feel like it's either the Court of You Suck or maybe the Court of the Awkwardness I Will Nonetheless Feel if It Turns Out I'm Actually Doing a Good Job. I like how the names of my courts are rendered in MLA style <3 the MLA! Unless it turns out they're not, in which case, give me a break, my beloved MLA style guide is far away and they went and updated the rules since I did my thesis anyway...
ANYWAY, before the rambling started I was going to tell you what made my day better, which was whoever runs a blog on the subject I work on calling me 'precious' (well my work, not referring to the precious little darling I am) and 'very productive' and picking up some of my postings as being particularly helpful to those working in the field. Take that, internets, I rule you now!
After the beginning of May being the coldest in 15 years or something (seriously, at work I wished I had gloves it was so cold), the weather has turned lovely this week. Which makes me happy that I usually clock in around 8.45, take half an hour for lunch and finish my day at 4.15. After that, I can walk home in about half an hour or take the bus in about 15 minutes, and still have plenty of lovely warm sunshine to enjoy. Today (and yesterday, when I went home sick) I went to a lovely park not far from my house and soaked up a bit of sun. Still not quite used to putting in the hard yards that is 7 hours' work per day, so this makes it easier! Glad I didn't have to start in winter!
What else have I been up to? Oh yeah, as you will have seen if you looked at the photos in the last post, I went to the fair on Saturday with a guy I met the other week. Fun! I only went on two rides - the one pictured, that featured awesome views from the top and made me very dizzy and made my eyes cry, but was pretty fun, and then another that featured huge amounts of centrifugal force (I think this was the first time I've had a flat stomach in about 10 years ha ha) and ALSO made me very dizzy. Oh and we went on the Ferris wheel which was a lot more sedate, but was very pretty and enabled me to take the below blurry photos of the fair. The bit with the rides and fairground stalls and everything had candyfloss and suchlike, but turned out that the real gastronomic/drinking action was across the road. France really knows how to do this sort of thing - there were dozens of stalls selling everything from tapas to speciality cheeses, to sangria (possibly the same stall as the tapas stand), delicacies from Réunion (we had some samosas and some kind of white rum), suckling pig, etc. etc. etc. But what did I end up having to eat? None other than andouillette:
This was the result of foolishly saying (AFTER the subject of andouillette had already been broached) that, while I wasn't overly keen on the idea of eating a sausage made up of coarsely-chopped pig stomach and intestines, I would try anything once (PS not spiders!) So yeah, I knew what andouillette was, I knew that one Eduoard Herriot once said: "La politique, c’est comme l’andouillette. Ça doit sentir un peu la merde mais pas trop." (Politics is like andouillette. It should smell a bit like sh!t but not too much) and I ate it anyway. And you know, it wasn't that bad. There is so much pollen around in Tours I'm permanently a bit runny of nose at the moment, so maybe that protected me, or maybe it was the red Chinon wine or the mustard and onions that went on the andouillette sandwich that helped, but while I won't be going there again, it was fine.
I also recently went to a soirée where I'm pretty sure a girl thought I was racist cos she was kind of Asian-looking and I spoke to her in French and her boyfriend (loud, obnoxious, drunk and almost incomprehensible in English) replied for her in English so I assumed she didn't speak French and then she did and I was all 'oh, sorry, I thought you didn't because he answered for you in English' and then she said 'yeah, he's my boyfriend' which I don't think adequately explained why he did that at all but I think the hidden subtext there was 'and you're racist cos you thought I didn't speak French because I'm Asian'.
Anyway, I think that's about it. You've presumably already seen my furniture-constructing triumphs in the photos. I went to a free French class the other night, I will hopefully eventually get to go to the classes for reals but I'm pretty sure my work isn't going to pull their finger out in time, since this course is already halfway over. Next one isn't till October :(
Oh, and the French government refuses to believe that my MA is the equivalent of a 2-year French Masters (they say it's a 1 year degree, whatevs, I wrote a thesis and everything) which is even MORE annoying since I have TWO Masters and I'm not even going to try to argue the point on the other one, but the MA was totally a research degree. And yeah, that means that they pay me a little bit less and my job title is different, so I'm trying to fight that but that mostly consists of just sitting around waiting for my big boss to get back to me at the moment.
And that is all! Will try to update more promptly should anything exciting befall me in the near future.
No, I don't think that girl would've thought you were being racist at all.
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