choosing my confessions

Why do romance novel authors feel the need to include a prologue detailing some traumatic experience to explain the hero's angst/abandonment/love issues? It's really annoying. If you're a good writer, his reasons for being the way he is should come across without having to write out a scene where his parents are dead and he is left all alone, boo boo.

In other news, this update is brought to you by obscene amounts of caffeine. I got maybe four hours of sleep last night, if I was lucky, which I never am when it comes to sleep. This week has been more hectic than usual, because I've been commuting out to the Il de Ré everyday. As an assistant, I'm assigned to three different schools; two are in La Rochelle and one is out on the nearby island (hour by bus, thirty minutes by car). In order to simplify my schedule, the professors agreed that two weeks out of six I would spend at the one school on the island, lumping my hours together so that instead of having to go out there one day every week. I'm in the first of my two weeks here, and because it's so far away, all my hours get clumped together, and I spend from 9 to 5, Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday with a bunch of snobby middle schoolers.

I got up this morning at 6:30, after having fallen asleep sometime around 2. I chugged two cups of breakfast tea, and bought a coke on my way to the bus stop (along with a pain au chocolat, because chocolate never hurts). For now I have time to sit in the teachers lounge and write a bit, hence being able to tell you more about my life in France.

Today the school is having a bake sale for the parents to buy "cakes" to fundraise for school trips. I put cakes in quotation marks because they have a very different concept of cakes. Pies, tarts, cheese cakes, things that are basically big brownies, etc. I would have made a cake myself except I don't have an oven. Or a mixer. Or eggs, or flour, or sugar.

Speaking of American food, I've been doing a lesson on Thanksgiving in all my classes this week. The kids who aren't being total brats and ignoring anything I say are actually quite confused by the concept. There isn't really a word in French for 'thankful' and they don't understand that a turkey is different from a chicken (even though they have turkey in France and it's called something different from chicken). I also got a bunch of grossed out faces when I explained about pumpkin pie, which is delicious but I can see how they would think it sounds nasty. Some of the other American assistants and I were discussing how we could put together some Thanksgiving-y food for us next week, including a pie, but we'll see if anything actually comes of that (I find that people talk a lot more than they do). I had dinner with two of them last night in an Indian restaurant I've wanted to try, and it was decent. The best part was I got a tea (they called it "Marsala Ceylan" with milk and cardamom) which essentially tasted like chai. That might have been what kept me up all night but it was worth it. No price is too high for chai. Theoretically.

I don't think I've been this tired since the time last year I was awake for a 36 hour stretch. And I seem to remember mild hallucinatory effects. Or maybe that was a hallucination—wait. See, this sleep deprivation thing can make even the most sentient of beings incoherent.

I'm pretty darn incoherent, even in my head, which is saying something, because my head can be quite the acid trip on its own.

I've been doing research for my novel, and discovered that there are still so many things I want to see and haven't. So for my own continued education (and love of old things), I'm planning a thorough trip through the historic Périgord region in May, once my contract is over and I have some spare cash for travel before returning home to work and be a slave to school (if I manage to get into grad school, which is dubious). One my to see list: castles, castles, castles, castles, and medieval cities. And cathedrals. And ruins in general. I might also take the time to visit the prehistoric cave paintings that litter the region (seriously, this area is like my dream come true—so much old stuff! everywhere! This must be what heaven is like).

I suspect I'm becoming predictable.

I'm also growing my hair out which always translates to impending doom.

Desserts from this week: