moussu.net Blog

That is it good people, I am leaving in a few hours, and I shall miss you! Please do send me emails, I would like that! I will remember you while I eat patisseries and cheese and visit Paris and my gorgeous Switzerland, my darling family and my dear friends… and I hope you all have a merry Christmas (if you have one; if not, I still accept presents, even from people of other religions!) and a wonderful, enriching, marvelous, interesting, successful, admirable, loving, exciting, merry, joyfull, lucrative, productive, invigorating, fabulous, remarkable, tremendous, pleasing, extraordinary, amazing, gentle, thrilling, pleasurable, gratifying, delightful, lovely, agreeable, rewarding, inspiring, stimulating, satisfying, pleasant, constructive, exhilarating, creative, dynamic, and very good new year!!

Last day of class!! So sad and so happy at the same time! I have one exam this morning and one paper due… a few papers to grade… my grades to turn in, and then i’m done, bye bye Indiana!! I will miss my students A LOT and i also liked what i learned in my sociolinguistics, research in L2 writing, and space management classes… it’s getting cold here, so it’s a good time to leave this place… and hope that after the hottest summer in europe i won’t spend the coldest winter in europe…
i haven’t eaten anything, almost, in a week, because my kitchen is clean and i don’t want to mess it up before i go so i’m kinda starving and feeling dizzy… sleeping a lot when i should be writing and grading papers and getting ready for this exam that i have in 8 hours…
i don’t really want to fligh to Paris in 3 days… it’s so boring! Mark is driving me to the airport and that’s very kind of him!! The biggest problem is when i come back and have to go through the JFK airport!!! And this December, the major airports are starting the new « biotics » program, where they’ll take pictures and FINGERPRINTS of everyone who enters the US!!! It’s going to be hell and I bet I’ll miss my connection. I don’t want to be photographed!!! I don’t want to give my fingerprints, i’ll feel like a criminal!!! Chris told me that she had to give her fingerprints and have her picture taken when she went to Japan, and had to carry her « ID card » at all time… so that makes me feel better, it’s not just this country… but still, i’ll have to graduate ASAP and leave this place, I don’t feel welcome and I’m treated like a criminal so goodbye, I’ll have had a good time for 10 years (TEN YEARS IN THIS COUNTRY??!!!!???), and it will be good to move on to greener pastures (if they exist). I think I’ll go live in New Zealand, how about that?

The Last Samurai = The Last of the Mohicans meets Braveheart and Seven Years in Tibet. Nice propaganda in these times of war: find yourself, die for what you know is right, forgive thy ennemies, blah blah… Well done though, except for a quite unrealistic story and a very sappy end.

Watch American History X over and over and over. This movie is amazing! It’s exactly what I was talking about on nov. 10: hate is baggage… you just can’t go on being pissed off at everything all your life… I don’t know exactly how to express this and I guess I am too far from understanding it well to say it well, but I wish I could learn about people better by just sitting in the sun with them, face to face, and just look at them and smile… and say nothing… just look and feel and learn. I wish I loved better.

Those pinks I’m choosing are really ugly. What can I say tonight? I am not writing in my own journal so I’m feeling guilty… did anyone notice that I have been writing on this thing for more than a year already!!?? Wow… It was supposed to be snowing TONS tonight but I don’t see a flake yet, keep my fingers crossed, knock on wood, and all the other ones too!! Now that I won’t have a covered parking space I think I can say that my winter will be one long hell… haha… that’s funny… hell’s supposed to be hot… BUT NOT INDIANA!!!! In Indiana, hell is FREEZING! In fact, it might even be here that the beautiful saying « when hell freezes over » was coined!
Tonight, I tried to write my paper, and can I just say I honestly thought of dropping out of school and go work at the next door gas station for the rest of my life? I felt so dumb and unninterested in this stupid thing that I didn’t even know how to feel, and that’s pretty scary. I thought ok, if you write 3 pages, then you can go get something really good to eat! This kind of rewarding system usually works with me, especially when I haven’t eaten out in 2 months because of car problems… but tonight, I couldn’t even find an ounce of enthusiasm about eating a good dinner… so I tried the second trick: if you write 2 pages (uh ho, lowering my expectations already!), you can go to Border’s and spend $30 on books about web page design. Now THAT one works really well, usually, even though I have tons of books that I still haven’t read/learned yet… but I LOVE to buy a book, learn one thing from it, and then feel discouraged because the rest is too tough… and go buy another book! (Although I hate to have to admit that recently, I have had to go back to books I bought a while ago and actually LEARN the tough stuff, and more than once, darnit!) So anyway, even that trick didn’t work. The last thing I could try was this: if you don’t write SOMETHING tonight, you’re going to have to clean your room!!! OK, ok, guess what?? I DID clean my room! Ashley cleaned the rest of the house for the $30 I made by selling my notes to Steve, but I did clean my room… The argument that made me write something, in the end (well, a couple of pages at least) was that it was too cold to go shopping, too late by then to go eat out, too annoying to write in my journal, and… last but not least… I remembered my poor students who have to write a paper for ME… and I felt so guilty! I am a PhD student for goodness’ sake, and I can’t make myself write 20 pages!!!??? And I’m asking my poor, sick of engineering exams, homesick, overwhelmed international students to actually write a paper too??? How cruel of me!!!! I remembered the great drafts I read today… the enthusiasm these kids show… the hard life of freshmen… the difficulties of being an international student… and I thought: if these guys can do it, so can I! Shame on me! –the music on Purdue’s radio really sucks this fall! It’s either some ugly flute concerto or some nasty modernistic so-called music… So anyway, I DID write a few pages… so now I have 6 pages… and need 20 total… I don’t know what argument I can use next time. And I only have 10 days to write the damn thing!!!! OK, enough complaining for tonight! No snow, halleluia! In France in 10 days!!! AMEN!

note to the evil people who are trying to make my life miserable: i turned my AirPort connection off, i cleaned my whole computer, i got a new operating system, i changed every single one of my passwords (and that’s about 30!!) and i encrypted everything that’s on my computer! HA! TEN days of worries… Advice of the day to good and stupid people like me: BE CAREFUL!! Technology is not always your best friend!!
Something else: i managed to get my old computer to work and installed the brand new « Panther » operating system on it, and erased EVERYTHING that used to be on it, so it really looks like a new computer!! Who wants it??? I’ll sell it for $900 OBO.
What else? At this exact time the Monday after next Monday i’ll be ON THE PLANE HOME! Ha! Nice!!! Yes, I envy myself too But before I can leave, i have to finish writing this #@*$#(@!# paper…